This strange weather we've been having has made Tia go a little bonkers. She's determined that the time Chris comes home is time to run around meowing, not a normal run but almost like a stiff-legged bounce. She'll do sideways dives and somersaults as well. Whatever her motive, she gets a lot of attention for it and she's loving it.

Wednesday, November Tenth
a little bit about fencing

Well, since some of my readers have asked, I'll explain a little more about fencing. Hopefully you'll understand a bit better when I'm prattling on about foils and sabres and yellow cards and such. If this totally bores you, there's a little "normal" bit at the end.

I'll start with foil. Foil (known as fleuret in French) is a style of fencing that is based on a famous duel from the 1600's. No, I don't remember who was dueling...look it up if you are curious.

Foil is kind of confusing to watch if you don't know what is going on. Basically, the target area is the torso, front and back. No arms, head, legs. This corresponds to your vital organs. The blade is very flexible and is square in cross-section. Foil is confusing because there is a thing called Priority (sometimes Right-of-Way) that mucks everything up. This is a holdout from dueling.

In essence, when someone attacks you, and "Asserts Priority" (but sticking their blade arm straight and advancing) they have the right of way. You can't ignore that attack and launch a counter attack of your own, because you don't have priority. This is the link to dueling. It would be utter folly to ignore an attack that could kill you in order to launch one of your own. Therefore, you must gain the priority. How do you do that? Well, if you beat their blade, or parry, then you have neutralized their attack and thus gain right-of-way for your own attack (same deal, stick your arm out and go). Now they can parry YOUR attack, so the goal is to gain priority and then land a touch before they can.

Got that? Probably not. It takes a while to figure it out.

Epee is the weapon that I fence. Basically, it is a sniper's game. The target is the whole body, including head. There is NO priority. The guard of the blade is larger to protect your arm, which is valid target area. It involves precise quick movements and is quite athletic. Not as much running around as foil, but there is still a lot of jockeying and evasion. In epee, since there is no priority, a double-touch can be awarded if the two fencers hit at the same time.

The blade is stiffer and is triangular in cross-section. As I said earlier, the guard is much larger in order to shield the hand and arm from attacks. Generally tall skinny people end up in epee. I'm not that tall, but I am fast and skinny, so I seem to be doing quite well. Women's and Men's fencing is completely different anyhow. There aren't that many really tall women so the field is a bit more even.

Sabre I won't even pretend to understand. Foil and Epee are thrusting weapons. Sabre is a slashing weapon and the target is everything above the hips. This is based on cavalry fighting where your legs are around a horse and thus somewhat protected. Sabre has the same priority rules as foil, however in sabre, priority is asserted by moving forwards. It is very quick...the judge calls "Allez" and the two combatants run at each other. Smack. Then the judge either throws out the action as being simultaneous (there was no priority asserted) or awards a point. Then it starts again. It's really confusing.

Now for some other fencing terms, a little glossary:

fleche: this is a running attack. It means arrow in French. Basically you extend your arm and push off with your front leg and run by your opponent, hitting them before they can react. Once you run past them, action stops.

piste: this is the "runway" where fencing takes place. It's oh...about 1.5m wide and 10m long. You get a red card of you are run off the end of the piste. You are not allowed to step off the side.

yellow card: this is a warning. You get them for all sorts of things, like equipment failure, loss of control on the piste, falling, corps-a-corps, swearing, losing your temper etc.

corps-a-corps: this is a big no-no in fencing. You are not allowed to touch or run into your opponent. You will get a yellow card for it, and if it continues, a red and finally black.

the box: this is our affectionate nickname for the scoring device. You will find yourself yelling at your teammates "Don't look at the box!!!"

lunge: the meat and potatoes of a fencing attack. Once the arm is extended, the front leg kicks out and bends while the back leg straightens as a support.

red card: this is the equivalent of two yellow cards. It means that your opponent gets a point. You can get a red card from having a bunch of yellow cards due to equipment failure, from losing your temper, getting run off the end of the piste, etc.

black card: this is a Very Bad Thing. It means that you AND YOUR TEAM are disqualified. You can get them from having a breakdown on piste and throwing equipment and swearing, trying deliberately to injure someone, or by fencing in the wrong order. If it is due to temper then usually you are on probation for a year afterwards.

en garde: this is the basic beginning stance. That's why the judge says this, literally he's saying get in the guard position.

prete: literally "get ready"

allez: Go!

balestra: a weird jumping lunge...I guess the triple jump most closely approximates this attack.

lame: (pronounced LAH-may) this is the metal fibre jacket that foilists and sabreists have to wear so points can register when fencing electrics at a tournament.

lid: the fencing mask

plastron: a half jacket that goes on over your blade arm under the jacket...protects against accidental punctures and bruises.

breeches: fencing pants...they end at the knee, are gathered in with elastic. They have a very high waist and suspenders.

hose: the socks you wear to cover your legs from knee down

jacket: standard jacket have padding or double layers to protect you from injury. High collar, gathered at the wrists and have a groin strap.

glove: usually leather, with a long wrist. Goes over the jacket sleeve. Has padding on the back of the hand.

action (first, second, etc.): this is how the movements are broken down. Basically fencing is analogous to a conversation. The first action occurs, which is met by a response (the second action) and so on. Generally there is no more than three actions before a touch is scored. So for example, once a flurry has happened, and the judge calls halt, he'll explain the action. So he/she will say something like "Attack non-valable, remise non, prise-du-fer oui. The first action was the attack and it landed off target so was "not valuable", the opponent counter attacked (second action) and didn't land (the "non" part) and then the first person took the opponent's blade (regaining priority, third action) and landed a touch ("oui").

remise: this is a counter attack, in foil if you remise and you don't have priority, it doesn't count. Literally you are re-attacking.

mal-parry: this is a parry that goes wrong. If you mal-parry, you haven't taken away priority from your opponent.

parry: this is that flashy move where you deflect your oppnent's blade. There are many different kinds of parries.

beat: this is when you hit the opponent's blade sharply to knock it out of position and then continue into a lunge or fleche.

prise du fer: literally "take the blade", this is an attack where you ride down the opponent's blade, deflecting their point off to the side and (hopefully) landing yourself.

bugle: this is a Trent Fencing invention. You aren't allowed to directly tell the person fencing when they are getting close to the end of the piste, so we just randomly will yell "bugle" so they know where they are.

I think that's it for now. If you have any other questions, be sure to email me and I'll do my best to answer them. I've gotten a lot done today, and my poor ankle is feeling better. I'm still unsteady, but I can hobble around without the darn crutches at least.

Since I skipped my morning class, the day has stretched invitingly before me. I've done some cleaning and furniture arranging and a lot of web-work as well. Plus all these graphs for my thesis. I don't know which are relevant. I'm just taking in a small sample of the ones I think are interesting and we'll see how it goes. I said that I am feeling lost and it is really true. I have all sorts of free time to work on assignments but I can't seem to summon up the mental focus or ability to sit still for long periods of time. This is starting to become a problem.