My old isshinryu sensei in USA, Bob Sherman, has been running his dojo for 30 years this year.

To celebrate that, he invited all former and present blackbelts to a reunion.

I started training in Bob’s dojo back in 81, when it was only 2 years old, so I simply had to go to California and join the festivities.

Tough, but somebody has to do it!

Since I was going to California anyway, I wanted to live an old dream of climbing the world’s largest and highest trees out. I’m a professional treeclimber ( arborist) and the giant Sequoias and Redwoods are our Mount Everest.

My two partners from work came along and we spent a not very relaxing night in hammocks in the top of a Giant Sequoia, 65 meters up in the air. We were kept awake by flying squirrels, running across our sleepingbags, trying to figure out what kind of giant caterpillars we were.

Afterwards we went to the Redwood forests on the Pacific coast and climbed a 90 meter tall tree.

Quite a fine view from the top.

Then I went up to Bob and spent a couple of weeks training with and teaching his blackbelts.

We worked intensely on Hamahiga Tonfa and Urashi Bo. One of the blackbelts. who came for the reunion, Bob Shear, is a professional video photographer. He helped us make some DVDs as teaching aids for the students to use after I’d gone home.

As always when I visit Bob, his regular bunch of blackbelts are ready to train everyday. Those poeple are really enthusiastic about karate.

It was hard for me to keep up, with all the injuries I presently suffer from, but ingesting ibuprofene

in huge amounts helped somewhat.

The blackbelt reunion was a great time. I’m the oldest of Bob’s students who are still active, so I know just about all the other blackbelts in the dojo. I taught Eric Lien, 5 dan. who runs the dojo with Bob today, when he was a beginner, just to give an example.

Seeing all the old training partners again was a lot of fun.

The local TV station did a news story about the reunion. I was interviewed of course, they thought it was something special that I’d travelled across half the planet to be part of the reunion.

The show turned out really well, very straight and a good advertisement for the dojo.

Going home was hell! There were 4 different babies on the plane and they took turns howling the whole 13 hours.

I’ve never been happier to get off a plane.

                                                                  Stig Bredsgaard