Midwest Trip Part the Third

Since I was too lazy to upload them during my holiday, here are several random photos from the parts I've already reported, with the rest being integrated into the rest of this entry. Here we have the Emerald Dinner in Ohio which we stumbled upon right around dinner time on the first day. It was tiny inside! Next have a pic of the tesla coil going off at the Museum of Science and Technology in Chicago. I'm continually amused by how happy Kirk looks in this photo from the House on the Rock, though what really pleases me is that lugging the tripod around meant I finally got clear photos of the amazing ivory carvings.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, the 11th, we headed to Missouri, near St. Louis to visit my eldest brother and his family. We hung out, forced my niece and nephew to watch Adventure Time! (what?), and had a good time. The next day, I'd heard raves about the City Museum so leaving Dad and my eldest bro at home, Kirk and I took our niece and nephew to the place. This is just a view of one three story area of it. And here's an alternate route our niece and nephew took to get out of the airplane at the top. It really is a crazy place. I loved crawling around and exploring, especially in the caves (which were impressively dark in places), and we even braved the secret passage across the floor in the white whale area (which was only 18 inches across and maybe four feet deep). Needless to say, it's not a place for claustrophobes, and it didn't surprise me that sometimes you'd encounter a place that you just couldn't get through or possibly didn't want to try. (I kinda want to know the statistics for how many people do get stuck and how often.) The only thing that really annoyed me is the lack of padding on everything which meant that long before the thrill had worn off, I was sporting bruises on my knees and scrapes on my elbows, which gradually discouraged me from going exploring in favour of not limping (by the end of our five hour visit, I couldn't go up or down stairs/slopes without pain... that faded eventually, but I'm still sporting the bruises).

Other than the climbing, the other cool thing about the City Museum (the museum part is rather a misnomer) is all the slides. The 10 story one (the spiral on the far left) is the famous one, but it was actually the one on the roof that gave you the best ride (you climb up the top of it, then slide down the bottom part of it). I kinda wish I'd gone on it again. They also had an old skate park where you could slide down the steep skate drops... and a giant pencil... er, just because. We ran through giant spinning barrels, braved the ball pits, and tried not to die of heat exhaustion. Once I stopped being able to walk properly, Kirk and I retired to a nice spot in the caves and told the kiddies to explore for awhile before heading back to our brother's house. Dinner was pizza, while we introduced our eldest bro to the new Futurama eps (he's a huge Futurama fan). Since we rarely had to be up early, Kirk and I often used the time after our families had gone to sleep to catch up on tv watching for things like True Blood and Leverage.

The next day, we headed back to our brother B's. near Louisville, spending the night chillin with him watching Supersizers (wartime and restoration), plus that awesome ep of Community (123). The next day, we took our time, letting Kirk sleep in while I went out and gathered us bagels and caught up on my fic reading (B's house is the only place I have easy internet access since I've been allowed through his massive layers of security). We then had a leisurely 2 hour drive to Cincinnati to our cousin D.'s house again. I argued for a visit to another barbecue place for dinner since they're rather scare on the ground in NJ (I can only think of one). We were brought to Pit to Plate whose pork ribs were delicious, and came with country furnishings and a live country music singer. *L* We were then brought to a nearby ice cream place where Kirk and I got soft serve blue raspberry ice cream that tasted like blue cotton candy. Once back at D.'s house we were then fed her sinfully delicious chocolate silk pie. I was sort of glad we were nearing the end of our vacation cause I cannot afford to eat like that every day *L* Kirk and I watched the movie St. Trinians, which entertained us mightily, before bed. Once we were all up in the morning, we headed out for our long run home. Neither Kirk nor I had slept well, but we pulled driving shifts while Dad slept in the back, knowing that he'd be doing the longest leg at the end (since he's the only one of us who relies on coffee). We'd hoped to arrive home before midnight, but the usual traffic in Pennsylvania added a half hour on to our trip and got us home Friday morning, rather than Thursday evening. So it goes.

bujinkan

I am craving salt so much, even though I drank a whole bottle of gatorade on the way home. Training in 95 degree weather plus high humidity sucks. Time to break out the salted cashews I guess.

Training itself was fun. I snagged E. as a partner. He's much taller than me and stronger which is a fun mix to try to get around (when your partner is actually a good training partner that is). Jack ended up going over everything he taught at Saturday's seminar (which I missed). He's trying to design a sort of simplified Bujinkan self-defence course, though it seems to be aimed more at law enforcement than anything else. Case in point, most of the techniques tonight started off with you just grabbing another person's arm to try to stop them or take them with you somewhere. A few others began with your opponent pushing you. The actual take downs since they were just our basic moves were pretty easy (at least to me) so I focused on the hard part for me which is the final take down to the ground and restraint. Jack had us going all out, kneeling on people's necks, arms, trapping them so they couldn't squirm out, etc. When E. was actually fighting, it only worked about fifty percent of the time for me. Rather than show me some cool ninja move to get around this, Jack just shrugged and suggested I should never try it alone, and really just running away is my better option - to which I heartily agreed. Unless I have a nice arm bar and am kneeling on someone's head, I don't feel very safe in ground restraining, ne? You never know when someone's going to try something crazy like kicking you in the head.

Now, none of the usual high level belts were there tonight, except for Jo.. and he was training with a relative newbie (the one who gave me that nasty bruise a few weeks ago), so it amused me to notice that Jack was taking the time to show me cool little things he wasn't showing other people - usually he does that to the high level belts who generally serve as his uke, so I was flattered, even if he did make me teach the class - twice! (and I was the only one who had to). The first time was pretty funny. The move was basically the person shoves you, you go with it for a few steps (taking the space as you do), then turn it into uragyaku which locks first your wrist, then your arm. With that, you walk forward until the person hits the ground on their back, then simply walked around at an angle to get them to turn over on their back (they go willingly cause that's the path of least pain - that lock hurts). Jack was busy talking to a spectator (we get them sometimes) so he was letting us go on longer than usual with the technique which I was doing well, and which I'd taught E. to do to. Meanwhile, since it was getting a bit boring to repeat, I was amused at how badly the two pair near us were doing it (it's not my place to correct another pair training, though occasionally I will if they look really lost... these were black belts though...). Suddenly, Jack calls out, "Ariana, show them the right way to do it!" I look at everyone, and ask, "Who?" since a lot of them were doing it wrong. Jack says, "All of them." then tells them all to watch me do it. The second time I had to teach was more normal with Jack showing me something cool (how to elevate a half nelson so it locks since a lot of people are flexible enough not to find them uncomfortable), then making me teach it to the class. But that first time really amused me.