By Grapthars Hammer, were alive!

So the test was very good. First off all the people testing did a great job. There was the Housman Family. A father his 2 daughters and one of his sons(the other is getting ready to test for his red belt), another father and son pair, a collage age guy and one little girl. We had a huge panel of judges. Some of them old friends i haven't got to see very much over the years. As for me and my performance, well, to put it modestly, i was awesome. i am quite sore, but that was from their self defence section. When partnered with a tester you are what is referred to as a fall guy. and it can be as bad as it sounds, especially when you have a lot of big people testing. the idea is that you grab or otherwise attack them and then pretty much let them beat the crap out of you. at one point i was moving from ring to ring partnering with 5 of the 7 people. Luke(21 years old, 6'4", 210)threw me with a hip toss. when i hit the floor the whole room shook and every one looked over and said OOOOWW! it didn't hert.....then. so basically for about 2 hours i had 5 people taking turns hitting, grabbing, throwing, and holding me. Sounds like fun right? well then we got to the fighting portion of the test and i took my turn. you see now i get to fight back. we did 3 different types of sparing. Tae Kwon Do(like kick boxing only now punching to the head, you can kick to the head). Karate(its lighter contact, you can kick and use hands, you stop between each point, first to 5 wins, kicks worth 2 points). and grappling(basically wrestling but your are trying to get your opponent to "tap out" or say uncle). i was able to dominate the two(two minuets each) Tae Kwon Do fights i did. My combined Karate score for matches was 11(me) to 0(them)(i scored 6 on one guy because i had him at 4 and then scored with a kick). then the grappling round. 5 mins with the 21 year old i talked about earlier who also happened to have wrestled 4 years in high school. i tapped him out with a leg scissors to his neck. so if you haven't figured it out yet, yes i am bragging. its nice to have old friends that will bring you back down though, one of the other black belts said "hey, you looked good out there. Very light on your feet.....for a fat guy!" i am paying the price now for all of this. i am very sore. pretty much every thing hurts. my ribs from me being slammed into the ground repeatedly. my legs from doing so much high kicking. my neck arms and every thing else from all the holds and general tweaking i went through. and my bad knee is still stiff and swollen from...well being a bad knee and going through all this. all in all it was great and i will have fond memories from this for a long time.