The Grand Tour

This is an idea with less sense and more idealism. One of my long term goals for Missoula is to have enough people fencing to pile into 3-4 cars and take off in a predetermined direction, hitting every tournament/club along the way. One year we'll swing to the east coast via the Midwest, stop in Minneapolis and fence for a day or two. Then head east where tournaments become more and more dense. Next year we would hit the entire west coast. Fencing up and down California in a giant road trip. Then maybe we would go through the deep south, and then start the cycle over agiain the year after that.

This is inspired by my urge to have the fencing community be far more tightly knit, and to increase our overall capacity to network. If we have friends in every major city in the continental U.S., lodging for NACs would be incredibly cheap. It also increases the chance that passing fencers may stop in and fence with us for a night, increasing our exposure to outside talent.

Out here, we are fairly isolated. I enjoy the isolation for the most part, but I would like to make the fencing community psychologically tighter even if we can't physically be closer. Plus I have the feeling that random clubs wouldn't mind having a bunch of fencers from a region they never get to interact with show up one random Tuesday night. We used to have a few Californians show up in Minneapolis once a year and fence us for a while. I always enjoyed the exposure to outside skill sets and different ways of doing things.

This is certainly more of a dream than anything else right now. But someday, I will be spending my supposed vacation in a car full of fencers heading to a club near you.