Blades, parries, fleches

Went in late to Wednesday practice. It's Nathaniel's 7th birthday and I wasn't planning to go in at all, but by 7:45 or so T said I might as well, so I did. If nothing else I wanted to test my newly wired epee. The place was packed when I arrived around 8:30. After testing the epee, realizing I had put the bell guard on wrong, taking it apart and putting it back together again and making sure it worked, I fenced more or less non-stop until nearly 10:00. Fenced George, Jeff, Travis, and Jim. In my rush to get there I didn't put in my contacts, so I fenced with my glasses off. I can fence just fine without being able to see clearly, but it was a little distracting. The straps on my mask kept unconnecting, which was also distracting. And I used the newly wired epee, uncanted, and with its "sawed-off" Visconti grip, which is also distracting! Still I had fun and did pretty good in some ways.

I tried a bit of the "parry 2, advance with rear foot" thing, but it mostly failed to work and even earned me a mini-lesson from Travis. He said I was doing a "weird seconde" that was way too large, and anyway one should do parry 8 instead of 2 usually, he said. He is probably right. Travis and I fenced to ten. Early on his point caught on my glove and the blade snapped off. First time that has happened in a bout I was in.

I also tried sticking to the left side of the strip, which did seem to discourage fleching from some people, like George. Also experimented with drifting to the right side of the strip, to see if it could encourage fleching. And, with George at least, it seemed to. It almost felt like I could get him to fleche if I wanted, by drifting right and waiting. This could be a useful tactic if it works on more people. Of course I need to also be able to successfully defend against a fleche, which I failed to do with George.

In the end Jim and I fenced for a long time, which was a great way to end. We did a lot of "blade play". He does a lot of extentions, disengages, and general circling. I had fun trying to work out various deceptions based on things like circling one way, then the other, setting up patterns of, say, mild beat 8s, then change to a circle 6 kind of thing. Or doing some blade play with a mostly extended arm, then slowly pulling back, trying to draw him in a little closer than he should be. We had a lot of double touches. Maybe more doubles than singles altogether. Anyway, altogether a very fun night.