nother big gap, and another strange practice.  Its been a LONG LOONNNGGG time since I wrote a journal entry.  The size of the website, the cumbersomeness of the tools I was using to maintain it (basically FrontPage Express), and the shear absolute slowness of my computer all worked against my timely updating of this journal pages.

However, I've gotten a new computer, and a new program (FrontPage 2000), so we'll see how things go from here.

The practice was another practice down in the Canton of Rundel.  I was doing my normal dilly-dallying and arrived there late.  The practice was slated to start around 2:00 and I arrived around 3:40.  The humourous part is that no one had really started fighting, so I hadn't really missed out on much. '

I was concerned about several things driving up to this practice.  First, this was the first practice that I had fought at since my LASIK surgery, and I was concerned about how my depth perception would do.  I had already experienced a few minor quirks in my depth perception due to the fact that my eyeglasses were of such high prescription that it made images appear smaller.  After 20 years of wearing eyeglasses, I had pretty much gotten adjusted to "Object X is this big so its this far away."  The biggest indicator of this is that when I am coming to a stop light I have a tendency to stop a little bit late.

The other thing that I was concerned about was me left knee.  I had sprained/strained my left knee at Coronation fighting in the slippery ground in King's Champion.  I had taken it fairly easily in the last two months, but it was still tender after large amounts of inaction.

I arrived and quickly armoured up (I neglected to stretch enough, this will be important later).  Everyone was fighting florentine, and since I had sent my shield to Gulf with Luke, I grabbed by six foot glaive and my new sword.  Made it around 3 fights in the center of the bear pit when I did something to my right knee.  Don't know what (all the orthopedic doctors are booked up for a long time right now) I did, but it buckled under me and I fell.  It hurt a bit, but I was able to limp off the field and sit down for a bit.  I rested for a while, and then when back out and tried a few fights with Gavin McKitrick to see how I felt.  It seemed okay, but every now and then it'd pop a bit.  

The super cool part of practice happened.  We squared off with me, Angus, and Piotr (the Hierophant of Meat) from Northkeep.  Angus and Piotr had great sword, and I had my sword and my old 2x3 square shield.  The three of us faced six opponents.  Baron Thorgrim, Slaine, Chas, Connigan, Gavin, and Eric Bloodaxe.  Baron Thorgrim was probably the only hard-core melee veteran, while all of the others had a good amount of melee experience with the exception of Chas.  This was Chas's first melee practice. 

Well, to make a long story short (too late!) we destroyed them.  Now of the group there were two shields, 1 glaive, and 3 florentine fighters, and in their strongest fighter (Thorgrim) was fighting one of his less effective styles (florentine).  Unfortunately, I don't remember much about the fight except that two of their fighters drifted a bit left, and I shot between the gap between the two groups.  Somehow, we managed to kill them all, and only lost one person in the fight.

After that fight, Thorgrim went and got his shield.  This of course changed the complexity of the fight immensely.  Thorgrim is a MUCH MUCH dangerous fighter with a shield, and not only does it make him more dangerous, it enables him to protect his teammates better, thus increasing their effectiveness as a team.  Well, the next fight went baaaadddd.  Thorgrim and Slaine held me up while the other four went after Angus and Piotr.  The two of them had me dead to rights when my knee popped again and then I yielded.  When I looked back towards the field, Thorgrim and Slaine had piled into my teammates, and the fight was over.

I though the experience to be an interesting commentary on what the difference a good fighter can have on a group.

I armoured down and took the rest of the day off.  

As of this writing my knee is feeling much better, but I must admit I'm very concerned.  Two knee injuries withing 2 months could just be bad luck, as I haven't had any since my ACL repair.  However, it could also be an indicator that my body is carrying too much weight, and that I need to shed myself of some of it.  Its depressing.  My fighting skills are coming along at a very nice rate, and I am enjoying the fruits of my efforts.  Lurking below my conscious mind though, is the fear that my body will fail on me while the will is still strong, and I'll be left with the desire and not the means.  I've seen it happen to many a fighter, and I am loathe to join their ranks.

Moodily yours,

Ld. Jean Paul de Sens
Squire to Sir Asoph Hearts