A couple of weeks back I had to help Jason with his “take-away” homework, which consisted of pirate related project work divided into three parts. He’d already done the first task, making a flag, so I had to help him make pirate money and help him write a story about his pirate, Captain Fork Beard!
Recently, three years to the week that I became a taekwon-do student, I passed my red belt grading. It’s come along a little slower than it should have done and in that time there are several other students in my class who have overtaken me – even those who started well after I did.
I’ve never been too bothered about racing through the colour belt gradings in a particular time frame. As well as my instructor letting me know when I’m ready to grade, I’ve always had my own personal standard that I feel I should reach before I’ll consider testing.
At the tail end of May I made my fifth visit to my mutually adopted family and friends in Indianapolis and it proved to be one of the best yet. After last year’s brief trip where I was only in town for a couple of days it was good to be back for a full week to soak up everything that’s great about race week in Indy.
I should have been there for a day longer, too, but the President visited Philadelphia right when my connecting flight to Indianapolis was due to take off, so they told us to get off the plane as we would be held up for an hour. This was disappointing, as the flight from Glasgow to Philly had been a breeze and I’d made it through security so fast that I could actually have made an earlier flight to Indy. There was certainly space on that plane, but the staff told me I couldn’t get on it because I had to fly with my luggage. It would later transpire that this was a rule with a considerable amount of bend in it.