I have been thinking lots lately of some physical activities I’d like to do to try and be more active. I really like hockey, but it doesn’t jive with my schedule. Coral and I have found a dodgeball league that will be firing up on Thursdays right as I finish my show which if good.
Thinking about what I like, what I want to get into…. well, I think I want to do some medieval sword fighting.
Manny moons ago, I was involved with this group called The SCA. The society for creative anachronisms. They were/are a funny lot, but basically, every week my buddy Paul and I would head out to a school rec room in Kitsalino and get shit kicked by big metal dudes with clubs for a few hours. As you can imagine, mucho fun.
Paul and I did this for some time and sadly, that Thursday practise every week in the city ended. We had to find a new group and I tagged along with some guys doing it in Coquitlam.
A club of grown adults who pretend to live in a fantasy medieval world atracts a certain breed. The Thursday thing in Vancouver had a special lot, but for the most part, it was bunch of guys in their 20s, that listened to epic metal, had beards, and liked to fight.
But as I got more involved with the club, well… I met some characters and it became less fun and very serious (for some people). Paul and I stopped going, whatever, life moves on.
Fast forward to now, and I still get the urge to do some fighting. A few weeks ago I thought maybe I’d try this MMA that is all the rage. I called some gyms and visited a couple and two horrible truths stood out.
MMA Guys are asshole. Judge SCAers all day, fine, but MMA guys are generally the d-bags you make fun of in the bar.
The other; MMA is expensive.
Lame, to beat the shit out your fellow man, you have to pay money for the privilege.
And I was a little down… anything fun I thought of costs mucho bux and/or requires tons of equipment. But then I remembered SCA.
True, there is and can be some expensive equipment involved but when I first started I fought in hockey gear (basically) and some borrowed stuff. The helmet needs to be a real deal metal medieval contraption because giant Odin looking fellows are swinging clubs at your head. But the rest can be whatever you got laying around that you feel like taping to yourself.
As I got into SCA more, I pieced my kit together as I had money/time/found a deal and by the end I had some bad ass functional medieval armour!
Part of the fun was putting it together and sourcing it. And this was back in the infancy of the internet, I bet now I could find what I need easily on Craiglist of eBay.
Heck I might even still have some gear at my folk’s place (though I doubt it, and if its there, its over ten years old, so I can imagine fairly rotten).
The point is, I like history, I like fighting and I love medieval total war, so I think I will fire up some medieval sword fighting again. If anyone is down, we could form our won club and do fight practice a couple times a week maybe? Or join up with the SCA? whatever works. We’ll find out how to make our own armour on the internet and try to do it ourselves (those rain collection barrels they sell in Vancouver might be the perfect plastic to make a scale mail armour). I had a helmet, heck I had two… but I left one at the radio station and haven’t seen it since and I don’t know where the other one is, so that I might have to try and buy again.
Anyways, that’s the story… I am going to start up a medieval sword fighting club and if you’re into it, let me know and we’ll try and find a rec hall or space to do it.
Go with yourself.
The Morning After 