Norwegian chap That Norwegian chap would have to want really badly to live in hot, dry West Texas, 'cause I ain't lettin' her go far away!!
She just didn't want to pose and its hard to swallow when dads pointing that camera. My strawberry blonde was a second green (7th. KYU) belt in Shotokan Karate.Her instructor was Oscar Favila and her Chief Examiner was Sensei Osamu Ozawa from Las Vegas(born in Japan)She was a very good student.Her brother is 4 1/2 years older and he learned real fast she could and would put him on the ground flat of his back.It was really funny as he was always roughing her up and that stopped fast. Goggle her Examiner he was a great man. The ultimate aim of the art of karate lies not in victory nor in defeat, but in the perfection of the character of its participants." Gichin Funakoshi
aikido In college, my best friend practiced & taugght Tomiki-do aikido. It was cool. I took from him & right before my test for my first black belt, I broke my left thumb & was in a cast after the thumb was pinned back together. Then, my friend graduated from college & left and I never took my test. I liked aikido and saw the usefulness of it. I especially liked that it was a defensive art and not aggressive. You use the other person's movements & balance/imbalance to defeat them. I saw my friend put a stop to several displays of stupidity by drunken idiots with aikido. But his first love was judo and he took 4th in the NCAA's in 1981 in his weight division. He used to teach judo & aikido as an intramural sport and I was his "uke" (the guy, who gets thrown around to demonstrate the techniques). We were goofing around playing judo one day, when we each tried to do a leg-sweep on the other, we spun around & fell. His hip landed on my left hand and that's how I broke my first metacarpal clean in two. I had to have surgery to pin it back together. First & only bone I ever broke. I was 21 then - that's now 26 years ago. Dang, time flies!!
My horse-minder broke her arm whilst jumping this spring. After two operations and a cast for eight weeks, she graduated in tae-kwon-do two days after removing the cast. It looks like children get incredibly tough learning these techniqes. Love your reminiscing WTxDaddy.
My son Kevin trained in Tae-kwon-do but didn't like it and forgot it all. I think he would have loved Shotokan Karate but by then he was to interested in girls and work.
