McCaren Park August 19

As usual McCaren Park was small. There was me, Ervald, Timur, and Jarrod, the new guy from Trimaris. They all killed me a few times. However, I really need to fight some knights.

Timur is looking better and better all the time. He is back to using a modified Belatrix style, but he’s doing it with that leather-strapped center grip Mongolian shield, and it’s working well for him. The way that shield shakes and absorbs energy is quite interesting. He killed me a couple of times, mostly with offsides to the head and once to the inner shoulder.

Ervald is getting better, but he is coming out from behind his shield on his onside shots. When we started the bear-pit, he went to sword and dagger with the sword in his left hand. I found that he didn’t have a good attack outside of trying to stab his opponents in the gut around their shields.

Jarrod is taller than me (always a problem) with a big heater (another problem). He was able to get angles on my legs that were weird. Those long arms worked in strange ways. He is also a product of the Asgaard system. He even has the training videos downloaded to his Iphone. That is pretty cool. He is also very into drills. It is good to have a willing student who like to train not just fight. Timur is this way too. After practice they went off to do some of the Asgaard sword drills together.

Me, I was having too good a night. I got killed a few times, but nearly always it was because I was tired, was bored, or was messing around. Messing around often gets me killed. But I was also messing around and killing people to:

I got two (maybe all three) of them with tight wavy-rising snaps, almost just a double pump.

I got every body’s leg with a super hard double strike.

I killed everyone with a stutter-wrap.

I wasn’t killing as much with my thrusts. I got a couple of good hidden thrusts in on opponents on their knees, but I don’t think I got a single hook/thrust in, which is my bread and butter.

At different times I used a butterfly, an upsilon, a cut from five, the foot stomp, and even the fast Eddy/Radnor direction change (on someone who was standing no less) to win fights. I was even using old MacEnruig style figure eights and molinees as misdirection, and they were working. While most of the time I used my classic high open form bunny round, a la Fabian, I also at various time channeled Jade, Artos, Connor, and Radnor, all to good effect.

In other words, I felt like a God. And that is definitely going to get me killed if I go into crown feeling this way.


Also: the best laid plans of mice and men go awry. My third class at BMCC is, once again, a Monday/Wednesday evening class. It gets out at 720, which makes Nutley very unlikely till January. Grrrrrrrr.