As you know, I'm headed to Indiana where my friend, Ken had invited me to move to Indiana after getting out of the Navy. Specifically, Ken lives in Wran, Indiana which is part of Ashford County. I've later come to learn that the city of Ashford, which the county is named after, was often referred to as "Ashford Island" because of how it sits like an island in the center of the county will all the other towns surrounding it. Don't ask, I didn't come up with this concept.
I first entered through the south from Thatch, from there I drove through Davenport which seemed to be a lot more developed than Thatch. I'm not saying Thatch was a complete rural area with no sign civilization, but Davenport definitely seemed a lot more going on. There was something I did notice too. There was a common martial arts academy throughout Thatch and Davenport, Silver Tempest Martial Arts. Even then, I noticed another logo with each of the academy location, ACCOMA.
I didn't think too much of it at the time, instead I was curious to see what MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) gyms were out here, but to my surprise I hadn't seen any. There wasn't even any BJJ (Brazilian Jiu Jitsu) schools to be found either, not even a boxing gym. Strangely I felt like as through I drove through a martial arts Twilight Zone where the first UFC hadn't happened considering BJJ and MMA gyms are pretty much opening everywhere. Of course I realize how silly that thought was when I drove past a bar that said the UFC fights would be showing there on the weekends.
I continued driving up north through Davenport and eventually found myself in the city of Ashford. It was big enough to be called a city, but still had that small town feel to it. I actually found it pretty cool, growing up in San Fernando Valley as well as spending a lot of my time in the Navy in San Diego, I was used to living in bigger cities. One thing to take note about Southern California is that just about every city is connected to the next unlike Ashford County, Indiana. There was open space in between Thatch, Davenport, as well as Ashford. I figured it wouldn't be much different with the rest of the surrounding cities.
I eventually made my way to Wran, by this time it was roughly 8:30 AM in the morning. My first stop was the apartment I was going to rent. Thank goodness to the powers that be known as the internet to be able to make arrangements to meet with my landlord the moment I arrive in Wran. To give you an idea as to how Wran looked like, it was much smaller than both Ashford and Davenport. It wasn't like a farmland or anything, rather it had a downtown area that it shared with Murray, the city south of it.
The downtown area really wasn't that big to be honest. The central portion of it had the city hall for both Wran and Murray. Rather than a local police station, the county sheriff pretty much was the main law enforcement entity throughout all of Ashford county. But one thing I did find interesting was the fact that the police vehicles weren't parked behind a secured gate, instead they parked in the same parking lot at the designated employee parking lot. Across the street from the city hall and sheriff's office was a public transportation hub. The hub was a small octagon shaped building with a dome like roof and the hub itself also served as a roundabout for buses to pick up and drop off passengers. I also noticed the public transportation name was called CATS (County of Ashford Transit System). At specific times the buses would go out throughout both Murray and Wran, with one designated bus that ran to and from the city of Ashford.
Surrounding the CATS station were a few buildings, really old red brick style buildings. The one next to the CATS station, facing away looking towards the promenade was where my apartment was located. A three story building, mine being on the top floor with a balcony overlooking the promenade, but my bedroom window was literally facing the CATS station which meant I'd hear the buses every morning. The place was somewhat furnished, an old wooden table to match the wooden flooring, a dark brown leather couch with more stitch marks than Frankenstein, a couple modern looking stools to match the counter top by the kitchen.
There was an old bed with a bed frame that sounded like it was going to collapse at any moment, so of course I tossed it in the trash dumpster and ordered something online. In the meantime, the wonders of air mattresses will do. I was hoping for a bottom floor apartment, with all the workouts I do at home like P90X or Insanity, I can't imagine how annoyed my neighbors downstairs would be. But let's hope they're cool about me doing my workouts at home, on top of working with Ken, I'm also working the business online marketing these workout programs.
I pretty much spent the whole day unpacking and fixing up my new place. Made a few trips to Walmart and purchased easy and cheap furniture. If you're wondering, I had attached a U-Haul trailer to my SUV with my belongings. Of course I had to find a U-Haul station to drop off the trailer. Filmed a little video clip for my fitness/martial arts channel on YouTube to show off my new home and how I was going to create my home gym in my apartment. After spending all that time, I realized I had lost track of time and got a text from Ken.
"Hey, I hope you're doing well and found your way to your new home. If you're still coming down to the dojo today, I'll be out and about taking care of some stuff. Nadja will be there and so will my junior instructors," Ken texted.
I rushed and grabbed my gym bag which had my sparring gear and stuffed it with some clothes to train in. I ran down down the stairs and ran into my neighbors downstairs, a few college kids rooming together as they attended the university in Ashford. I hope they didn't think I was rude as I was in a hurry, they tried to introduce themselves, but I simply told them my name and said that I had to go.
From the downtown area for Wran and Murray, it probably took me a little over twenty minutes to reach the dojo. Wran was pretty a small town, it had blocks of suburban residences with a few strip malls in between. For the most part, most people that lived in Wran worked in Ashford or the downtown area intersected by Wran and Murray or the few strip malls in between. Besides that, Wran mainly offered a lot of truck stops and gas stations for truckers travelling through Indiana as well as hotels for road-trippers passing through.
Ken's dojo which was named as Franklin's Self Defense Studio was located at one of the strip malls found in between the suburban blocks. Again, I noticed the same logo on his dojo window that I had seen before, ACCOMA. I was sure I'll figure out what it was eventually, but until then I just entered the dojo with my gear. Ken definitely brought some nostalgia when he designed his dojo as the soothing sound of Japanese meditative music could be as I entered. There was a sense of piece and zen about the place.
The front lobby had a cash register with glass counters containing various martial arts training weapons, merch (merchandise) which included clothing with the dojo insignia included. Ken's dojo insignia included a dragon and a tiger circling around each other reminiscent to the Yin and Yang symbol with a scroll underneath that said, "Honor, Courage, and Commitment." Nice, Ken also instilled the Navy Core Values with his dojo.
There was a single hallway that led from the lobby to main dojo floor. Ken had set up the dojo floor really nicely. The mats were color coded, mainly blue mats with red forming the shape of a cross to divide the blue mats into four big blue squares. The wall were the mats were lined up against had a large mirror with Japanese shudders on each side of the mirror giving it a real Japanese feel to it. Around the mats were fold up chairs for parents to spectate as their children practiced.
I had arrived during the children's class. The kids were lined up while two instructors held up kick shields. The kids would take turns kicking the shield and then run to the back of the line. The two instructors were young, black belts, but young adults. One was a tall and skinny man of African American decent and seemed to be the more enthusiastic of the two instructors. I gathered his name was Jason as the kids called him, "Sensei Jason."
The other instructor, a more technical one. The kids called her, "Sensei Kylie." Kylie wasn't as tall as Jason. While he was clearly at least six foot tall, Kylie was roughly around five foot five. Kylie was skinny with blonde hair tied into double French braids with a pair of glasses on her face. Even though Jason too was skinny, he was skinny in an athletic way as muscle definition was evident with his forearms.
The two seemed to work well together with Kylie giving most of the technical instruction on what kick to use on the shield, as well as how to execute the kick. Jason was the motivator of the two. He was the one that was very encouraging as well as cheering the kids on letting them know how good of a job they did. I pretty much caught the last fifteen minutes of the class. They ended it with having the kids line up in formation based on their ranks and had them sit and meditate for about a minute before dismissing them for the evening.
As the children and their parents filtered out of the dojo, Jason made his way towards me. "Hi, I'm Sensei Jason. Can I help you with anything?" he said greeting me.
"Yeah, I'm a friend of Ken Franklin and I'm new here," I replied. Of course I meant I was new to Indiana, not new to martial arts which of course Jason misinterpreted what I said. It wasn't uncommon for Ken to invite various friends of his to try out a class.
