I got back from Berkeley late Sunday night. I always pay close attention to how I feel when I return home after a trip - I feel like it provides a nice barometer for how I'm feeling about my life in general. I didn't have a window seat on the plane, so I wasn't able to watch the Austin skyline as we approached, so my first feeling of being back was as I walked through the airport.
I love the Austin airport, because instead of anonymous airport-chain stores and Burger Kings, it's got BookPeople, and Amy's Ice Cream, and The Salt Lick - it's a nice little (retail) microcosm of Austin itself. I distinctly remember walking through the airport once and hearing a song by Wendy Colonna - a local musician who I went to college with. And as I walked through on Sunday night, I felt like Austin fit me quite well. Not that I'm a big barbecue fan, necessarily. It's more that Austin, like me, defiantly labels itself "weird" while surrounded by...well, by Dallas and Houston, for starters. By the south generally. And it's proudly progressive in a state (and a region) that is decidedly conservative. We don't have it easy like Northern California, where pretty much half the state agrees with us - you don't have to get far from Austin to be back in Texas, if you get my meaning. And Austin *is* Texas, in the same way that I am a product of my rural Louisiana upbringing. We celebrate our heritage and its uniqueness, while cleaving ferociously to our progressive, weird outlook. Overly romanticized? Maybe. But that's me - and that's Austin, too.
To bring this around to karate, while I was in Berkeley I got to train at Berkeley Seido. It was a lot of fun, even though there was the whole "I don't know any of these people!" discomfort, as well as the "I'm wrapping a black belt around my waist, I must reprezent!" discomfort. One of the gifts of my training is that I can face those fears, even if they are still fears. And to prove that it's a small world after all, as I'm changing into my gi, one of the guys says from over the partition, "You're from Austin? You ever go to the Magnolia Cafe?" Turns out he used to work there, for a short time while he lived in Austin in the early 90s. Too early for him to have been able to train at Sun Dragon (Sun Dragon being all-women back then). Maybe that's why he didn't stick around (he only lived here for about 6 months).
The class was fun. It was smallish - there were two black belts (not counting myself), two blue belts, a yellow belt, and a brown belt - all adults, and a brand new white belt who seemed around 8. I believe she was the daughter of one of the black belts (the one who lived in Austin, in fact). We did a lot of push ups. Then we did some more. Push ups (and ab work) were interspersed with kihon, including some combinations. Then we went through all 10 basic self defenses, and I learned the first advanced self defense, and got to see the 2nd one. W00t! Then kata - first taikioku (black belts: ura), and the Seido kata - through 5, though I only did the first 4. After class we did what was apparently a routine post-class soji, where we each got a towel and wiped the floor, from end to end. And then back. I've seen this done before, but never participated in it. It's a nice tradition.
The gender mix was interesting - the yellow belt was a woman (Karen), from Honbu - visiting but thinking of moving to Berkeley/the Bay Area for a medical residency (she was in her last semester of med school). The brown belt was a woman - she was Senpai Todd's wife (he's the head instructor). And the little girl was a girl. Of course, the whole class was only 7 people, so it's not like it was overwhelmingly male. It was only after the fact that I noticed that all of the women there were either a)visiting, or b)related to one of the men there. I know intellectually that martial arts is male-dominated, but that's so not the case at Sun Dragon that I tend to forget it. And then my primary recent experience of a co-ed dojo is Thousand Waves, which has a strong male contingent, but still a little over half women. I enjoy training with men, and it's not like I think Sun Dragon should still be all-women - I just wish there were as many women as men in the martial arts, and I actually find it surprising that that's not the case. I'm a product of my environment, I guess.
By the way, the title of this entry is a reference to the country song of the same name.
The first two lines of the chorus are:
I bet Amy's back in Austin/
Working at La Zona Rosa Cafe
...I'm not working at La Zona Rosa, which is not a cafe (it's a bar). But they got the first part right...
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4 comments:
I'm inexplicably fond of Austin-Bergstrom, too... though Southeast Texas Regional might be my new favorite. So. Very. Bootleg. Though I must admit, my brief stint there was probably enhanced by the father and son sitting next to me, arguing about whether daylight savings was going to cause them to gain an hour or lose it. I'm not totally convinced they'd managed to resolve the issue by the time the son had to go through security and the matter was effectively closed.
Ha! That's hilarious. Where is Southeast Texas Regional? I've never even heard of it...
It's in Jefferson Co, which means nothing to me, but it serves Beaumont which is where I was going. This is their kind of awesome website: http://www.co.jefferson.tx.us/setra/frames.htm
It looks more developed than some airports I've been in (for example, I think Lake Charles has one) - they're basically just small buildings, no food, no "cyber cafe" - as I recall, not even car rentals.
It's cute that they still use frames. If you're a nerd like me, that is.
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