Last weekend I attended a referee seminar in Aurora, Colorado. The seminar itself was old hat, but getting there and back turned out to be rather perilous!
The seminar started at 10am on Sunday, so James and I left just after midnight. We had driven about an hour down Spanish Fork canyon, when my car broke down. Poor Roxanne! We couldn't get the car to restart, and after a little while, I decided to call my parents. Just so you know, I have the best parents on the face of the planet. They got up in the middle of the night and drove an hour to come rescue us. By the time they arrived, we'd gotten Roxanne started again, so they let us take their car, in the hopes of still making the seminar, and limped Roxanne back home. Best Parent Award!
We arrived just in time for my seminar. I spent eight hours reviewing referee knowledge, while James attended sacrament at a local ward, and spent most of the afternoon reading at a nearby park. When my seminar finished, we went out to dinner, then began our return journey. What had been a pleasant and mild trip into Colorado became a stressful and at times frightening journey home, as it snowed throughout our trek back across the Colorado mountains. This was succeeded by almost--very nearly--running out of gas just into Utah (yay for answered prayers!) and then snow all the way through Spanish Fork canyon. We made it home at about 3:30 in the morning, and needless to say, we were incredibly grateful to climb into bed!
Yesterday we competed at the Friendship Open, a martial arts tournament held at Pursuit of Mastery in West Jordan. James and I are both members of our school's demonstration team, Beyond Force. For those of you who are unfamiliar with them, demo team performances usually comprise a variety of martial arts elements, including kicks, self defense, tricks & flips, board breaking, weapons, and more. Demonstrations like this are supposed to show off the very best of martial arts--they're supposed to be cool. Our demo team has been around for three years now, which is still fairly young, though we are among the top-ranked teams in Utah.
That said, this was a so-so demo for us, at yesterday's tournament, due to a couple of things: first of all, we were missing a third of our team, including a couple of very crucial people for some of our best tricks. Second, we had two brand new team members, who auditioned and made the team last week. That means they'd just just just learned the choreography of the pieces they were in, which means things were still kind of rough. Auditions being last week also meant that we put this demo together in the last week. Needless to say, not our best demo ever. But still a decent job:
We hung around at the tournament most of the day, because adult black belts were the very last division to compete. *Sigh* But once our turn finally came, we had an excellent time of it. James competed first in forms. He did an excellent sport poomsae-style Keumgang. Because this particular school (and therefore most of the judges) don't follow this style, he was not highly scored. But I was incredibly proud of his performance, which will earn him much higher grades at the State Championships next weekend.
The female division went next. I unfortunately had to compete against my friend (and student) Kristen, but that sometimes cannot be helped. I performed Shipjin, the 5th degree black belt form, and one of my all-time favorites. If I do say so myself, it was an excellent Shipjin. But when I finished, I was heartily teased for slipping up during my introduction, when I almost forgot my new last name! James is still teasing me about it, and probably will for awhile to come.
Lastly came James' weapons form. He competed with a nunchuku form he created himself, which he has worked hard on. He received high marks, and ended up with a silver medal. And, as James would be sure to tell you, the guy who received the gold dropped his weapon (an enormous error) so should not have gotten as high of scores as he did. Oh well. James did remarkably well, and was very pleased with his performance.
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