Practice has recently felt like a chore. Last week however, I had some great passes with Orlando which I really enjoyed. I'm not sure why the feeling of malaise when it comes to practice, other than my life has been very busy right now, and going to practice feels more like an obligation and not like something fun. But I do enjoy being at practice for the people and the fencing. Its the "going to practice" that has me iffy. I also need to get back to working on drills and building up muscle memory.
Saturday, we traveled out to Long Island for St. Andrews. Its a small local event and most of the people who were fencing there don't travel all that much, so it was nice to see some unfamiliar faces, as well as those more familiar. There were two tournaments, a single elimination tournament and then the novelty tourney. I went into the first tournament over confident. I drew Eanraig the Bonesetter as my first bout. He's pretty good, I was stupid and I wound up dying. So lesson learned... and its a lesson I've probably been needing for a while. I tried to toy with my opponent, figuring that I could counter anything he threw at me. I was wrong. I need to fence my game and keep it tight. That is when I am at my best.
In the second tournament, there were three people fencing at a time. You got one or two points for picking up objects around the list and three points for killing your opponents. I said heck with bending down, and my strategy was dispatch my opponents and then pick up any remaining objects. At the conclusion of the tournament, I had 27 points. My next closest opponent had a little over half my total. For my effort, I was rewarded with a signed copy of "Honor Among Thieves" by J.M. Aucoin.
I did some pickups and a little teaching at the conclusion of the tournament. I did some pickups with Eanraig wherein I felt better about facing him earlier. He's strong and faster than I thought, but playing my game and maintaining proper measure, I felt more at ease. He does like to come in hard and fast, but it left me his belly to hit as he tried to recover from his initial attack.
I did some my quick and dirty dagger lesson with Baroness Lassar. She picked it up right away and we signed her auth card for dagger.
Then I participated in a re-auth for a nice lady and did the dagger portion, as she had all her auths and had to go through all the forms. I had to coax her significantly to actually make any attack with the dagger. Even after tying her sword up completely with the dagger free, she was reticent to make an attack with it.
Finally it was a series of bouts with Jean-Xavier. Its always a fun time fencing with him. For some reason, I was making a lot of parries in five, with my blade over his, and my point offline, which was allowing him to complete his attack after the initial interception. I'm not sure why I was doing this or what was going on in my head, but I was not rolling my wrist over to execute a parry four properly. I paused what I was doing, evaluated it, still have no clue why I was doing it, but was able to correct it for the rest of our passes.
Following the fencing, I was able to witness Jean-Xavier take Lady Miriam Giant Killer as his first provost. Then it was the long trip home. I hate travelling through NYC. While it was only a little over 90 minutes to get to the site, it took us an hour longer just to get to the George Washington Bridge.
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