JOURNEY - on Mastering Ukemi by Daniel Linden (classic books for 12 year olds .TXT) 📕

We stood like that for a while and then, when I found my voice, I asked what he had been up to and if he was finding time to enjoy his life.

“Ah, you know what it’s like. I bought a house for my folks so they wouldn’t be living with us… Sensei, they were driving me crazy… I had no time for my wife, and... but you know mothers… they can’t stand the idea that something is happening that they aren’t part of. So she comes over to visit, and then my dad starts to wonder where my mom is and comes over…, and the next thing you know, they’re both at my house, and I’m driving over to their house because nobody is there and I can get some peace and quiet.”

We laughed.

He shrugged hugely and held up his hands. I almost wept as I recognized my own gesture in his hands. I held out my arms and we embraced and then he got into his car and drove away. If there is anything that aikido has given me it is the wealth of people that I admire beyond all the people I have ever known.

***

I decided to go to my farm in Maine, take care of a few things that needed to be tended to and join the group in New York from there. The tickets were so expensive when I first looked into the trip that I was shocked and was truly struggling with the cost. My wife suggested that I find out how much a round-the-world ticket, might cost. To my surprise it was the same as for a round-trip to Kathmandu. I explained the idea to the group and we decided to do a little sight-seeing along the way. We were going right past, after all. Might as well stop and see a few sights.

Round-the-world tickets allow you to go wherever the airline travels as long as you don’t backtrack during the journey. There are many established routes and if your itinerary does not fall too far from the norm you can enjoy many options and possibilities in your journey. Since I wanted to spend a few days in Paris, and Curtis and Chris liked this idea it worked out well. Celine needed to go to Izmir, which is not all that far from Istanbul, to get her kit together. It was decided that we would all meet in Istanbul and she invited us to stay with her parents. She said they had an enormous house and plenty of room for us. This was all flowing nicely west from our original destination and the first leg’s stop was Charles De Gaulle Airport outside Paris.

My friend Arne drove me to Bangor to make the flight to New York. He had said we should have a few drinks together before we went. He was serious. The night before I was supposed to leave for New York we drove about seventy miles south to the town of Belfast to the Three Tides Brewing Company. This is a locally owned Micro Brew restaurant that serves the finest beer and ale in the state. Forget it, it’s the best in the world. It is so good that I was willing to drive one hundred forty miles on the eve before a monster trip to Nepal and Paris and Istanbul just to have a few pints of ale. Yeah, it’s that good.

Arne is a giant Viking and thank God he is my friend. He has absolutely no respect for me. He abuses me just like he does everyone else. He treats me like any guy he knows and couldn’t care less about aikido. Arne is a man in the capitol M sense of the word. He is my friend. The only thing I can do that makes him crazy is to out-fish him. And he makes up for that with his dead-eye shots with his Browning rifle.

Bangor is not an easy terminal to fly from as this was one of the departure points that launched the September 11, 2001 attacks. Still the airport is small and it is easy to arrive and depart. It is only difficult once you stand in line for the scans, the body searches and the constant surveillance. I survived both that and the short flight to Kennedy and made my way to the international terminal. I checked in at the overseas hub and waited the interminable stretch of time necessary for overseas flights. They all leave in the evening so that you arrive in Europe in the morning. I rarely carry anything aboard a flight anymore. An IPOD and a wallet with my passport is all that I can stand to carry through the personally invasive tactics of the airport Gestapo. I check everything and have never had a problem.

So I waited to be called to board. I am a big man, over six feet tall and weigh anywhere between 220 and 240 depending on which side of the holidays you might catch me. I am never comfortable in an airplane seat unless I fly first class and my wife, god bless her, has given me this gift a few times when I have gone to Europe to teach aikido seminars. Tonight I was not flying first class, I was going to be crammed into the Air France flight with 400 strangers and knew I would be spending the majority of the trip hanging out near the galley where others of my size and disinclination to sleep prematurely usually gather. I kept looking around the departure lounge for Curtis and the rest of the group and finally gave up and wandered down to the bar.

The first person I saw after walking in was Celine. She was laughing and Christian was trying to appear cool and suave, but was failing miserably. He was developing a serious infatuation with her and I was mildly curious how long she would flatter him into thinking