Found out that while I was gone the fencing club’s beginner groups had started working with saber. (I do seem to have a knack for making sure I’m always a few weeks behind everyone else. :-)) Interesting. I don’t have any of the muscle strength or memory for saber yet, of course, and was mostly fumbling, but … there’s something kind of comfortable about the sorts of motions it requires that makes me wonder whether it won’t be a better weapon for me than foil, once I know what I’m doing.
Of course, my initial reaction to being handed a saber was, “But I’m still struggling to understand foil! I’m not ready for something new!” 🙂 And with saber, it’s going to be very much about the basics for now–learning how to parry and riposte and simply hold the blade properly and for extended periods of time.
And I suspect trying to get my muscles to instinctively remember which weapon I’m holding and how to respond to it will be an interesting challenge, too.
But if I get tired of all that, there are always the basics to get back to. I didn’t practice my footwork hardly at all while I traveling. I thought I was going to feel that when I returned, and, yeah. I did. Not so much in an I-hurt-now way as in an I-can’t-do-this-for-nearly-as-long-as-I-expected sort of way.