you might be an ARMAteer if...

[Will Adamson]

From my experience, girls exposed to an activity like ours tend to be more confident in themselves than average and are more likely to demand a well rounded character (read: physical as well as psychological) from their prospective boyfriends.

As well as a healthy dose of fear!

[Lorraine Munoa]

From my experience, girls exposed to an activity like ours tend to be more confident in themselves than average and are more likely to demand a well rounded character (read: physical as well as psychological) from their prospective boyfriends.

As well as a healthy dose of fear!

...When only brave guys are interested in dating you.

Sure weeds out all the losers who are scared of confident women!

[Nathaniel Bacon]

Great read.

Although I am not an ARMAteer yet I did happen to insist on buying the house with the oversized 2 car garage (Very high ceiling + space heater = winter rec room) on a dead end street that backs up to woods and wetlands on two sides. Lots of privacy, natural pells, and material to work with.

[Andrew Steeley]

---Been reading a good ARMA Forum thread at work and had to fight off the urge to go out to the car, get the waster out of the back seat and run through a drill or two just to get it out of your system. And that's before lunch when you go out and drill in the parking lot just to keep sharp.

Cheers,
Andy

[Will Adamson]

...you paid off your credit card in anticipation of the International Event.

[Jason Taylor]

Well, there seems to be some initial interest here, but may take a while to get more of a group going.
Utah, alas, forgot to mention all of you down that way. No discourtesy intended.
Wider interest, methinks much of it might be in areas somehow associated with the collegiate environment, or those where the interest is in both martial arts, and exercise. Although too much of an implication for self-defense could be trouble to this kind of activity. Better to be thought of as a flock of eccentrics.
From what I remember from when I was back in the cities...the Asian focus is the norm there.
Ironic (or vexing) insofar as many ignore their own heritage in these arts. But learning an art of this type is obviously much harder when the masters have been dead for so long...hence Tobler, Brown,& others, ARMA and all the manufacturers of useable equipment, deserve acclaim for rescuing these arts from academic obscurity. Nothing quite kills a tradition off, as when it becomes the sole venue of tweed jacket academia.

Being from a city environment and teaching in a collegiate one, I can say you're (generally) right on both counts. In the cities around So. Cal., we generally get Asian arts. Scratch that; we generally get Tae Kwon Do, because you can milk more out of the parents with that one (no 0offense to the art, but it's true of many, many individual schools of TKD). Anything non Asian, except boxing and wrestling (which are now popular because of MMA/UFC stuff), is considered useless.

I brought some padded longswords and a mace to my other martial arts class the other day, and some of the other guys were having fun screwing around with them. Anyway, they invited this visiting MMA dude to go a round, and his answer was "I don't joust."

Sigh.

[Lorraine Munoa]

...When the best news you've had in months is being invited to use the Martial Arts studio you go to for your swordwork some mornings when it's empty.

[Matt Bryant]

You might be an ARMAteer if your lawnmower is out of commission so you trim a batch of tall weeds with your Albion Thalhoffer.

[CalebChow]

Hey, thread necromancy! I'll chip in.

You might be an Armateer if your entire backyard is a dust bowl because your footwork has killed off all vegetation...

[Jaron Bernstein]

You spent too much of your free time over the last 6 months searching high and low for an indoor training space with: (1) low to zero cost, (2) high ceilings, (3) mats, and (4) open floor space.