Karate party

The book of your promotion tests, results and rank looks like this. Like a passport. Might work as one in all the Shotokan-dojos in the world.

Harald Barret, one of the young talented students.
He also plays guitar in "Imminence".

The Shotokan-teachers want to get the Taekwondo out of me. I studied UTF-Taekwondo for a while. This is a typical Taekwondo downblock. I can see it myself looking at this pic.
Shotokan and Taekwondo is really similar. To simplify it crudely: Tkd more kicks, shotokan more hands. But it is up to the fighter in the end.

But I became this happy after passing my grading test.

Robban was talking about his "ippon" that he landed on a 3:rd degree black belt's nose.
Björn Frid, the victim of this Kisami-tsuki, wasn't that happy and swept Robbans both legs a second later...All in the great fun of Shotokan.

Micke had a few beers or 10 as everyone else. Hard fighter! Nice guy.

Two really experienced fighters from England. Sir Geoffrey and Sir Bob. Six degree blackbelts both of them. World champs, European champs and Universal champs...you name it. We were lucky to have them train us for the weekend.

Ulf Tengeborg, a gentleman, 3:rd degree black belt and the main boss for The Trelleborg Karateklubb. Great competition record. Swedish champ and more a few times.

Anders Olsson and Christopher Book in the background having a great time. Anders is the father of Martin. Stoffe one of the teachers. I was sure I took some pics of Daniel Olsson as well, but somehow they got lost. Might have been operator error from the camera guy after all the beers.

The young table. Great guys and mean fighters all of them. Stoffe 2, Erik Billgren, Martin and Harald. Linn is behind Stoffe. Is that green tea in Haralds glass?

Godfrey and Smith. English steel.

Blower.

This is something I don't understand. They build and sell blowers powered by gasoline to blow dust and leaves from the sidewalk. Well, three minutes later the normal wind has blown it back. A waste of gas, environment and time. You have to pay the guys that operate these things as well. I could understand it if the machines collected, rather than just move the unwanted things.

Daniel Svensson-In Flames.

Playing the Daniel Svensson-kit.

Same kit-different drummer.

I have this idea: Daniel Svensson, the In flames drummer, and I will meet at an airport before a day of summer-festivals. We will exchange our flight tickets. Then show up th the "wrong" festival, I at an In Flames-festival and he at a HammerFall-festival. We will wear each others clothing and hide from the bands all day. Then at the gig we will play with the "wrong" band. We will see if anyone will notice. Might be fun and interesting.

End of the tour.

The bus outside a gig in Arizona. No bathroom, no shower. Sometimes I wonder if our bookers would put up with it. The local guys were great, though. As always. But they shoul be, getting nice tall good looking well hung viking-dudes hanging out playing Europeean metal. And playing well, well sometimes.

The thief:

"-I'll take your bike! But since I couldn't get the front wheel, I'll bend it so You can't use it either! Ha ha!"

A P.A. from a gig somewhere (I know where but don't want to badmouth the place since they are nice people). A bit smallish wouldn't you say? P.A. means "public Address". Some people think it means Power Amplification. Most people don't care.

I'm glad they didn't allow guns. No one checked, though.

Me with my new orange t-shirt I got from a friend. In front of a Saguaro cactus.

I tried to look like one, without much success.

Hmm...why not?!
One wonders what goes on here.

Fish doing some coke.
This restaurant served the most digusting food we ever had. A new record!

We tried to get Fredrik to come out of his shell and join us for a beer for once. He hates alcohol and rarely wants to party. But no luck this time either. He almost puked by the stench from his beer.

Gig toilets. Pink for the ladies so they would feel more comfortable and not go the wrong ones.
The gig was half outdoors.

Our headline stage in Texas. It was getting a bit more strange the more south we got. One member in the band didn't feel too hot so he had a bit of a problem during the gig and had to leave the concert rapidly since he soiled himself. And the band played on...

In the 80-s people tried to get a line. Now they want to get online. The guys are constantly online with their Iphones. I'm the only one with a Nokia and a PC. They are playing games. Sneezies mostly. Hours and hours, day by day, night after night look like this.

The "cat walk" to the backstage somewhere. Outdoors and full of garbage.
Just the way we like it! I like new experiences though, this was one for sure.

The toilet door. The hinge was ripped off so one had to lift the door in place. Again...I wonder what the bookers would do if we like booked equally bad hotels for them and had them living there for six weeks. Then again it's our own decision to go ahead and do these territories. Even though circumstances were a bit shady we were in a good mood and had a great time.

Did I mention the toilet was clogged?

On the Lufthansa-flight back. We had these really annoying kids behind us. They travelled with their mother but she didn't have them in check and didn't do anything about their behaviour. Don't you hate this!? They banged on our chairs constantly and screamed out loud. We told them off many times, in a very harsch way even. I threw a package of (opened) butter on them at one point and it only took a few seconds and it came flying back, into Fredriks head. The flight started out funny when Oscar was stuck in the middle of Fredrik and Joacim. He started freaking, elbowing the seat vigorously 10-15 times before Joacim, the daddy, stopped him by offered him his aisle seat (as you can see in the pic). It is horrible to sit for 10 hours when you can't move at all so I understand Oscar well.

West coast etc.

They made gold cans for the Canadian people since they won the gold in the olympic hockey. Next time Sweden wins (again) we want gold cans also.

Pontus is always happy about the food and easy to please (so am I). Joacim is more of a connoisseur. But this meal passed thru Joacim's filter. The saddle ranch on Sunset boulevard in Hollywood.

Pontus was interessted in this huge and loooooong Canadian freight train (so was I). Somewhere in the Canadian Rocky mountains.

Fish always has problems at the borders. Every time. He looks like a criminal for sure.

He had spit out some snus (tobacco to put under your lip) during the night in a box for his headphones. The border inspectors were interested in it to put it mildly. When he explained what is was they stopped poking around in it...-It's my spiiit in there, man, Fish said. (Imagine a Portugese accent for more realism).

Drive thru coffee. In Medford, Oregon, where we had a day off.

Potato sallad in tetra brick-containers.

A fat American, so fat he had to lend an electrical vehicle to be able to shop at all.
The wheels made a strange sound from trying to carry the large weight.

Germanchökolätekäke.

To get people out of a heart attack. You see them here and there. This one in a movie theatre.

Swedish bread. Who's behind it? Hint: He is the third tallest in the band.

A syringe welcomed us outside the bus in San Francisco. HIV-infected possibly.

Jenny came over for a few days. At Denny's having orange-strawberry juice.

Amercican breakfast. 10 000 000 calories!

Jenny's they type that's always happy and positive about everything.

We rented a car and took a drive to Vegas. A Toyota Tundra V8. Really great. Big and powerful, easy to handle. Not bad on gas either.

Yngwie has big hands. You should see his feet...

Mikkey Dee has a long middle finger (maybe it was Lemmy's...hard to tell).
Mikkey came to the Los Angeles-show. Got a bit drunk. In the end he just screamed: -Anders Anders! with a really hoarse voice. I don't think he remembers this. He's always a fun guy to have at a party and the musical backbone in Motörhead. Without him this band wouldn't be half as good.