Well, I’m back after a couple of back-to-back trips to Las Vegas and Colorado Springs, respectively; one for vacation, one for work. Both were quite enjoyable, and I learned a lot, though I missed several karate training sessions. Fortunately, I had great coverage from Sempai James (thanks James!). I am very happy to be back home and to be back at training.

The week in Vegas was a great time spent with my son Matt. We had conversations over meals and walking through the downtown area and the Strip. I also met up with my in-laws (Matt’s grandparents), who were there for a high school reunion. I was able to make progress reading through a couple of books and got to visit the the Palazzo, one of the most recent hotels on the Strip, adjoining the Venetian.

The week in Colorado Springs was work-related and quite busy, but very enjoyable as well. I hadn’t been in Colorado Springs since 1992, when we went up as a family, to visit my brother-in-law’s home there. It had changed a lot over the last sixteen years, but remains a largely rural area dominated by the hills surrounding Cheyenne Mountain. My room had a panoramic view of the mountain, under which, the Air Force’s NORAD center is located…I think it has capacity for 3,000 personnel, and was one of the military wonders of the 1960’s. It was easy to imagine vast herds of buffalo crossing these sweeping plains. Needless to say, I learned and saw a lot.

Now, while I was gone on those great trips, did I miss karate training? The answer is…Nope! I was too busy having fun or meeting people or just too engaged to even think about training very much. Of course, I did morning warmups (it went down to the 30’s in Colorado at night) to get me going, but that was about it. The funny thing is…I really didn’t miss karate until I got back here and went back to training. Then it hit me; how great it was to be back home. And I think it’s that way for most of us…we don’t appreciate our opportunities to practice in fellowship until something (vacation, work, events, sickness, etc) keeps us away…AND we finally get the chance to return “home”.

Anyways, I suppose that human nature being what it is, one has to be away from something, somewhere, someone for a while and then return to it/there/them, to really appreciate what one has. It’s good to be back home.