Vegas, Baby!!!

Hows it going everybody? Sorry about the dry spell, I haven't had time to write because I have been training my ass off for Taekwondo Nationals in Las Vegas, which were this last Friday and Saturday, March 13-14 The following blog is the account of my experiences there. Enjoy!

Thursday, 12 March 2009, 10:34 PM

Today I write from my room at the Sahara Hotel on the one and only sunset strip in Las Vegas. For those of you who don’t know, I will be competing on Saturday in the taekwondo national tournament here in Vegas, so as a result, my spring break started two days early.
The drive from Tuscon to Las Vegas is a little more than 400 miles. Now, if this were any normal drive, it could be done in 4-5 hours, depending on how heavy your foot is. However, this is not a normal drive: we had to drive through Phoenix.

Two summers ago I worked for a residential painting company. However, before they let me paint any houses, they had me going door to door hanging company flyers on people’s doorknobs. It was then during my 5 weeks of door hanging that I developed a theory about civil engineers: they are all evil. They designed roads that went straight up ridiculously steep hills just to spite me. Architects had it in for me too, they designed houses with front doors at the top of ridiculously long driveways and several hundred stairs. I realize now that the douchbags that designed the roads and intersections in Phoenix make the others look like alter boys. I have never seen a city with such a convoluted set of intersections and traffic lights (and I have been to Los Angeles). It seemed that everything was designed to make traffic move slowly. There was no way we could have won. As a result, a drive that should have taken 5 hours at the most took about 8.

Once we were out of Phoenix, the drive actually got pretty good. I already mentioned in another entry how much I enjoyed driving through the Arizona desert when I drove from San Diego to Tucson, and I think I enjoyed this more. After an extraordinarily long stretch of un curving flat road through Nowhere, AZ (I’m not joking, that is the name of a city here) the terrain got a lot more rocky. It was quite beautiful, and where the southern desert what characterized by cactus, the northwestern desert had a bunch of what I can only describe as spikey trees: Middle sized trees that lacked leaves but instead had these clumps of long green thorns at the end of the knarled branches.

Monday, 16 March 2009, 1:42 PM

On Friday, all of the high ranks competed in their traditional weapons, forms, and sparing. All of the XMA competitions took place that day as well. It was a real treat to watch the best in the ATA compete against each other. I think my favorite event was the blackbelt sparring. All of them are excellent fighters, and its always fun to watch fights when the fighters are excellent. Of course, the XMA competition was excellent as well, though I was much more impressed with XMA weapons than XMA open hand. Maybe I have unreasonable standards from watching all of the excellent tricksters on youtube, but with the exception of a pretty sweet, butterfly twist-kick, I wasn’t that impressed. XMA is not supposed to be about flips, but that doesn’t change the fact that they really look cool. One of the guys who I train with at UA competed in both XMA weapons and open hand, and did very well. Color belts don’t normally compete in XMA, so Simon took first by default; that said, he put together pretty sweet forms for both, especially his weapons form: he makes me want to learn bo staff Another girl, Heidi, also did both XMA events, did very well at both, and took home two gold medals.. The best part of the XMA, aside from watching my buddy kick ass, was I got to see Mike Mo himself do an XMA demo….talk about badass. FYI, hes also a really cool guy from what I’ve seen, very good with kids.

On Friday the rest of us competed in traditional forms, weapons, and sparring (or in my case one steps). Im not going to go into gruesome detail, but I took 5th in traditional forms. Meh, I didn’t care too much about them anyway. My baby was my weapons form. I worked that thing into the ground…..and it paid off big time: FIRST PLACE BABY!!!!!!! Unfortunately there was only one other girl in my ring competing in weapons, but I blew her out of the water! I then finished out my first tournament by taking second in my one steps. I took home a gold and silver medal!!! I must have worn both of those things around my neck for a good half hour as I walked around the tournament; I was so proud. I was grinning from ear to ear. Videos of my traditional form, weapons form, and onesteps will go up very soon.

Videos:
Weapons Freestyle
Traditional Form

Unfortunately, the day did not end well for all of us. One guy didn’t take home any medals (though he easily could) because he got flustered, and another girl didn’t take home any because her judges sucked. And then Heidi punched a girl so hard she dislocated her shoulder and had to be taken to a hospital, so she only took third in sparring. I think she is going to be out for a while, her shoulder is really messed up. The way she sees it though, getting injured at nationals is probably the best place to get injured, at least it wasn’t lame like getting injured in practice, hahaha.

Anyway, on Sunday the rest of the club left for Tucson, while Heidi, myself, and three of her friends drove to San Diego, which is where I write from now. Of course, we couldn’t leave without walking around the Las Vegas strip. I honestly couldn’t tell you what my favorite part of the strip was; part of the intrigue of Las Vegas is that every hotel has a different theme. All of them have really nice casinos and bars, but they all are completely different. But if you want to twist my arm and force me to choose a favorite, I would have to pick the Luxor. I think it was just a little too cool. Plus Criss Angel performs regularly there with Cirque du Soleil; cant do much better than that. We drove to San Diego after having drunk our fill of the Las Vegas strip, both literally and figuratively.

Its 3 in the morning and at some point we have to drive back to Tucson tomorrow after we hit the beach. Bed time!

Wednesday, 18 March 2009, 11:28 AM

I can think of no better way to wind down from a big tournament than by going to the beach and relaxing for an afternoon. Oceanside California on Monday afternoon was perfect: clear sky, warm sun, light breeze and good company. Everyone else wanted to build a sandcastle, but the best way I know to enjoy the beach is to put on some Jack Johnson and take a good long nap in the sun. We drove back to Tuscon immediately afterward because we needed to return the car.

The tournament in Vegas was probably one of the coolest experiences of my life. Not just because I walked away with a couple medals, but because it gave me a glimpse into a new world filled with new possibilities, and to be honest I really liked what I saw. When I started tricking, I knew it would remain part of my life so long as my joints cooperated; it wasn’t until I went to Vegas that I realized how big that part might be. I love everything about this, from training to competition, the camaraderie in and out of the ring, even the occasional shitty judge. The one thing I know for sure is that I want to teach taekwondo. Time will tell where this path takes me.


Take Care,
DK