A rough year Austin to Vegas part I

I have a wonderful family. Good people. Generous. Supportive. Humble. Respectful. There when you need them to be. Chunkers and Thunkers. Blade-slingers. Hunters. Morros and Mountain Men (and women). Cowboys, Indians and Vikings.

Like Davy Crockett, Annie Oakley and Logen Ninefingers.

Legends and real-life heroes.

Warriors all.

Found in every Podunk town from Tierra del Fuego to Novo Sibirsk, from Djakarta to Djibouti and from Ottawa to Johannesburg.

My Brothers and Sisters of the Knife.

Reunions are metal storms of epic proportions.

Like characters from a Joe Abercrombie novel, many have earned a warrior’s blood name or three (even if they gave it to themselves). Alamo. Lizard Killer. Jack Dagger. Quicksilver. Talon. Hightower. Special Ed. Choke. Che Che. Paiute. Wolf. Gator Wayne.

Etc.

You get the picture. Frontier, Texas-style attitude and humor. People You Don’t Trifle With.

I’ve had a rough few years. They aren’t likely to get any smoother. A broken rod. A crushed lumbar fusion. Two 12 hr surgeries in five days. A lengthy rehab hospital stay. Falls. Lots of pain, anxiety and situational depression.

Heart-breaking obligations and losses.

Much of it only my closest friends know.

Some of it nobody knows.

Life is hard, but death is harder, darker.

And if you’re not living, folks, then, ergo, you’re dead.

But I ain’t dead yet.

They say the best blades are forged in the hottest fires.

Bent, folded and twisted, over and over again.

Pounded, tempered and honed.

“I am the blade,” I tell myself.

Straight and true.

Got no time for worries and sorrows.

May not be around for many tomorrows.

So I’m trying to live, no matter how, just one more day.

To give back what I get.

And what I got.

Late last August, I was diagnosed with DVT. My legs hurt. Couldn’t breathe sometimes. I just couldn’t throw in the heat of a high summer, high desert afternoon and early evening. If the solar index is over 95, I just get too dehydrated.

Heat exhaustion no matter how much water I drink.

Pain, too.

Ugh.

However, it all eased up a bit in late August. We started throwing more.

Then, with some regret, we decided to cancel our November 2015 High Desert Throwdown. We just didn’t have the time and/or resources to put on a professional throw.

But that little imp of the perverse on my left shoulder wasn’t happy about it. In fact, she showed up for the first time in 9 months about that time.

Like she crawled inside my head and died when I broke a rod and crushed a previous spinal fusion while throwing knives in my girlfriend’s backyard.

After all, it was her fault. Keli told me to take it easy that day, but the imp had other plans.

“Come on, pussy,” she’d said, tossing a stiletto longer than her heels from hand to hand. “You got the underhand no-spin going on. You won’t hurt anything by trying it overhand.”

“But I have to do that little twist thingie,” I’d replied. “I’m not supposed to twist. The rods in my back…”

“Pfffft. Rods, shmods,” she’d said as she eyed me like a feral cat eyes a baby woodchuck stuck in the hedge. “Those rods are titanium steel. They won’t break.”

That’s what I wanted to hear, that day, deep down in my heart.

And the imp was hip to it, too.

I picked up a Cold Steel Sure Balance and chucked it like RC does.

“KERPOW!”

Then an echo off the house, “KERPOW!”

Was that a freaking rifle shot?

Hey…  Why can I suddenly bend like this?

Damn… it feels good.

And I nailed the bullseye with a 4 meter no spin throw.

Cool!

Wait… I’m not supposed to be able to move my hips like this…

I glanced at my shoulder and raised my eyebrows.

“Oh shit,” said the imp, then she snapped her fingers and, poof, she was gone.

WTH?

I took a tentative step.

Immediately collapsed to the ground and screamed.

Yet all parts still worked.

I gritted my teeth, struggled to my feet.

Found myself holding another knife.

“F#$% it,” said the echo of a faint impish voice in my head. “In for a penny, in for a pound… pussy…”

So I threw it.

“CLANG!”

Damn, that hurt.

Ok… No mas…

I staggered and hobbled to the back door and yelled for help.

What happened after that is another story and may never get written.

After nine months of recovery, the imp was suddenly, and somewhat alarmingly, reborn. I guess the gestation period of an imp is about the same as that of the humans they resemble. She seemed to spring right out of my ear hole to regain her place on my shoulder.

All I could do was sigh and shake my head.

She looked hot as ever, that day, dressed in barely legal black leather and stiletto heels, whispering restless, breathless thoughts in my ear, her red hair like a flaming, sun-bright halo.

Fitting for a fire imp.

“Go to Austin, even if you have to go by yourself,” she kept saying.

“You freakin’ pussy, you need to do this,” she often added.

“Shut up, you evil bitch,” I always said back.

But I knew she was right.

This time.

Besides Talon really needed a break from work. He probably wouldn’t go if I didn’t.

So we threw and drank beer and talked and finally, after a week or so of it, we decided to go to Austin for sure.

Bob said he was in, too.

We paid our entry fees a day before the 1 Sep deadline, made some new targets and started training 3-5 times a week.

We got pretty freaking good, averaging in the 190s.

But my ex, Pam, was even then in the hospital again. She’d been in the whole time I was, and then some, back in the winter.

I hated to leave her alone, but…

And per usual, money was tight.

Entry fee, gas, 4 days grub and a pair of new tires.

I could swing that, barely.

Nothing for lodging, though.

So we camped at awesome McKinney Falls State Park again.

Plus Saturday night in the South Austin Karate bunkhouse again.

(Thanks, Mike.)

We performed well.

I came in second in the Intermediate class with a 194, throwing Talon’s Dragons, three points behind Big Bear Lagrasso in first, and only one ahead of Talon, in third.

Bob scored an expert 215 and had to turn pro after only 3 months of serious throwing.

I didn’t throw anything else that weekend. No hawks, no games.

I was beat and hurting.

But I made sure to visit with every person there.

I thought it might be my last throwing trip.

Maybe my last trip, period.

On the way home, we stopped at Pedernales Falls State Park, in the Hill Country 40 miles west of Austin.

Very isolated.

Nice park, though.

And I slept just fine on an air mattress in the back of my awesome Toyota Sienna van. Really surprising considering all the structural issues I have.

Makes attendance at any southwestern event a possibility.

All three of us would rather camp than stay in a motel. That’s why we live where we do. No tv. No movie theater. Not even a bowling alley.

Nothing to do but get out in the perpetual sunshine and fresh air and enjoy the scenery.

My performance in the World Championship gave me a confidence boost, and all the genuine well wishes and comments about me being awesome and an inspiration were real ego strokes.

Thank you all, but it is you who inspire me, especially guys like Mike Baintain, Ed Brown and Lee Fugatt.

But winter was coming up, and winter sucks. We all three wanted to go to Vegas in April, but that was 6 months away. I just couldn’t plan anything that far ahead.

The story of how that turned out is coming in a day or two, while I can still remember the details. Thanks to Rick the Rocket, and his fine photography, I have a few prompts!