I'm an occasionally-mature, sumo-sized Englishman - Cumbrian to be exact - who's been living & working near Amsterdam for the last 6 years. I came here for...shall we say 'horticultural'... reasons
No wife, no kidz, 3 cats, a 1000cc SuperBike in the garage, a fridgeful of wonderful Dutch & Belgian beer & several mason jars full of "Hollands' finest". No, it's not exactly a hard life!
Apart from the above - and computer/internet stuff of course - my passion for many decades has been the 'modern sport blowpipe'. For the last year, every 2nd Friday evening, a slowly-growing band of fellow-enthusiasts have been meeting here to shoot darts at targets, and to socialise in ways only possible in Holland. Since autumn last year we have been using the indoor range downstairs at distances from 5-10 meters. When the evenings get warmer & lighter we'll return to the outdoor range on our 'terrrace', which is actually the flat roof of a small industrial unit, shooting at up to 25m is possible there but for safety reasons we usually keep it to a maximum of 15m. Most of my members now own at least one blowpipe, I currently have 7. We call ourselves the Zaanse BlowPipe Club (ZBPC) & have a strong claim to be the most international club in the world, having members who are English, Scottish, Dutch, Polish, German, American & Canadian.
Until December 2010 I was also a moderator at the leading English-language blowpipe(gun) forum -
- The 'hotbeds' of world blowpiping are Japan, where it is called "Fukiyado"; Germany (Blasrohr) & France (Sarbacane).
I had a major falling-out with the founder over a "freedom of speech" issue & withdrew. In January I started setting up my own forum which went 'live' at the end of February. Currently we have a mere 22 members, 557 posts have been made in 157 topics. The problem is, there are not that many 'pipers in the world who are also 'forum people', even amongst my own club members
So, I'm working hard to 'get the word out', but I know it will be a long, slow process before the forum really starts flying. Tempting though it is to increase my membership by 'diluting' the forum to cover more general chit-chat, I'm hoping to preserve the spirit of the place by not accepting too many applications from people who are not there for purely 'piping reasons.
Keej (Dutch slang for 'O.K.', pronounced "Kay") that's enough for the intro. I'm looking forward to knowing - and possibly "crossing swords" with - the rest of you in the course of time.
