Silat Workshop - Las Vegas 2008

(Pictures, from top to bottom: 1. The T-Shirt. 2. The Group. 3. Some Bellywork.
4. The Gurus (save for Mike Roberto, who hid somewhere when I shot this: L. to R.:
Cliff, Jonny, Ari, Stevan, Bud, Louis, Narin, Bob)

So, I just flew in from Las Vegas, and boy, are my arms tired ...

Actually, all of me is pretty tired. The flight home was, ah ... delayed. Something about mechanical problems, and a new crew having to be flown in from San Diego. Supposed to have left Vegas at 9:30 p.m. Monday, but didn't leave until 4 a.m. Tuesday. Six and a half hours overdue on a two-hour flight ... yeah, that's a delay. Plus I had gotten to the airport early, to share a cab with a couple of folks from the Northwest, and to see if I might snag an earlier flight, so I was at the airport for a pleasant twelve hours. Learned that you can find some empty corners to practice guitar when everything is closed and nobody is there but people waiting for your plane and the airport staff. And security doesn't care ...

I'll do a longer report on the workshop later, and in a bit more detail, but the essence was that a bunch of people who have trained in our version of silat all got together at the Texas Station Hotel & Casino for a three-day weekend of training. Far as I can tell, a good time was had by all -- save Cotten, who developed the flu and had to go home early. There were sixty-five or so of us from all over the world, some of the best teachers ever assembled under one roof, and nobody got seriously hurt, either.

We tended to stay inside a lot, what with it being 105-107 F. out of doors during the day, and dropping to a balmy 85 F. at night.

More later.