salledetroit.com

Yeah, it’s tourney season in Michigan.  This means events most every weekend.  And posts very infrequently.  Sorry about that.

October was the month of travel for UFO fencers.  A group went out to IL for the Burton (I skipped and stayed home), then the following weekend was a NAC in Columbus (my fencing was such that I could have skipped and stayed home), and most recently the Remenyk Open in Chicago (where I did skip fencing, and went to a winery in Wisconsin).  There are some great pictures of all these events on the UFO website.  Between FreeSizer and FileZIlla it’s much easier to crop down a 7 MB file to manageable sizes and upload them to the website.  So I’ve been keeping up on that pretty good this fall.

One thing I had to change recently was the cost of armoury work.  The month of September I spent way too much time staring at an ohm meter and cursing at wires.  So I raised the rates.  By a lot.  It wasn’t an easy decision, but I did have some input from other armourers out there that I was under-priced.  Hopefully the increase will actually cover my time spent, or cut down the amount of work and give me more time to fix the club equipment.

I also want to put in a few improvements in the main gym area.  More hanging ball targets and maybe rebuild Nate, our wall dummy.  We’ve also got enough donated equipment to build Julio, a second fencing dummy.  Now it’s just finding time…

Today was one of those days where day job and fencing club collided.  Usually I can keep one mostly unaffected by the other, through the beauty of high speed Internet and portable computing.   Some days I can’t.

I work in IT, which alone is enough to make most peoples eye glaze over and beg me to stop describing my job.  Sometimes I think I opened the club just to have something more interesting to talk about in groups.  One thing to know about IT, it comes with computers and they break.  So after three days of fighting it out and losing to some random issue, the phone rings and it’s my counter-part with all the vendors on the phone determined to Fix The Issue.  Great, except it’s 4:45 PM and I’ve arranged to meet someone from the local paper to talk at the club at 5:30.  Do I think this’ll be done in time?  It’s been three long brutal days of conf calls, so no.  I don’t hold out much hope.

My lack of hope was not misplaced.  Finally, with a cringe in my voice, I interupt.  “Um, guys?”  The chatter stops, “Uh, I hate to do this, but I really have to be somewhere that isn’t here at 5:30.  Can we pick this up tomorrow?”  Happily just about everyone else on the phone realized they also had better places to be than struggling with something that hasn’t yet worked, so it cleared quickly.  I was late, but not by too much.

Thankfully my club was open due to our youth class and my contact was raptly watching small children learn the art of fencing.  So everything worked out.

But it’s interesting trying to juggle a job that can have off hours problems and a club that can have daytime requirements.  Keeping all sides happy can be a job unto itself.

This was a good week. With Sheila out here practicing with us, we’ve also had various news organizations out interviewing her. Sometimes they even take pictures. Our biggest hope was that at some point there would be a flash of green and we could get all excited that our venue was in the paper or on TV. Wednesday we did one better, the Detroit News ran a great article on Sheila and mentioned both Ben and Salle d’Etroit by name. It ran front page, with the picture of Ben and Sheila above the fold. We’ve included a link under our links page.

There is also some really good video footage of Ben and Sheila fencing at the same link. Check it out if you haven’t already.

For a club owner, this is the best. People that know nothing about fencing get a glimpse into the sport and they may just get curious enough to try it out. Hopefully here.

We’ve decided to start a series of blogs, this is the first post of the Salle d’Etroit blog.  We’ll be chatting and typing about some of the behind the scenes day to day stuff of actually running a fencing club.

Yesterday we had a tourney here.  Now the one nice thing about being a permanent venue, we don’t have to pack up equipment at the end of the day.  We do however have to wander through and pick up all the abandoned water bottles, gatorade containers and the like.  In two days we’ll be doing the hunt for what ever food item was tucked away and left for the fruit flies.

There is something very still about a venue after all the activity is done and it’s just you and your co-owner looking about the darkened space.  You can almost hear the echos of activity.  Of course this assumes the event was really great.  Those that tank leave you feeling somewhat lost.  Yesterday was a good one.

It was also the debut of our new metal strips.  Paid for by the fencing club, UFO, these went in with lots of help on Friday evening.  Aluminum and fully grounded.  These are a luxery that not many clubs in Michigan have ever been able to afford.  The UFO fencers are really proud of these.  I’ll be proud when I can stand upright again.  Hours bent over a drill as I tacked them down.  Ouch.

So today is post event day, which means financials.  Running a fencing club costs money, and events contribute (somewhat) to that bottom line.  So today we total everything up, look at what it cost in directors and are pleasantly surprised when the number isn’t negative.

Today also being Sunday means it’s an armoury day, I have 4 blades needing attention waiting for me.  Oh and two body cords.  What I don’t get done today, I face tomorrow.  I’ve already had the sorrowful look of “it’s not done yet?” from one of my customers.  Sorry, I was welding awards for the last event.  There is only one of me and I also have a day job.  (Now there’s a topic for a future post, holding a full time job and running a fencing club.)

I suspect I’ve spent enough time typing and the repair work is calling.  I’m off to immerse myself in superglue fumes.  Assuming I don’t glu myself to the vise, I’ll report back in a few days.