the bennymay story: chapter 6

Who goes to Germany for kung fu, anyway?

The mountain-bike races through fields and forests. The shock absorbers work hard. Each hill challenges every muscle in my legs, and the drive within my will. Three gossiping villagers huddle on the narrow sidewalk. Old German buildings crane over them to listen in on their yarns. The villagers twist to spy powering through their ancient village street. I release the handlebars, grab my water bottle, sit up straight, chug down a splash, and survey the petrified wrestling match between 17^th and 19^th century village architecture.

Every hour my bike stops. I am permitted one square glucose tablet—the size of a large German postal stamp—and one thin slice of full-grain bread—that weighs more than a small turtle—and a row of Aphrodite’s Milka chocolate. I am strengthened for my next hour.

I continue. My eyes feast furiously on fresh forests and farmland—country-sides criss-crossed by Autobahns with expensive cars, ever speeding forward, turning around, then speeding back again. And what self-respecting German keeps a car more than two years anyway; unless it is a classic? Those expensive, new cars certainly have loud horns, whining Doppler’s song at my mountain bike if ever I need to use 300 metres of their freeway .

Cars go. Trains run—and on time, too. But Germany’s small village buildings have held hands, squeezed together, forced up massive stone walls and bedecked them in leafy drapes, to hide away all their favourite little castles and gardens, far from the reach and clutches of the Autobahn’s noisy gawking tourists and speedsters. Those curious few find a gap in the stony wall to peer into majestic beauty, and melt with wonder. The designs of those ponds, motes, fountains, footbridges, statues, and romantic gardens coalesce into a fairytale’s setting.

Feet have pounded forest paths since before the Celts built their fortress on the hill near Heidelberg around 2500 years ago. I regularly checked my compass, making navigation decisions every few minutes; thousands of paths wove themselves together. The forests reveal their beauties, designed by no human hand, equal to those fairytale castles and gardens.

The forest’s darkness increases the impact of the escape, as light hits me from far horizons, distant vineyards, and rolling hills painted in greens, yellows, and browns by farmers and their crops. The road meanders ahead of me. My muscles know every pedal movement. I push on.

A very talented musician lives in a small town up ahead. She married a man who immigrated to be with her. He once lived in Hong Kong, studying and training in kung fu under Master (Sifu) Wong Shun Leung, and Wong’s so called Grandmaster, Yip Man. Wong Shun Leong regarded his student Bruce Lee as an actor—far from being his greatest student. Rather, Master Wong handed both his favourite weapons—the symbolic badge representing headship over the Wing Chun system of Kung Fu—to the master who now opens his door to me.

Top fighters travel long distances, even internationally, to learn from this master. Training with him for half an hour has the same effect on my arms as lifting weights for a day. Occasionally he will walk around to my side, grab my wrist, and shake my arm up and down to help blood flow so I can keep fighting. At times, not just his hands but his whole body appears blurry to me, even to me with such good eyesight, since he is so fast. His speed is quite unbelievable. After six months of training in Hong Kong decades earlier, Master Wong told him he was much faster than Bruce Lee ever was—and as Jack Johnson quotes, ‘slow down Bruce you’re moving too fast; the frames can’t catch you when you’re moving like that’ since Bruce Lee was too fast for movies (though Jack changed ‘Bruce’ to ‘everyone’). So, when I saw it is hard for me to see him because he is fast, I mean incredibly fast. His punch, from only a few centimetres away, can throw a person 2 metres backwards and knock them out—as he did once in a match, where the judges all thought they must have been imagining since they could not believe that they had actually seen what they witnessed.

So with his Olympic-level fitness, machine-like technical precision, and such intense power training with this guy for four hours bleeds my energy and abuses my muscles.

Before he lets me take the two-hour mountain-bike ride back home to Heidelberg, he and his wife do their best to over-fill me with great cooking, and ensure I have enough blood sugar and sufficient use of my muscles to ride safely back to Heidelberg. We chat. He continually explains more of the finer aspects of fighting.

I ride a different route every time, since I find so much pleasure exploring and challenging myself on forested mountain paths. Occasionally I pass a wild fruit tree, sharing her fruit with those who care enough to stop and attend her. I stop. I lift my heavy leg off my old bike. Her branches are drooping and I tug free the tastiest looking apple I can reach. My first bite teaches me, as I spit acid from my tongue, that I should have kept focused on my ride. I remount. I think of throwing the apple as hard as I can, as though that will not appease my disappointment. I drop the apple at the foot of the tree.

The 70 kilometre round trip is a real pleasure, and it helps keep me fit. Back home again, I look up at Heidelberg’s castle, with her scars from our Allied bombers. She continues to look down at the old city, bridge, and the river Neckar.

I stop in Heidelberg only long enough to drop off my the loose-fitting, kung fu pants, grab a bite to eat, and pick up a chef’s uniform. I get back on my bike, and continue riding north. I have another 20 kilometres to ride, farther north, to the town of Weinheim (lit. ‘home of wine’). Weinheim and her surrounding vineyards boast of their beauty.

Towards the end of the journey I always think of the beginning of the racing return trip (south), which takes only about an hour. The journey north takes an additional 25 minutes, on account of the narrow, spiralling road to the mountain’s peak. The five-minute ride speeding down the mountain, which really tests my mechanical work on the wheels and brakes, is considerably more enjoyable. The 25 minutes up the mountain is a tough climax to my morning’s exercise regime.

Finally my muscles heave my mountain bike and me to the top of this magnificent mountain. Atop her peak stands a local, historical icon—a defensive castle (burg), called Wachenburg. The allied bombers left her untouched in WWII, surely in part because of allied respect to international laws. If the stories are true, the Nazis were a little less concerned with international laws, and used the allies’ compliance to their advantage, by housing an electronics research station in Wachenburg.

As an aside, I think that if two groups of people agree to shoot at each other, or as in this case, drop bombs on each other, and someone gets hit, then the people who signed up for it can expect it might happen to them. So I accept that risk. However, I feel that those who deceive reveal that they are unreliable, and their words too are unreliable and worthless. They show themselves to be unworthy of trust or respect. Deceptively claiming to obey laws is something I, personally, find quite repulsive.

And so I reach my destination. Wachenburg’s popular restaurant takes pride in serving deliciously rich and unhealthy meals. It is quite tempting to feast and relax.

I put some oil on my bike’s chain and into the bearings. I go upstairs and get cleaned up. I greet my friends in the restaurant’s kitchen. I cook. I walk out to the large courtyard that opens out to vineyards stretching towards Mannheim and Frankfurt, and enjoy a large, delicious meal.

I haven’t come this last 20 kilometres just to enjoy the scenery, however. Vision is very important to a pilot. I study the science of the human visual system, information processing, visual search/scanning and target identification. I practise it by teaching myself oil painting. I then combine these visual processes into a work environment—viz. in Wachenburg’s high class kitchen, with its unashamedly unhealthy and delicious food, I incorporate intense attention to visual (and aesthetic) under a pressured, work environment. I work with two other cooks—both French. The Head chef, Serge speaks only French and German. Michi speaks only French and a little English. I speak only English and German. So we three use three languages at all times. When the work is less busy, I write about what I’m learning in fighting, and think about it.

Helping in the restaurant each afternoon and evening is a great pleasure. Having already ridden 90 kilometres, and trained for four hours with one of the greatest hand-to-hand warriors on the planet, I then work from early afternoon until late evening, before getting back on my mountain bike for the last 20 of the 110 kilometre day—the trip back home to Heidelberg.

The ride back down the mountain is not only fun, but also somewhat surreal and magical—the forest’s conifers silhouetted by a deep blue night sky, and around their bases perch thousands of glow worms—giving definition to a forest speckled with light. As my speed quickly increases, I aim for the dark strip of pavement that cuts through a mountain forest who imitates the sparkling cityscape below. I follow my narrow headlight beam down towards Weinheim, then on home again. And why am I doing this?

I am working hard to stay extremely fit, and still feel great after 110 kilometres of mountain biking, and a full day of work, and four hours of unbelievably intense martial arts training. I am not yet twenty-three years old. I have long since become a licensed commercial pilot, and have completed a Bachelor of Science degree, specialising in Aviation. I have worked as a pilot, and restructured three different aviation companies to optimise their management, efficiency, and to comply with civil aviation regulations, laws, and advisory publications. I am passionate about aerobatics (acrobatics for you Americans). I often take friends on aerobatic joy-flights, as well as honing my skills at the competition level. I have logged time in many aircraft types, and completed an air transport pilots licence course (for airlines). My aerobatics instructor—who used to be an RAAF mirage fighter pilot—has strongly recommended I fly fighters for the RAAF. It’s not as though I have any other plan.

reading in Berlin

I finished school so I could fly. I fly and train in kung fu so I can (soon) master the mental and physical skills required to become a top fighter pilot. I want to be a fighter pilot so I can become a test pilot. I want to become a test pilot at NASA. I did a science degree since NASA required it. I also like the idea of the easier, more relaxed option—becoming an airline pilot, continuing to do aerobatics for pleasure. Any one of those jobs—general aviation pilot, fighter pilot, test pilot, or airline pilot—would be great. I would be happy in any of them. For now, however, I’m training myself harder than ever, with every kilometre on my mountain bike, every hour of kung fu, and every hour of working and studying flying and fighting, to master my goal.

Go to chapter 7.

© Benjamin May 2009