Ice Sledding

Wintertime and Farm Island Lake is frozen. Mike, Jack and I take Mike's '55 Buick onto the ice and Mike starts doing cookies (drive ahead as fast as you can then cramp the steering wheel one way or the other) You will spin really fast. Then someone sensible (I like to think it was me said, "This is really crazy; this car is really heavy, and we don't know how thick the ice is."

PLAN B: Mike and I had 60's era sleds and Mike had a sheet of plywood (His dad owned a construction company.) Jack's contribution was a sheet and two bamboo poles (His dad ran a motel.)
 Wrap the edges of the sheet  around the poles and tack them in place with short nails.
Back at the lake, we sit on the sleds with our backs to the wind and slowly raise the sail.We take off slowly but pick up speed faster and faster. The sleds make a clackety clack noise and I notice a black band across the horizon beyond the fishing shacks. The fishermen inside the shacks used what they call tip-upsthat potrude about 5 or 6 inches above the ice when a fish bites. I yell,"That's water up ahead!" As much as we try to turn the sleds, it only skids sideways and we begin to take out the tip ups. We bail off the sleds and hustle back to the car with lures hanging from our coats,each carrying a piece or two of the incredible ice flying machine.







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Karate lessons as I have taught them

I write E=mc2 on the blackboard, "Does anyone recognize this?" Inevitably someone mentions Albert Einstein.  I say:
"Well, he wasn't so smart. Every junior engineer knows E=mv2  Einstein just said that  nothing can go faster than the speed of light (c)- very very fast. So Einstein's equation basically meant you could get a tremendous amount of energy from a teeny tiny amount of mass (like a single atom).
But let's look at the other equation. It says that if you double the mass, you double the energy, but if you double the velocity (of a punch or block), you quadruple the energy. Don't try to hit harder. Try to hit faster. And what gives you speed? your pulling hand. Try an exercise with holding a rope in the pulling hand.


Kicks:
When you first start karate, a kick is just a kick. When you reach black belt a kick is just a kick {I.e., a round kick feels like  a front snap that rotates at the last instant.

Blocks:
Try to make impact close to your opponent's wrist. Use a snap(rotation) at the end. You can execute blocks without your pulling hand; but with the pulling hand, blocks can break bones.
I think that the easiest block is the rising block; just because it is so intuitive. You instintively protect your face
Inside blocks need a pulling hand. Outside blocks work well with a follow up chop to the nose or neck. They also facilitate grabbing the opponents arm or gi to allow a side or back kick.

There is a down block too, but many people incorrectly use it against kicks. Instead use it against mid-level punches. Block kicks with kicks or with an "X" block. (E.g., block a front snap kick by positioning your foot as if you were kicking his shin. He does damage  to himself and you are unharmed. The exception may be for high rounhouse kicks where you can use both arms in outside blocks; then spin low to the floor to sweep his remaining /standing leg with the back of yours.

Pepper and American History.

My son and daughter gave me a Kindle for my birthday a couple years ago. I love it!
One of my 700 books is American Nation, A History by Edward Potts Cheyney. It has like 28 volumes. Volume 1 says that any history of America has to start in Europe in the 1300's. The food was so bad that pepper was literally worth its weight in gold; and pepper only grew on the west coast of  India. Hence the spice routes  -- the camel caravans to Alexandria and the Black Sea. And people like Christopher Columbus started thinking if I took a few ships and headed west, I could bring back a whole shipload of peppercorns. More on this book later -- I'm a history fan..