Today the weather is rainy, windy and dreary. I could easily give in to the temptation to sit and stare. Instead, I turned the radio dial to CKUA, which was playing one of my favorite programs; John Worthington's 'Old Disc, Jockey'. 'Stormy Weather' happened to be playing at the time. I located some fairly colorful scrap paper, and made a plan. Fold one peace crane, do 50 pushups. So, to the tunes of Count Basie and His Orchestra, Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington, I managed to fold seven cranes, fire off 300 push ups, and dance a Lao Gar to 'How High the Moon'. Now the program playing is 'Voices in Jazz', which I don't much like, so I have decided to turn my attention to my journal, training goals, and the laundry.

Last week's training went fairly well. I had hoped to do 260 pushups daily, for a total of 1,820. I improved on last weeks totals, but still fell short at 1,545 pushups. It seems that my body wants a rest from the daily pushups, which it decided to take on Saturday. Keeping this in mind, I have decided to aim for 300 push ups daily this week, and as mentioned above, I have started the week off well. I am not terribly pleased with the number of kicks this week. A sprained or broken middle toe, and some temporary issues with my left hip really dragged my numbers down. However the toe seems to be mending, and a visit to physiotherapy on Monday is scheduled, so next week should be better. In spite of the set backs, Sihing Lilienskold and I managed to get some excellent help from Sifu Brinker after he observed our spinning back, round house and side heel kicks at the bags. So there was still progress in this area. Forms practice went quite well too. I was not able to do Lao Gar until the end of the week, due to that middle toe problem. However, I did LOTS of cane (point, strikes and blocks; left and right on all). I am looking forward to next week, as arrangements are coming together amongst I Ho Chuan members to form a team form demo in either Kempo, or Lao Gar. I find that being involved in the demo team and I ho chuan has really motivated me to practice forms at home and in open training, as well as other spare moments during the week. Attending the color belt classes this week has also helped me to focus on and practice combinations and techniques.

I am finding that these last couple of weeks have turned into a steep uphill climb for me. My goals are high; being aware of this, there are feelings of doubt: will I achieve my goals? Will it be enough? I feel resigned to the fact that i can only ask myself to not give up; to place one step in front of the other, and see where I end up. There is one annoying question in the Zen and Art of Motorcycle novel study sheet: "How is Kung Fu like climbing a mountain?" Annoying, because it seems like such a cliche question, that begs a cart load of cliche answers. But as i look back at the beginning of this paragraph, my answer feels not so much cliche, but very real. Well past the tree-line now, the incline is steeper, the ground seems harder. It is hard to judge the distance to the summit; one is left with the feeling that it is probably further than one thinks. The struggle now becomes one of keeping the desire to succeed intact; and to keep placing one foot in front of the other.