Snow, Exercise and Diet

It snowed this morning and I used that as an excuse to not ride my bike. But by the afternoon I managed to squeeze in a ride around the lake and it was more of a workout than usual as the wind was really pretty strong,

Above is a pic from my ride and below one of the neighborhood this morning.

I plan to ride tomorrow morning but I got hooked on Season one of Heroes and since they are free online with netflix I stayed up late tonight and last night watching. I hope I can force myself out the door in the morning

This part of my new diet which I call "I drink Wine and Beer on the weekend and not during the week and I try to exercise more". After one week I weigh about the same but I swear my pants are not as tight and in Aikido I have more stamina. We will see how I feel after another week. I may have to redefine weekend to exclude Sunday

A Dark Rider

In an attempt at healthy living I rode my bicycle around the lake before work and since daylight savings time started yesterday I made most of the ride in the dark. I meant to get up at 6:00 but slept until 6:30; still enough time to ride for an hour.

Unfortunately a family emergency forced me to miss Aikido, so I guess I should have gone on Saturday. But if I had I wouldn't have been able to ride this morning since I had my wheels trued and chain replaced when I missed on Saturday. Oh what a complicated thing this living is.

A Weak Link In My Chain Of Being?

I slept too late today, felt generally “blue” and consequently skipped Aikido class today. I think I once read an Uchi Deshi blog where he was asked "what do you do if you don't feel like going to class?" and he replied "Go to class". I thought of that advice as I skipped today, pondering my self worth and quality of moral fiber.

But, you can only do that sort of thing so long, and I finally worked up enough energy to try and fix my bicycle which was suffering from warped wheels and a rusty chain. I was not going to try and “true” my wheels no matter how many you tube videos show me how. But I figured I could replace the chain myself. I had a chain breaker from the bike I had in the 1980's but the nail that drivse the pin out of the link was just too dang big.

While the bike shop fixed my wheels I looked at chain breakers and they ranged from $13 to $25. When the wheels were done I found out they would only charge $10 labor to replace my chain, and seeing that I have not changed a chain in over 15 years (even if I should have) I used all my math skills to determine it would take a decade to get my money out of the new chain breaker.

The net result is I now have no excuse not to ride around the lake before work. Was my lack of exercise the bad chain and wheels or was that link in the chain of reasoning merely an excuse? And that leads me back to my self worth and moral fiber, dang it all!

---

Below a picture of a rainbow I saw this week while driving, and I realized it had been years since I either saw or noticed a rainbow. They really are quite amazing.

Turning

Wednesday we started with Tai No Henko (0r is that Tai No Henka?), anyway I started off with Sensei and I finally noticed he was responding differently after the tenkan as he returned to the starting position. It had never come up before. Usually each participant focuses on the turn
(tenkan) and then ending with the right stance. I could feel a difference but could not figure out what was happening.

I tried to mimic but finally had to ask how you go back to start again. And I think he said you respond to the grip uke has and ultimately I suppose it mirrors the first half except in reverse. But the thing is that we have done that may times and I have done it at other dojos when I traveled but nobody ever point out that there might be something after yo think you are finished.

Another lesson is that the technique is never really finished, as one technique simply blends into another

Share The Tip Of The Sword With His Head!

What type of tip will you share?

I am starting a new topic...”Sensei Says!”

Sensei always looks for ways to express the subtle points of Aikido and sometimes the phrases have a unique quality that either comes from secret insight or a polyglot's overload of language.

Today was “Weapons Work” and we worked with the Bokken (wooden sword) not for actual martial application but to help us apply and understand our non weapons aikido techniques.

So today we where using the Bokken in a strike to the top of the head, and we all seemed to he holding back, keeping our our elbows too close to our heads or rather not giving our all to the motion of the strike. Not that we didn't use muscle and force to strike to the imaginary head, but that it really was not efficient.

So Sensei struggling to explain and came out with “Share the tip of the sword with his head!”. He then went on to say something like we were keeping our energy in, close to us and not “sharing” it with uke.

The phrase stuck with me and it does point out one of the interesting aspects of Aikido. In that O' Sensei made comments about harmony and there being "no enemy" but it is still a "Martial" endeavor and the reconciliation of those two aspects points not just to our view of Aikido (since slicing a head and harmony are normally two wildly different things), but to our approach to any endeavor. Meaning what do we dig about the thing we are doing; do we like the cool movement or the slicing of a head, the gentleness of sharing or the effectiveness of a strike to the head.

Of course this was just an exercise in our own personal movement. But still, there is the "sharing our sword..."

I Push A Very Small Envelope

I missed a week of Aikido classes plus either I am getting bigger or my gi is getting smaller (guess which) but in any case I now know I a REALLY out of shape after tonights class.

Charlie taught and it was a pretty small class. I can't remember much except that I pooped out during ji waza at the end.

This was my first time at the new location with the new floor which has a thin rubberized matt on top of the “Denver Floating Dojo Floor”. Which we worked on a week or so ago where the subfloor is 4” squares of some sort of hard foam glued to 8' x 4' plank of “OSB” then flipped over and then screw down more 8' x 4' planks.

On top of which the mat is placed.

Anyway it feels good and I wish I was better on it.

But getting home really tired and then having some bread, wine and mozzarella was pretty damn sweet. Maybe that is why my gi is getting smaller.

Snow Delays

Short version... Snow storm in Dallas last Thursday... missed Saturday's class to deal with side effects of storm... still no power at home as of Monday morning... may miss tonights class to ferry 4 unruly cats from temporary home to newly re-powered home base (we hope it happens today)