Blue Belt

Chapter 17

                                                                  XVII.

        As it turned out the Disneyland Karate Expo was something that Cammie had been planning for a long time.  I finally got around to reading the official brochure for the event about a half hour before I was leaving to ride up there with a few other students from here on the morning of the event.  I did not even realize the event had an official brochure until Cammie had dropped it off the night before.  Taking part in this expo was something she had been working on for the past eight months or so.  Every year martial arts students selected from a group of schools from the Southern California area are invited to take part in this four day event.  Cammie was involved in a specific part of all this which had to do with the performing of a sort of group form performed by women.  They also were to run the booth there for four hours following their performance.  What I had not realized was that this group that she was performing with was fairly well spread out in the area and that she had began working with them since late last Summer in terms of choosing what they would perform and learning to execute it together.  These were students from a variety of different schools and different forms of martial arts.  I'm sure it was no small feat to find consistency in the moves that were a part of their routine.  And this was not to mention the fact that every time they performed their routine, it lasted thirty minutes in length. 

            Also, as it turned out I did not actually get to ride up there with Cammie and her friends.  They had ended up leaving the night before, and there ended up being a small group of people from OKI who went to watch anyway.  So instead I rode up with a van of people early on Saturday morning which to my surprise ended up including Ron and Kim.  We sat next to each other in the van and had a good time reminiscing not only over recent classes we had in our green belt training, but also about their previous trips to Disneyland and how Kim had even spent some time working there before for a Summer.  The whole group stopped and had breakfast at a small restaurant in Santa Ana where we got to sit and eat outside at small tables.  The food was really good.  During breakfast I got a good chance to visit more with Zhou, who as it turned out has been very active in karate since he was really little; along with Brian, who was a friend of Jed's and in his class as well.  Everyone was in a really good mood that morning as we drove up.

            We arrived at Disneyland at around 10:30 in the morning, and were not planning on visiting the gals over at the expo until around 11:30 which left us with some time to check things out.  I ended up joining Brian and his friend Chris, also from OKI, as we first headed over to the "Big Thunder Mountain Railroad" per Chris's recommendation.  It was a roller coaster type ride that followed tracks along caves and caverns, twisting along through a background of brown rock that even included traversing some water.  It was a lot of fun and we went back on it yet again.  We next ran over to the famous "Space Mountain".  It was another roller coaster type ride, only it was indoors and this time the backdrop was the cosmos of shooting stars, satellites, accompanied by many other awesome special effects.  With just a bit more extra time on our hands we walked up the "Main Street" area, just people watching and looking at the shops and souvenir stands that were there.  It was quickly getting quite busy as people seemed to be streaming in.

            The expo itself was taking place at a small stage with some chairs set up, alongside a small red and white striped tent that had a table set up for people to visit with the attendants.  The table was manned by people involved in the expo.  There were some speakers also set up for audio so I assumed some of these performances were going to be set to music.  All of this was located up on the far end of that "Main Street" area, opposite the entrance to the park.  It was very close to the entrance of the area generally known there as "Frontierland".  As we made our way there around 11:30, no one was on stage, but groups of people were gathered nearby.