It's been a little while since I've said anything. I am now 9 days away from leaving, and my wife just got me a GPS for my birthday so I won't get lost on the 19 1/2 hour drive to North Carolina.

I have made a lot of new friends and everyone has be wonderful in their willingness to help me get started teaching again. Either with their interest as a future student or with advertising, I know my family and I will love our new hometown!

We are having a house built which will have enough land for me to build a workshop. I plan on producing more of my replica guns as well as tinker on whatever I want to. Ironically, we close on September 19th, talk like a pirate day. I told my wife I plan on wearing my pirate hat when we sign the paperwork, if not a whole outfit.

Anyways, if you have any interest in learning the use of the of any medieval weapon or the US cavalry saber, let me know I am still compiling the list of prospective students!

Mike

Hello everyone. There has been a fair share of interest in me teaching again when I move out there and get settled in (thanks for the email Bill and Brian). I have been debating about starting something similar to the Nebraska Swordfighter Guild, but with the amount of response I have gotten in such a short amount of time perhaps it is something I should consider.

If you have any interest in learning a thing or two about historical swordsmanship please drop me a line. I am compiling a list of folks who would like to learn so that I can contact them once I am ready to start again.

Well, I don't blog much. In fact, I don't really at all. But I felt it necessary to introduce myself and tell those of you who are actually reading this who the heck I am.

My name is Mike and I founded the Nebraska Swordfighters Guild, a medieval martial arts school in Lincoln, Nebraska. "A medieval martial arts school?" I'm sure some of you are saying to yourselves. "What the hell is that?" Well, let's take a step back in time to 2002.

My wife and I were living in San Jose, California and we were both fans of renaissance faires. We decided to attend one near Gilroy, California and upon entering the front gates, we were handed a flyer. Usually, these things are just tossed in the nearest trash can, but this one caught my eye.

It said something along the lines of "learn to swordfight as they did 600 years ago". I said to myself: "Self, that sounds pretty dang cool now. Doesn't it?" I finally decided to attend one of the classes, and it only took one for me to get hooked.

For those of you unaware of what western martial arts is (from here on out I will refer to it was WMA) it is no less of a martial art as any of the eastern styles. Movies and TV have led us to believe the medieval fighter was this barbarian that mindlessly hacked and slashed at their opponents and that couldn't be further from the truth! What I was initially taught, and still teach to this day is a system of fighting written by Fiore dei Liberi around 1409 in Northern Italy.

This manuscript (in which there are 3 surviving copies) is the most complete medieval fighting manual in existance today. It not only focuses on the longsword (AKA bastard sword, hand and a half, etc) but has sections on wrestling, how to fight with the dagger, the single hand sword, the poleaxe (and spear) how to fight in armor (which is different than out of armor) and even how to fight from a horse.

Now let's jump ahead a couple years to Nebraska. Once we moved, I found that I had no partners to train with anymore. Which...well...sucked. I decided that if I wanted to continue my hobby I would have to make my own practice partners and the Nebraska Swordfighters Guild was born.

Just a couple weeks ago, I had to step down from running it and pass the torch onto a couple students of mine since our imminent move has taken every bit of free time I have. We now have a little over 2 months to pack, sell our house, buy a new house, find me a job and move. My wife is about to graduate with a Phd in Chemistry and has been offered a job in the Research Triangle so as a loyal husband, I will follow.

So now, to continue my training and spread the good "word" of WMA, I have set up this renspace account in hopes of finding some new practice partners. Perhaps I will open another school at some point, but when that will be, I have no idea. Even if there is no school, I will be available for demonstrations on the life of the medieval Italian soldier for scouting events or schools.