Racking my brain for cute Kansas/Wizard of Oz joke. Coming up short.

My minions are growing! Today Danni emailed me that she and her husband John, both of whom are college classmates of mine, are reading the blog with their 6-year-old son. I’m excited to see them when I pass through Hailey, ID, which is where have lived since they left Chicago about 4 years ago. I also heard from Jen, a childhood and high school friend, that she is reading and has many of her colleagues at UBS following along too. Cool! Thanks to everyone for coming with me. I promise to make it a colossal waste of time, to borrow the name of a message board run by my friend Skimmy, which, I think, is a combination of “Jimmy” and “Skinny.”

Jen is an opera singer moonlighting as an investment banker or whatever they do at UBS. Even in grade school, I remember her being able to belt; we had some kind of talent show in 5th grade, and she sang Please Mr. Postman while playing the piano (my talent was "audience member"). Danni has a beautiful voice too; she was in an a capella singing group at college, and my musical memory of her is her singing that Turtles song that goes “I can’t see me lovin’ nobody but you for all my life.” She and John had just started dating and were obviously falling in love, and he was front and center in the audience. She pointed at him every time she sang “you.” (Are you freaked that I remember these things, Jen and Danni? I remember the important stuff.)

Writing about high school is a good segue to the next topic. Here is some insight into my psyche, whether you want it or not: In my senior year of said high school, my class voted me Most Likely to Succeed.* I went to a prestigious college. I have a graduate degree. When I want to, I can get pretty well-paying jobs. I pay my taxes and bills on time and am generally viewed as a responsible person. In other words, I am RESPECTAMABLE. Mature. Poised.

And yet, when I saw this as I was pumping gas somewhere in Kansas today, I laughed and laughed.


I texted my friend Mark about it. He immediately called, pretending to be the proprietor, getting on my case for laughing at the name. I guess if it’s wrong to have the mentality of a prepubescent boy, then I don’t want to be right. And apparently the real proprietor of The Trouser Mouse doesn’t either. Or maybe I read something into the name that shouldn’t be there. It’s probably the title of an innocent children’s story and I am just a degenerate.

Along the same lines, I’ve been fortunate enough to eat at some of the nicest restaurants in the world. Tavern on the Green, Windows on the World (before 9/11, of course) and Sardi’s in New York City. The Savoy Hotel in London. And yet, I was heartbroken that this place is closed on Mondays.


What I like is that there is absolutely no doubt about what you are supposed to do here; as it says on the door, you are supposed to “meat” at Doe’s Eat Place and use a two-story tall fork to eat there. It is in Manhattan, KS, home of Kansas State University and of the Combative Sport Center, where I trained tonight.

I arrived in the afternoon, after driving about 400 miles on I-70 through all of Missouri, being chased by sporadic rain and menacing clouds. I love rain, and driving in the rain, for the most part, especially when the weather keeps changing, like it did yesterday. The sun would come out and then go behind the clouds again, the rain would fall in sheets and then mist and then stop altogether, and the clouds kept rolling by. I listened to part of On the Road, but my mind wandered, so I’m not entirely sure what’s going on. (I was glad to hear from Chrissy that she has this problem with audiobooks too; it’s not just that I’m short attention span girl.) I think Sal Paradise just left Denver and is now headed to San Francisco.

Kansas is flat, of course, but I was surprised at how pretty the countryside is. Manhattan is in the middle of the Konza prairie, which is a site for research on how prairie life survives, perpetuates itself, etc. You have to admit it’s pretty scenic.

I found the Combative Sport Center without much problem. (Mapquest really kicks butt, and I can’t remember what it was like to travel without it.) Their school is in back of a Red Cross; they have a nice big space and even have carpeted the pillars in the middle of the room. Nice touch! I met Ethan Day first, a brown belt who runs the school along with brown belt Dave Durnil and purple belts Andy Wefald and Joe Wilk. Joe wasn’t there, but Dave, Ethan, and Andy were super friendly and seemed excited to have me visit and post about them here, as you will see from the picture. They view their school as “a BJJ oasis in the middle of Kansas,” and it’s a tight knit group. See my training journal for more details about what we worked on.

And here are some pics of the group. The first one shows Dave, Ethan, Andy and me on the top row and Jeff and Hector, my training partners, on the bottom. The other is the whole group voguing, though I doubt that's how they'd describe what they are doing. Nothing against Madonna, or anything, but you know how it is. Thanks to everyone for a great time!

I left before the class was completely over. My mother is going into surgery tomorrow and I wanted to talk to her before she went to sleep; she had to report to the hospital at 7 this morning. I’m hanging out in a Comfort Inn and think I’ve decided to just drive straight through to Denver today and tomorrow. I was thinking about stopping in Wichita to train, but that takes me south of I-70, and I am excited to see Lacey and get to Colorado.

Plus, I have seen signs for a Russell Stover outlet store! Two actually; I passed one, and one is yet to come. I don’t know if this means they sell candy that is slightly irregular or what, but this chick (imagine me pointing to myself right now) is going to find out!


*This was along with my friend PT, who is now a successful physician with a successful physician wife and a cute toddler son who, I’m sure, is preternaturally intelligent and probably already accurately diagnosing and treating his little friends’ boo-boos. I have no home, no job, no husband or children, and no clue what I’m going to do tomorrow, let alone for the rest of my life. Oh, and I live out of my car, eating beef jerky and pretzels with one hand while steering with the other. (I bet all my high school classmates are feeling pretty stupid right about now.)