They say exciting or bad experiences make for good stories. Well, that’s how the saying goes and true to the saying that’s what happened. Solis Ortus Karate decided to have an instructors camp, called a gashuku. Sensei William was the team leader because sensei Eugene had an unforeseen other event. Sensei Adrian and sensei Lilian, sempai Annerien and Heilieth went on the camp. Like a bunch of school teenagers we all huddled into the Fortuner Toyota.
I spy with my little eye something starting with ….. Was the main game in the vehicle on our way to Ribeeks kloof near Middelburg, about an hour and a halfs drive from Pretoria. Laughing all the way there we arrived to a breath taking amazing sun set on the 20th Feb 2015.
Friday night was spent getting to know each other a bit better round the camp fire.
Saturday morning we were up at the crack of dawn. We went driving up the mountain trail with the 4×4, sensei Lilian we realized is a bit scared of heights. Saturday afternoon sensei William sat us down for a serious discussion about what we need to do in our karate Solis Ortus club. Then we played a prank on sensei Lilian when we all got dressed in our Gi’s and woke sensei lilian up from a deep afternoon sleep. We then proceeded to take some
beautiful photos in our gi’s in various poses and on various objects.
We climbed a part of the mountain near by and posed for pics which
came out amazingly well. Being late afternoon we noticed that a generator was on near the pool which was becoming annoying. The generator was located about 50 meters from our chalet and housed inside a small stone house. So sensei Lilian and Adrian decided to go switch off the darn thing. That’s when things became dangerous
which makes for a good story. Apparently what sensei William and the rest noticed was a change in engine noise followed by loud shouting to the tune of “run its gonna blow,” followed by sparks and smoke. Then Lilian and Adrian were running for cover. Adrian fell and lay motionless for a while in the dark and Lilian grabbed him up and ran towards the camp site. At this stage sensei William was visibly distraught and came running down shouting ” fix it fix it!”
I guess the flee fight or freeze mode “thingy” works different in every one. Its strange how quick things can go wrong. All we wanted to do was switch the darn thing off. Anyways a long story short we called thee owners of the chalets and they sent out a maintenance guy who fixed it.
Sunday morning we actually practiced proper karate mostly fun stuff like jumping flying kicks into the dam giving the word “dam duiker”, a new meaning. And so a good time was had by all making for a great weekend. Moral learned was don’t try to fix something that isn’t broken and run like hell when sparks and smoke is near a 50 liter diesel tank. Oss.
Written by Adrian Bonafede