My advanced students and I started my karate 2011 Disciple Retreat with class on Thursday 09/29. 3rd Degree Black Belt Carl Parker had planned to fly in from Albuquerque, NM in time for class, but severe weather in Boston held his plane in Baltimore such that he didn't make it to the house here until about 10:45pm. Several of the other students of at least 3rd Degree Black Belt had returned to the house with me after our little get together at Applebee's to view advanced forms videos, so Parker just caught them about mid way through. It was a late night; I didn't get to bed until after midnight because, after the others left, I kept 4th Degree Black Belt Yondan Russ Jones and Sandan Parker up discussing what we'll just call 'stuff'. Oh, and I pulled out the Kruskovac (a marvelous Yugoslavian pear liquor) so we could have a real excuse for staying up so late....

But, I was up at 6:45am Friday morning and into full swing with working breakfast carried in from Dunkin Donuts by Yondan Tim House and Nidan Rick Downs followed by the formal start of the morning session at 8:00am. It was such a nice day that we moved all of the deck chairs back outside and stayed out there until after 5:00pm. Before breaking for lunch (I had subs delivered), we had about an hour or so workout studying Rose Crane that left everyone limping and sore. Dinner was a home-bound Spaghetti feed, continuing discussions right through dinner until 11:00pm. But I kept 4th Degree Black Belt Russ Jones and Parker up until well after midnight as they were both staying here at the house and so I had a captive audience.

Up again Saturday morning at 6:45, patiently waiting for Nidan Scott Williams to bring in the coffee. Shortly after he arrived, Yondan House and Nidan Downs arrived with some extra food shopping items so that Sandan Parker could orchestrate a semi-southwest scrambled eggs and bacon breakfast.

The morning session proved to be pretty intense, with little time for much discussion as I was a behind in my presentation. Sue had done a lot of pre-prep work Thursday for a salad with ham, cherry tomatoes, cheese, onions, boiled eggs, and mushrooms so we did a quick break for that before continuing on until almost 6:30pm. I had made 7:15pm dinner reservations at the RiverWorks Tavern in Newmarket and we didn't get home from there until after 10:00. But there was still work to do so I didn't close the session until well after 11:00pm, and again, Jones, Parker, and I stayed at it until after midnight again.

Normally, the Sunday morning session goes until about noon and deals mostly with summarization and some goals setting. But because of the depth of material that I had undertaken for this retreat, I never got to the wrapup until 12:30, taking the retreat close until just after 1:00pm. Long, demanding session.

Sandan Parker and I settled into the afternoon with some discussion topics that he had wanted to cover in person as stuff like that is tough to do through cassette tape or email from Albuquerque, NM. We got so involved that to save time from going to the store and fixing a big dinner, I just had subs delivered, and we worked through until about 11:00pm that night. Though I felt bad that Carl had to get up early to drive up to a business meeting in Lewiston, ME, spend the night there, and then truck south to Boston's Logan International Airport Tuesday morning, I'm glad that we took the time to chat.