Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 10:09:23 -0700
From: Jun Akiyama
Subject: Aikido-L Seminar Review [1/4]
Friday
We all gathered in Merrifield, Virginia for the Seminar. The lodging
of choice was the Homewood Suites situated within walking distance of
George Simcox's Virginia Ki Society who was hosting the event. The
actual event site was about two miles away from the hotel and dojo,
but with some arrangements with the hotel shuttle, local people
providing rides, and visitors renting cars, there were pretty much no
problems in procuring transportation through the weekend.
On Friday night, I arrived from National Airport on the Metro and
walked the fifteen minutes with my luggage and weapons case to the
hotel. Luckily, the weather was nice (and was nice throughout the
weekend). Upon arriving, I first bumped into Alan Drysdale and Anita
Spitz in the lobby. It was nice to feel that I had arrived at the
right place at the right time, really.
I went and threw my stuff into the room and walked off my four hours
in the airplane by walking to George's dojo from the hotel with Alan
and Anita. We got a bit lost in finding the place near the theater,
but we found it after walking around the television buildings. We
found that the dojo was closed and locked up when we got there, but it
was nice to get a bit of exercise.
Upon returning to the hotel, there was a good group of people already
sitting around in the lobby including Alice Bentley, Susie Mellott,
Sean Robinson, Dave Liebreich, Jeff Boylan and perhaps a few others.
I hadn't met any of these people before (except for Jeff) so it was a
good way to kick off the weekend of meeting new people.
Kjartan Clausen and Maria DeRosa made their entrance from their day in
Washington DC into the lobby, too. Mike Bartman also came in at
around this time so we decided to go ahead and go get a quick bite to
eat at the nearby Silver Diner which was right next to the hotel.
There, we sat next to the five teachers who were going to be teaching
-- George Simcox, Philip Akin, Alan Drysdale, Jim Baker, and Chuck
Gordon. We perked our ears as we were eating and were able to pick up
a few words like "shihonage," "Kjartan," and "pain," but not much
else.
We went back to the hotel and found quite a group had gathered. Other
people I remember meeting there at the hotel included Emily Dolan,
Wendy Gunther, Monica Norman all the way from London, Beate Kawelke
and her husband Andreas all the way from Germany, Greg Jennings,
Gordon Wormser, and Margo Ballou. If I forgot people who were there,
forgive me, but feel free to speak up.
Quite a bit group of us then headed to George's dojo for his regular
Friday evening class. There, I finally met Carol Shifflett who had
done wonders in getting this Seminar put together. Everyone went
upstairs to shuck off their civilian clothes and get into their aikido
gear (including Emily in her all-black dogi).
I sat out of the classes since I was still feeling a bit odd with a
stiff neck that I had for about four or five days prior, but pretty
much half the class was taken over by Aikido-L folks; I hope George
didn't mind. George's class was, as always, enriching and
entertaining; it looked like everyone was having fun on the mat and
off. During this class, Wendy was reintroducing me to the notion of
"exquisite pain" by digging her steel fingers deep into my arms to
grind some of my mouse and aikido tension away. I was happy.
During the class, George had one of his senior students, Steve
Kendall, give a call to the nearby Chinese restaurant for reservations
for something like 40 people. They said they would be happy to hold
us there, so we headed on out to have some dinner. There, Peter
Boylan managed to find us all eating Chinese and joined our group.
I and a everyone in my room (214) went back to the hotel to get some
much needed sleep. I hear some others gathered in another room to
carouse a bit, but I'm sure you'll be hearing those stories from their
mouths...
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