Leesport PA

So, Friday morning I stayed up till 5 am trying to fix my computer. While waiting for things to load on it, I was simultaneously packing for the weekend, making lists of things my car needs done to it, and putting away my winter clothes/having a sneezing fit.

3.5 hours later, I was up and at the student clinic, massaging ungrateful wretches, I mean poor poor people with lots of shoulder injuries. As soon as clinic was over I turned on my trusty Tomtom (which by the end of the trip I desired to throw out the window on the Turnpike) and began to program it to tell me how to get to the jujitsu clinic in Pennsylvania. As it turns out, the address I got from the clinic website does not exist, according to Tomtom, but a quick call to mom to look up the address I used last year set things straight. Its a good thing I don't throw crap out and am somewhat organized about where I keep googlemaps directions.

I arrived safe and sound, and opted out of the "pay-$20-a-night-for-a-cabin-with-no-electricity-and-no-heat-and-no-locking-door-and-no carpeting-and-bugs" deal, and chose to sleep on the mats in the dojo. That was a better experience than last year, where I felt that the "martial" spirit had never left the mat and therefore kept me awake all night. This year air was peaceful. Perhaps it was not the mat that changed, but me.

Sheela working with a green belt.


Cara and I-forgot-his-name-already! working on some judo stuff after classes.


Peter... every time we turned around he was on the mat with someone. Or so it seemed.


After classes, we were stuck in the dojo avoiding torrential rain. We grabbed a deck of cards and began Rorshack tests on ourselves (Cara's idea- psychology major that she is.) Apparently, I keep all my assets hidden. Some are organized, some are scattered, and a good deal of them are all in one big pile of crap (sound like my bedroom to anyone else?)


Peter has a scorpion. But at the risk of revealing everyone's innermost psyche, I'm not going to share their card-psycho-analysis. Read into it whatever you want to. We did.


Cara's horseshoe.


Wu's whatever-shape-that-is.


Done with the psychology class, we began a game called heart attack which ended up being almost as violent as jujitsu. Maybe it was because we were on a mat, and it was easy to hit people without thinking about it.


The dojo picture. Wu, me, Barb, Peter, Sheela. And Professor Okazaki above the mantel piece.


Last year, the clinic was in the same location. Ben and Amish got it in their heads that we were all going to go visit a Chinese Pagoda that happened to be somewhere in Pennsylvania. I was following them in my own car and as it turned out, they left me in the middle of Reading at a stoplight. I managed to get lost enough to make it to the "other" side of the tracks, where no one spoke English and I had to keep my doors locked, drive slowly, and avoid one-way streets. As you can tell, I made it out alive, and decided that THIS year, Tomtom was going to bring me to that darned Pagoda if it killed me.


As you can see, it did.


So anyway... I had a good time at the clinic, took quite a few bodywork and therapy classes, and got a whole brainful of stimulating information to mull over during the drive back. Speaking of which... I mentioned an incident with my Tomtom. It cost me $.75 to get to Camp Joy via Interstate 78. Instead of sending me back the way I came, which would have been intelligent, Tomtom sent me from 78 past Philadelphia, to the NJ Turnpike, which cost me $8.55 and 25 minutes of stop-and-go traffic. I should have trusted my instincts and taken 78 to 287.

But at least I didn't get lost in Reading this year (twice last year!). Thats the important part. That, and learning jujitsu.