My Goodness, the Distance.

These hills, I have to pass them if I will ever see an event bigger than E1 in my weapon (for the foreseeable future). More planning is needed before I mount a last ditch effort to bound off to Minnesota for the weekend, because it was definitely what I was trying to do all of yesterday. What makes me a little bit sadder is that the event I want to hit is one 'body' away from a B1 tournament. If I did go, more happy letters would be handed out to people, which makes me a happy panda.

Askfred seems to be this ridiculously powerful engine for change when it comes to fencing in the US. If everyone at the event preregistered as early as they possibly could, and attended the event, tournaments would be at least 10% larger in most cases. If I knew that the tournament in St. Paul this weekend would be one body short a month ago, I would have canceled the Seattle trip and bounced out to Minnesota. Not because Seattle is inferior, far from it, but because I am from Minnesota and support fencing there even at the expense of myself and driving 22 hours.

I know that people preregister when they know for sure that they can make it, which is polite and far better than prereging and not showing. But I would like to do everything in my power to get more people preregistered earlier, because then events look more attractive than just at the last two days.

I would love to hear ideas about organizing Askfred events so that people blanket a random venue with their attendance. Perhaps we can organize some sort of gift economy dealing with sending fencers different places.

I know I'm asking for the human race to be more organized, but I am allowed to ask.