Vancouver: Sin City, Canada style

I woke up in Mount Vernon, WA, yesterday to an overcast sky, the first one in recent memory. I also had to put on a sweatshirt for the first time in recent memory. I picked my favorite, the maroon one that has “Nate 55” embroidered on the chest. I bought that sweatshirt years ago at the Salvation Army when I was training for the Chicago marathon. The marathon guidelines suggested that runners wear outer clothing that they didn’t care about so it could be stripped off as the hours went by and the day warmed up; the marathon took place in October, so we’re talking 40s-60s Fahrenheit.

I thought Nate 55 was gonna be my throwaway sweatshirt, but the more I trained in it, the more I liked it, both the weight of it and the fact that everyone who saw it wanted to know who Nate 55 is. I don’t know myself. Whenever I pull out the sweatshirt, I wonder if that will be the day that an older man comes up to me and tells me his name is Nate and that back in the day his varsity number was 55. Someday I will meet Nate 55!

I spent some of the morning looking for a hotel room. This was a good thing, because as I found out after calling several hotels, most of them were booked solid for the weekend. I finally managed to get a kind of expensive room, but it’s in the heart of the fun part of Vancouver, so that’s okay. I asked the man taking my reservation what was going on, and it turns out that Vancouver is the site of an international fireworks competition every Wednesday and Saturday throughout the summer. This is so big that I saw several busloads of Germans descend upon the hotel. And having spent a year living in Germany, I can tell you that Germans do not waste their time with TRIVIAL tourist attractions. So if the Germans are coming to see it, it must be hard core excellent.

After I got my hotel room squared away, I headed north on I-5, through more of Washington state. The mountains here are really pretty, and farther south are covered with pine trees. I got these pics at a rest stop just south of the US/Canada border; note that Mount Rainier is around there somewhere.




My crossing-over anxiety was unnecessary, as I made it across the border with no problem, though the guard did ask me why I was only staying for two days if I was coming all the way from Florida. I uhhhed and well-ed apologetically until he got tired of it and let me through. But he does raise an interesting point, which is that if I had this trip to do over, I would stay longer in each place. I definitely get more out of staying at academies for longer than just a day, and it would probably mean less driving.

Well, live and learn. Back when I was planning the trip, I was thinking in terms of quantity rather than quality, and I was also assuming I wouldn’t want to stay more than just a day or two in any one place. I’m still having a great time, and maybe I’ll slow down the pace a little in the near future. And actually, I’m planning to spend the better part of a week in Portland, though some of that will be white water rafting with my friends Jon and Alison.

Mapquest told me to drive on the Pacific Highway into Canada from the border. It’s not really a highway in the US sense of the word because the speed limit was about 60 km (~40 m) per hour, and it was punctuated with traffic lights. So the impatient, 17-year-old me would have been really irritated and irritating on that trip, riding everyone’s ass, blowing yellow lights, and generally being a nuisance. Fortunately, I’m much older and mellower now (“mellower” = “more tired”), so I just enjoyed the scenery, which is beautiful, and took my time.

And let’s give yet another shout out to Mapquest, which got me right to the Marcus Soares BJJ academy in Burnaby in time for a 2pm class. Marcus is a 7th-degree black belt under the late Carlson Gracie, Sr., who, as I’ve mentioned, was also my teacher until he died in February. Unfortunately for me, Marcus is in Rio at the moment, coaching some of his students at a world BJJ competition called the Mundial.

I would have loved to meet him, just because he is amazing at BJJ, but also because his students made him sound pretty hilarious. For example, a blue belt named Mark who would fit right in in Southern California talked about how at one competition Marcus was yelling at another student named Ivan that “Santa Claus is not giving away arm bars at this competition! You have to take it!” So it’s a bummer that I didn’t get to meet him, though the timing of this trip is a crap shoot because there are lots of competitions and other places for instructors to be.

And I had a terrific time anyway. Vlado, one of Marcus’ brown belts, taught the class, which was great and included one particular warm up drill I hadn’t seen before: reverse lunges. A normal lunge is when you step way forward with one foot and bend the knee, which causes the rear leg to lower and bend too. So you just keep stepping and bending, stepping and bending, until you want to die, which usually comes well before the instructor calls time. Normal lunges I can do just fine, and for a while, and we lunged in a pretty circle for about a minute (which is a long time to lunge) but then Vlado called for us to do reverse lunges. Basically, we walked backward instead. It makes perfect sense, but I had never seen or done them before, and now, the next day, my hamstrings are not happy with me.

As usual, the guys (and one woman, Tessia), were very friendly and welcoming. I’m going back tomorrow (Sunday) for another class before I leave Vancouver for Portland.

Here’s a picture of me with Vlado:

And here are Vigesh and Mark, two of Marcus' students, and very nice guys!

(Mark is giving a shout out to Chicago in the picture.)

In the evening, I met up with Brandon, a fellow poster on nhbgear.com. I went with him and some of his work friends to a strip club, of all places, Cecil’s. He checked with me first to make sure it was okay, and I didn’t mind because I had never been to one and figured that a major purpose of this trip is for me to be open to lots of new experiences, within reason. I mean, I didn’t get up there on the pole myself, but I was kind of curious about all the fuss.

My takeaways are these

1. Here in Vancouver, at least, the whole strip club scene, or what I saw of it, didn’t seem sleazy. There were plenty of women there, patrons, waitresses with clothing on, etc. The floor shows left little to the imagination, but it wasn’t titillating to me at all, pun intended. I still am not fond of the idea of women being ogled for money, but Canada’s a free country too (and NOT a US state, which is a common mistake lots of people make). So there wasn’t much to do except listen to the music and reaffirm my decision never to wear a thong. They look SO uncomfortable.
   
2. The food was delicious! Of course, I was pretty hungry after training, so maybe anything would have tasted good, but my friends, my burger with cheddar and Canadian bacon (though here they just call it bacon, har har) with a side of fries was a great meal. I decided to forego the usual club soda with lemon, as it would have set me back 5 Canadian bucks, about as much as the beers we had. (Alexander Keith on draft. Very nice.) Our waiter looked like Siegfried. Or Roy. Whichever one is sort of blond.
   
3. There are NO CAMERAS ALLOWED in the strip club, so I did not get a picture of myself and Brandon. I’ll have to snap one tonight.

Another funny thing about Vancouver is how proud its citizens seem to be of one of its major cash crops: marijuana. Since I’ve been in town, about 30 hours, I’ve seen a pretty large handful of stores that sell hemp clothing, literature, and paraphernalia; a marijuana bookstore, whatever that is; and a tobacco shop that fronts a more, um, groovy type of concern.

Apparently the law here is that marijuana is technically illegal but the police won’t bother to bust you for possession of certain amounts. Some of my sources tell me that one in eight Vancouverites is a grower. People apparently come from far and wide to “the Amsterdam of North America,” as one person put it.

So they like their weed here in the northwest. And in answer to the question you may be asking yourself about whether I did or didn’t, remember that this is a family show and I am here to train BJJ, eat Smarties (not the tangy fruit ones; here Smarties are like M&Ms), and say “aboot” as much as possible.

Today I went to the Gracie Barra affiliate, run by a brown belt named Tim Shears. He was very welcoming, and Brandon had mentioned that I’d be coming in (Brandon is on the injured list, so he wisely stayed at home; if you come in to watch, it’s just too tempting sometimes to spar, and that’s when you REALLY hurt yourself).

I sat in on a basics class and then the advanced/sparring session. It was so fun, as usual. I worked with a really eager white belt woman named Larissa. Only a week on the job and she’s got some good moves. I was trying to get her to slow down and just absorb what Tim is teaching her, but I did show her what’s called a basic scissor sweep. It’s good for me to do a little teaching, because that is the next step in my own evolution. Teaching BJJ well is extremely difficult, and if you can do it well, you have an understanding of BJJ that is that much more sophisticated.

The list of people who train regularly at Gracie Barra but who are away for the Mundial or other reasons was a veritable who’s who (at least for people who train BJJ; the rest of you might not know who I’m talking about. But trust me, these are luminaries): Carlos Gracie, Jr. (one of the older generation who has seen a TON), Marcio Feitosa (great fighter who also happens to be dreamy), Kyra Gracie (AMAZING female black belt who won a world competition called the Abu Dhabi Combat Club competition in 2005), and Bibiano Fernandez (a black belt from whose DVD I have cherrypicked liberally with my friend/instructor Aaron back in Chicago).

So I didn’t get to meet any of those people, but I got to train where they train, and that’s pretty cool. Tim did a great class, and I got to spar with Larissa, a tough brown belt named Mike who spent a minute or two sussing out my game and then systematically dismantling it, and a couple of fun purple belts named Gary and Mike.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture with Tim before he left, so I don’t have any visuals of Gracie Barra in Vancouver. But I did see a cool thing:

I don’t even know what Valhalla Pure is (looks like a clothing store), but as some of you know, Valhalla is my screen name on the MMA forums. Back when I was deciding what to call myself, it was down to that or Valkyrie. I chose Valhalla because Valhalla is also a gi brand, though being a Valkyrie would be pretty sweet!

Right now it’s early evening. I think Brandon’s gonna give me a call sooner or later, which means I should probably shower sooner or later. And then I guess we’ll go to the fireworks! Tomorrow is another session at Marcus’ academy, and then I leave straight from there for Portland, to stay with my friends Mark and Tanna and their kids. I knew them in graduate school, and this will be the first time in about 3 years that I’ve seen Mark, longer for Tanna. In fact, their younger kid didn’t even exist the last time I saw her. So it should be a good time. And there is good training to be had in Portland as well. Later in the week it’s on to my friends Jon and Alison’s place. Wow, I should get me some sleep.