Loopkicks camp – The beginning post #20

Loopkicks camp – The beginning post #20

July 2004

Mike Chat had successfully ran the first martial arts camp in the world. The sport karate world was in a buzz about it. Suddenly other people were starting to follow his lead and have camps of their own. Chat was charging an insane amount of money for the camp. He had the reputation and credibility to charge that much money though.

The crew that I was training with called Loopkicks was having the first ever-tricking camp. The camp was focused on the tricking side of martial arts. I wasn’t involved with it because I was too busy competing, playing video games and trying to settle into my new drama free lifestyle.

Trouble and I were doing great. Since she visited me, I’ve felt so happy to have her in my life. I’ve completely stopped contact with Throwback. Which was a first good decision that I’ve made.

I wasn’t sure how well the camp would go. I thought they would have 25 people come, 35 if they were lucky, I couldn’t imagine anyone paying 700 dollars to come to camp with only tricking. On top of that they had to buy their own plane ticket.

Trickers were mainly teenagers and young adults. None of which had any real jobs.

A week before the camp I went over to Dee’s house and see how the camp was coming along. I was interested to see how many people were going to attend the camp.

I asked him how many campers he had. He told me he had 45 people that already paid and another 25 paying when they arrive. HOLY SHIT! That is a shit load of people to come and just trick. I then asked him how many guests and instructors he was flying in. He had another 15 people coming. 85 total people that he was responsible for. That didn’t include the locals that were coming. He was in way over his head. He had no idea what he was in for.

“Where are you housing the campers?” I asked

“Don’t know yet.” He nonchalantly replied

“How are you transporting them?” I asked knowing the answer

“Don’t know that either” He replied with the same demeanor

“Where are you training them?” I asked for shits and giggles

“I was gonna do it at the karate school, but there are too many people now. So I don’t know that either” He said shrugging his shoulders

WTF! He had to be fucking with me… but he wasn’t. He was so fucked. So now I had to get involved. I grabbed the phone book and we started calling around for rental vans and hotels. It was a mad dash to get everything locked down.

Nothing was planned before I talked to him. Unbelievable. I tried my best to save as much money as we could because we were doing everything last minute.

I had a friend’s mom that was sitting on a house during the housing bubble. So I offered her some money to rent the house for a week. We planned to cram all the guests and instructors there. Fifteen people crammed into a three-bedroom house lol. It would turn into an animal house.

The hotel was only 3 blocks from Dee’s house. Which made it easy to travel back and forth to take care of the campers. We got one rental van and an army of drivers. I had a friend that was teaching at a school that was about a 30-minute drive from the hotel. We had no choice but to use that school because it was cheap for us. The owner was really cool with us being there also. Everything was coming together finally.

The Wednesday of following week a handful of guests arrived. It was nice to see everyone coming together in one place. We planned to have the first tricking super session. I don’t remember ever seeing so many talented and elite trickers coming together and training at one time. I was looking forward to it.

The session was going to start at 10pm. So a couple of my friends and I went to have dinner. I told them the story about the crazy year that I’ve had so far. Telling them about all the girls that have come in and out of my life. We had a few good laughs. I dropped them off at the hotel and would meet them at the school later.

I went back to Dee’s house to see what was going on. Everything seems to be going smoothly. What a relief.

But of course nothing ever goes smoothly. Guess who shows up to camp? Throwback and Gifted. Not only are they both here. They are best friends now. Oh joy! I make eye contact with them and I get the coldest look from both of them. This is getting better and better. They don’t say hello to me. They completely ignore me.

The session was a success though. It was a lot of fun to train with all these amazing people. The highlight of the session was someone had kicked a hole in the ceiling. I would say the ceiling was about 10 feet high. Definitely an amazing feet.

Later that night I found out that Gifted was dating one of the guys I had dinner with and he was angry with her because she didn’t tell him about me. On top of that Throwback and Gifted’s Boyfriend best friend had a little thing building. So both of the girls were angry that I made them out to be groupies. It’s going to be a long camp. Oh well, shit happens.