Wibbly-wobbly

Said bye-bye to my grandmother today, as we headed back down to Auckland for the last few days of our trip. After travel, lunch, and a bit of a spell at a local playground (for the kids, that is; I am always annoyed at the lack of adult-sized and themed playgrounds), I drove off for about four hours of karate training. Apart from a disrespectful white belt (who also gave my shoulder a bit of a wrench), it was fabulous. Quite a lot of one-on-one time with Kancho (including him demonstrating and taking me through two combat staff kata, which I've had trouble following from his videos) before the junior class, which I joined in on; the senior class followed, and was excellent. I felt I refined quite a few things.

After the class I spoke a little with Gene Browne sensei, with whom I trained back in the seventies and eighties; we sat and attained shoran together. He kept training, and is now sixth dan, and one of Chidokan's senior instructors, as well as a World Karate Federation judge, and an executive board member of Karate New Zealand. We talked for a little while, then he said that he and Simon Merrick sensei will be heading to Sydney for the Australian Open karate tournament; he suggested that they head over a day early, and organise a training session for me. O_O Colour me completely floored. He said that I came all this way to train at the dojo; since they're going to be in Sydney anyway, the least they could do would be to train with me. 

Feels. So. Good. 

(edit: And just now, after I clicked publish, I received an email from Kancho telling me that I forgot my new grade certificate, which he gave me today! Forget my own head, seriously. Hopefully I'll be able to collect it from him tomorrow.)

Anyway. No photo taken by the time I got back to the apartment, so I set a slow shutter speed, aimed off the deck, clicked the go button, and panned. The red line in the sky is a helicopter.

Wobblr; Flickr.

SMC Pentax-DA 35mm f2.4; K-30; Rw Therapee.