JOURNEY - on Mastering Ukemi Daniel Linden (feel good novels txt) 📖

are wandering the countryside calling themselves freedom fighters or Maoist revolutionaries. By any other name they are thugs. Still they have been leaving foreigners alone for the most part and if approached money has been sufficient to send them on their way. Call them what you want but they are still thieves. I was far more concerned with problems caused by altitude or a medical emergency.

We began to implement an exercise program that included ‘hiking’ in full pack up and down the towers at our local football stadium. These towers were about a six percent grade that switch-backed up and ended at the upper deck. From there we would go up the final forty steps that took us to the highest row of seats and then turn around and start down. It took about fifteen minutes to go from the bottom to the top and then back down again. We would do this three, four or five times and we tried to go over to the stadium and do it three times a week. It wouldn’t help to acclimatize us for altitude, but it would help develop stamina and strength needed for the long road. At this point every ounce of preparation is worth many pounds of grief later on. We needed to prepare as completely as we could.

When learning to take ukemi a person begins by doing simple roll backs that lift his posterior up off the ground, but to not go so far as to take him all the way over in a back roll. He sits and then rolls back bringing his knees up to his chest, legs crossed and tail bone off the mat. Then he rolls forward until his knees are on the mat and his butt just barely off the mat. All the while he does this he practices extending the energy we call ki forward or over his shoulder depending if he is moving fore or aft. This is a basic exercise, but it is vital to all that follows in his training.

Like those beginning students we were trudging up and down our pretend mountain in ninety-degree heat late one afternoon. It was ninety degrees because after a certain point in the year it is always ninety plus in the afternoon in Florida. It just is. If you want to go outside and train at anything you do it in the heat or you don’t do it. We had no choice. This was as close as we were going to get to climbing and descending in long enough increments to do us any good. And so like the beginner who trains at those back rolls, we were climbing to prepare ourselves for what lay ahead. Christian asked me if we would do any aikido training over there. I said no and let it go. He asked again if there would be any opportunity for any workouts at all, or maybe if there was a dojo in Kathmandu. I told him I did not believe that an aikido dojo existed in Kathmandu, but even if it did we were there on other business. Still, he persisted.

“Sensei, I think it would be fun to train in a completely foreign culture. You know, you wouldn’t know the language or anything. You might get something from it you wouldn’t see anywhere else.” He stopped and adjusted his pack. “And anyway it wouldn’t be a big deal to add a gi and a jo or bokken with us if we are going to leave our bags in Kathmandu while we are trekking in the high country.”

Is that what this is all about?” I asked. “You feel you will want a weapon?”

“Well, it wouldn’t hurt anything, would it? A jo would look like a walking stick to anyone who saw it.”

“Except that everyone who goes to Nepal has high-tech, collapsible, graphite or boron walking sticks that cost about a hundred bucks a throw.” I said. “And we will, too. I forgot to add that to the list I gave you, but you will definitely want a set of those.”

“Why don’t I just bring a jo?”

“Look, Christian, if you want a weapon we can go to the Khukuri House in Thamel. You can buy a nice lightweight knife for the trip and no one will think anything of it. Everyone carries Khukuri knifes in the high country. Well, not everyone, mostly farmers. But it would certainly not be out of place. And it would be a lot more useful as a tool than a jo would be. I actually plan to do this myself.”

“Oh.”

“Oh, yeah.”

We walked to the bottom and started back up again. Sweat was running down my back and into my jeans and the weight I was carrying in the pack began to chafe. Christian stopped and took his shirt off and threw it over a railing.

“I’ll get that on the way back,” he said.

“No,” I said. “Either put it back on or put it into your pack. You won’t be leaving anything on the trail but your boot prints. Don’t get into some weird habits now.”

We trudged on for another circuit of the ramps and steps and I began to feel as if my heart would pound right out of my chest. I switched to crab walking sideways and back across the ramp. We would have to exercise all the steering muscles in the ankles and calf for a long time before we would be ready.

Chapter 5

Randori

We were having a party on the fourth of July. Kids were running around and sparklers were more popular than cookies and soda for the moment.

Christian was at the barbeque taking orders, Curtis and Chris were holding court for all the kyu ranks and wives were hurrying back and forth with potato salad and other necessary things. It was a nice evening. Hot weather had moved in the last week of May as always and few people enjoy evenings