Down on the farm in Independence, OR

Class yesterday at Marcus Soares’ academy again. Through a serendipitous chain of events, the person who was supposed to teach ended up not showing up. This was good for two reasons: 1) I got to meet Stephan Kesting, a Soares brown belt who serves as an expert on nhbgear.com, answering questions about grappling (he came by with a spare key); 2) I outranked the ranking belt, so he asked me to show some techniques.

I was happy to; as I have been saying, I feel like teaching is the next step in my BJJ evolution, and it was good to have the opportunity. Of course, I wish I had had a little advance notice so I could make things flow together more, but I just went with it and people seemed to enjoy what I showed them. See my training blog for details.

I got some pics with the guys who were there for what they called Fun Technique Sunday (basically a grab bag of the stuff I have cherrypicked from various world class BJJers).

L-R, a kid visiting from Japan, Mike, Jess, Sean, Matt, Larry, me, Ivan.

I had a great time with Marcus' guys! Thanks again for such a fun time.

One thing that’s kind of strange is that my face hurts. Mostly the bridge of my nose, like I’ve been punched or something. I can only conclude that the “facing out” I’ve been doing is catching up with me. Here’s what I mean: In BJJ, balance is so important. You don’t want to be thrown or swept; you want to maintain your uprightness. When someone tries to sweep you, you try your best to do what’s called “basing out,” where you maintain your balance by planting a hand or a foot so you stay upright. Well, when your opponent has tied up both your hand and your foot on the side s/he is trying to sweep you to, you have two options: either get swept or stick out your face; hence, “facing out.”

I find myself doing a lot of facing out lately, and while it does work, I guess it has its consequences. I have a headache and the bridge of my nose is tender. Unless I’m doing some particularly strenuous sleeping, I think I need to take it easy. We’ll see how it feels tomorrow.

It was a long day from a driving perspective. I got a late start from class because I stayed to chat with the students, and then the line at the border was over an hour. The border guard did think my bumper stickers were cool (one from the Submit Pit, one from Colorado BJJ, one from nhbgear.com, and one that says No Depression, after a music magazine I like) and ask whether I do BJJ, but I already knew my bumper stickers were cool, so that didn’t quite mitigate the effects of the long wait. It helped a little, though.

I chatted with my friend Natasha, who is getting back into BJJ after a hiatus of her own (I took a year off about a year ago) and loving it, I’m glad to say. Besides the people I love, I don’t seem to be missing much in Chicago other than 100 degree heat plus 100% humidity. People complain about Chicago winters, but I swear to you that the summers are worse because you’re blindsided. You wait all winter for the gorgeous summer, and then the summer slaps you in the face when you aren’t looking. It’s like living in an oven.

Other than the line at the border and some traffic in Seattle that added still more time, (unexpected b/c it was Sun eve; there was construction that reduced the number of lanes from 3 to 1) the drive was uneventful. I sang along to the radio, talked on the phone and texted some, and ate a bunch of junk, including Canada’s answer to M&Ms, called Smarties. I gotta figure out a better way to make the time pass on the longer drives; fogging down a bag of LifeSavers and 4 servings of beef jerky, among other things, isn’t a good idea on a regular basis.

I was tired and achy most of the way through, but fortunately I found LoveLine on the radio. Used to love listening to it but got out of the habit when I sold my car. This episode was replete with interesting issues: a dude who likes to wear diapers, how long to wait before having sex with someone you like, cutting fetishes, etc. I like the show b/c Dr. Drew actually seems to know what he’s talking about, and he isn’t trying too hard to be down with the kids. I guess that’s what the co-host (Stryker?) and guests are for. But anyway, it’s fun to listen to.

I arrived at Mark and Tanna’s around 12:30am and as I was parking, a little white ball came barreling toward the car. I found out later that this is Poochie and that Poochie is friendly, but in the middle of the night on a dark country road, I jumped a little. But then he disappeared as quickly as he came, so I thought maybe I was seeing things.

I didn’t have ANY trouble falling asleep like I sometimes do after a long drive; after the first semi-conscious thought I had that I might still be behind the wheel, I just said, out loud, “You are not driving. You are in bed sleeping.” And then I didn’t have any more trouble.

Woke up this morning to a gorgeous, sunny day with relatively low humidity (as a gauge, my gis dried in about 3 hours this morning compared with the 15-20 it usually takes in Chicago). I took a walk down the gravel road toward town to see some of the surroundings; things always look so much different in the daylight if you have driven in at night. I had made friends with Poochie, so he came with me on the walk. I wonder if Poochie recycles TO THE EXTREME! (Obligatory Simpsons reference.)

According to Mark, in the summertime Poochie eats about 3 mice a day. Gross.

Here's a view from the house.

Here's the house, which was built circa 1910:


One thing I didn’t notice when I drove in in the dark last night is that Mark and Tanna have moo cows!



I tried to get them to come closer so I could pet them, but they just stared at me, swishing flies and being a little wary.

Mark and Tanna also have horsies!


The mask over the horse's eyes is see-through; it's just extra protection against flies. Tanna’s dad was in one of the two barns they have (Mark and Tanna have barns!) shoeing horses and doing other fun farm stuff. So while I hung out inside dinking around on the computer, I heard lots of neighing and mooing going on outside. Pretty sweet. Later that evening, the kids showed me the barn, the hay bales, and one of the tractors. Here are Justin and Emma showing me how it's done.

We also fed Honey the mule, who got out of the paddock into the main barn even though she knows better. Fortunately, Tanna’s dad came home just at that moment and took care of business.

Tanna’s dad is a cool dude. Among other things, Mark said that last year, at the age of 72, he was the champion roper in all of Oregon and Washington. Not for his age group, for everyone. He went roping later in the day, and now I want to see him do it. Mark has told me the story of how he (Tanna’s dad) lost a finger and a half years ago in a combine accident:

The older combines didn’t have protective shields over the working parts, so one time when Tanna’s dad was working, he slipped and his hand went into the fan part. The fan part sliced off most of the ring finger and the tip of the middle finger on his right hand. Needless to say, he was rushed to the hospital and put on major painkillers. The doctor asked him where his fingers were, ostensibly hoping to reattach them. He, in a haze, said, “Clifford got them.”

The doctor went out into the waiting room and asked the people there with him, “Which one of you is Clifford?”

One of the guys said, “What do you mean?”

The doctor said, “He said Clifford has his fingers.”

The guy said, “Clifford is the dog.”

As Natasha said when I told her that story, “That is GROSS. I love it.”

I know Mark and Tanna from graduate school. Mark was two years behind me in the program we were in at Michigan State, and Tanna was the admin assistant for the department chair—combat duty, as anyone who knows the department chair can tell you. I still remember the first time I “asked them out.” You know, you run into someone in the hall, take a class with them, etc, and decide you really like them and would like to get to know them better. And I really liked both of them.

But someone has to make the first move. So I took the plunge, inviting them to come with me to the dairy store. MSU is a land grand university, which means people can major in things like bovine studies and turf grass management. It also means that there is a dairy store on campus that sells weird things like cheese curds (they squeak!) and yummy things like ice cream.

I called Mark and Tanna one day and told them I was having an ice cream crisis and would they like to get together to help with it? They met me a little while later and thus a friendship was born, first focused around huge bowls of dairy store ice cream and then branching out into more important topics. Mark and I and our other friend Michael used to hang out at Pinball Pete’s, playing old school video games like Centipede, Dig Dug, and Galaga along with all the prepubescent junior high boys. I think Tanna liked me because I was always willing to do all the stupid crap Mark wanted to do (like play old school video games) and she knew he was in good hands.

Mark and Tanna have a nickname for me that has stuck all these years. The origin of the nickname was a conversation we were having about Little House on the Prairie (remember I said our conversation topics branched out into more important ones over time). Namely, I was feeling bad for Mary, because Pa had a nickname, Half-Pint, for Laura, but none for her. They asked me what I thought Pa should call Mary, and I said “Stumbly.” (Remember Mary went blind.)

They don’t really call me anything else now. Even my Christmas cards are addressed to The Stumbler.

We had a great dinner on the patio overlooking the farmland and the mountains in the distance. Tomorrow Mark has a bunch of work to do (he’s a faculty member at Western Oregon University), Tanna will go to her job as a real estate agent, the kids will go hang out with a family member or two, and I will go to Straight Blast Gym in Portland for a noon-2pm gi class. Then we’ll meet up later in the day and ride in the gator (sp?) a life-sized Hot Wheels car. And maybe I’ll get to ride the tractor AND/OR a horsie!

Let me tell you aboot my last night in Vancouver

Sitting in a Blenz coffee shop on Granville @ Davie in Vancouver. Cool, sunny day, and I’m hanging out for a bit until it’s time to head to Marcus Soares’ academy for a 2pm class. Meantime, I have checked out of my pricey hotel and am ready to hit the road again after class ends at 4pm. This time I’m headed to the Portland, OR, area, where I have multiple sets of friends and numerous academies to check out. I’ll hit Mark and Tanna’s tonight around 11, assuming all goes okay at the border, and stay at their place till Thurs. they won’t even be home tonight because they are celebrating their anniversary, so I will just walk in their front door and make myself at home; they live in a small town where nobody locks the door. I’m glad there are still places like that in the world, and not only because it saves me the trouble of breaking and entering.

Last night was another fun one with Brandon and some of his BJJ buddies. I met up with them at a club called The Republic, where one of the purple belts was celebrating his birthday. Tim was there with his wife Sarah, so I was able to snap the pic of him in civilian clothes that I didn’t get of him in his gi. Also snapped, and got to chat with, purple belt Ray (in the pic with Tim and Sarah), blue belt Evan, and, of course, Brandon. (Below, Tim, Sarah, Ray)

Evan, Brandon, me:

Brandon, me:

We had a pretty cool seat on the second floor of the bar in an enclosed balcony area. We thought we might be able to see the fireworks from there, but no such luck; never did see a single work. The Germans would be very disappointed in me. But it was a blast nonetheless; I found out from Ray that not only have we been training for about the same length of time (9 years for him, 8 for me), and he is taking time off from work in January to train in Brazil for a month. Tim’s interest in BJJ started with wrestling and with the physical education requirements of the military. And I forgot to ask Brandon why he does BJJ. But I can ask him any old time.

I lasted till about 12:30am before saying goodbye, and then got a text message from Brandon around 4am saying he was still downtown (he lives in White Rock, which is about an hour away, and refused my offer of a ride home at some point because he had a different ride). These kids, I tell you what. I think I used to do that. I THINK. But now I like sleeping a whole lot. I felt better when Evan, who looks to be about Brandon’s age (mid-20s) got my back on that, saying he likes his sleep too. Though he’s a better man than I am, because he lasted longer than I did and had to get up at 5am the next morning for his job managing a golf course. Yikes. I might as well buy the walker, start eating dinner at 4pm, and drive 40 mph in the left lane with my blinker on.

But I had a GREAT time meeting and hanging out with Brandon and his teammates, both on the mat and as civilians! Thanks again to him for showing me such a fun weekend.

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.

Bye bye Boise

This morning I took the Ws to breakfast to thank them for their amazing hospitality. We went to a place called Elmer's that happened to be on S. Lois Ave. (Lois is my mother's name :) Again, as always seems to happen with this crew, the conversation ranged all over the place, from Gloria Steinem, to toupees, to cheerleading. Life is never boring with the Ws!

Anyway, I had a wonderful time in Boise thanks to them, and I am so grateful!

Then it was on the road again. Roughly 590 miles of road, through Boise, Oregon, and north into Washington on rte 84, 82, 90, and 5. I made it as far as Mount Vernon, WA. I had planned to get to Bellingham, which is one of the last pretty big towns before you hit the Canadian border, but with the time change (I gained an hour), I managed to hit Seattle exactly at rush hour. Good music helped (Freedom 90 by George Michael, a Squeeze song called Vicky Verky that I actually think is about a high school pregnancy, Starry Eyed Surprise by Paul Oakenfold, Red Morning Light by the Kings of Leon, Light in Your Eyes by Cheryl Crow), but it was basically stop-start traffic for an hour or more.

And those of you who are familiar with the Worthington Curse know how bad something like rush hour can get for us Worthingtons. Basically, the Worthington Curse is that pretty much all members of my immediate family have the uncanny ability to pick the slowest grocery line, toll booth line, or highway lane. Every single time. One time I even picked a toll booth line that led nowhere. Truly. It kind of led into the middle of two other lines. One good thing about the Curse is that I am resigned to my fate. I just pick a lane and stay there. It used to drive me crazy to see other cars zooming by, but now I just stay in my lane and sing along to the radio.

I saw a bumper sticker that made me think of Marcel: "My husband use to be this dirty." I'm assuming it means that the car is dirty or something. I didn't really get the message, but that's not why I thought of Marcel anyway. I thought of him because if he had seen it, he would have had a conniption that there is not a "d" on the end of "use." I was kind of upset by it too, but it could have been the traffic.

Anyway, it was a long stretch, which meant I wanted out earlier than I had planned. Driving is really tiring, even though all you're doing is sitting on your hiney all day. But Mount Vernon is only about a half hour south of Bellingham, assuming the Curse is not in effect. So I'm staying here tonight and will make the rest of the trek to Vancouver tomorrow. I'll train at Marcus Soares' school in the afternoon and then meet up with Brandon to go out on the town in Vancouver tomorrow night. Should be fun!

Happy birthday, Fat Tony!

It is the birthday of one of my most stalwart comment-ers, Fat Tony! (BTW, he gave himself that nickname, claiming that's the name that's on his birth certificate.) Tony, I hope you have a terrific day of celebration, being good to yourself, and belittling me (even a birthday boy's work is never done).

More later on my experiences in Boise, including training no gi with Tom Supnet.

Hailey, Ketchum, Sun Valley

I had forgotten until Danni mentioned it this morning that Hailey is where Bruce Willis and Demi Moore used to live. They have apparently funneled a lot of money into the town, especially the Liberty Theater. There were no Ashton/Demi sightings today, though I did try to get tickets for Bruce’s next gig here with his band. (Not really.)

We had some kick-ass French toast with real Vermont maple syrup for breakfast, and then we took a fun fun fun bike ride on the bike trails that you can enter about 10 yards away from Danni and John’s house. The scenery is so beautiful, and it’s right outside their door. They used to live in Chicago as well, so we talked about how much nicer it is to be able to just step outside and be in a beautiful location rather than having to drive for hours in annoying traffic. Plus, whatever “mountains” Chicago has can’t hold a candle to the mountains of Idaho. Hailey, you get two thumbs up!

On the ride, we ran into Steve, a guy who also went to college with us; Danni had discovered several months ago that he lives here. And since Idaho is pretty far from New Hampshire (where our college is), it was funny and random to see him again. He’s an avid cyclist himself, and he picked a great spot to be one. Danni and John’s son and I had fun on some swings for a bit.

The T-shirt is a shout-out to Danni, John's, Steve's and my alma mater, Dartmouth College, which is known as the Big Green. Had to wear the shirt while with fellow alums!

Later in the afternoon, we drove into Ketchum and Sun Valley. The way the places are connected to each other is somewhat confusing to me, but I think it’s that Ketchum is a town (cute town) near the Sun Valley ski resort, and Sun Valley is also what people call the entire mountain valley where Ketchum and the ski resort are, but the entire mountain valley is actually officially named something else. Well, at any rate, the town, the valley, and the ski resort are all beautiful. Here are some pics of the ski lodge and the scenery near it. I didn’t snap any of the ice skating rink they have in the back yard, but apparently the rink draws big name skating stars. We watched a couple of kids skating, and both John and I were struck by how the kids’ performances, while spirited, reminded us of how difficult it must be to be a good skater. (Sorry, kids!)

A little farther north of Ketchum is an Ernest Hemingway memorial. It is adjacent to a lovely landscaped spot that has mountains in the background and a river running through it. The memorial commemorates the place where Hemingway committed suicide. I guess the general consensus about the memorial is ambivalence: some people don’t like it because they don’t want the place to be recognized for this particular bit of trivia; nor do they want lots of tourists coming to see it and take pictures. (Kind of like I did.) Others are adamant that it stay, because it is a piece of Hemingway history.

This memorial also provided the perfect place for a photo op for the whole fam damily. And a great family they are!



After a little rest on my part, during which I chatted with Natasha, who made me laugh as always, we went for Thai food in town. John suggested the Tom Kha (coconut milk soup with lemongrass and other Thai spices), and then we had a red curry and some noodles.

Good lord, that Tom Kha was kick ass. I wanted to get into the bowl, it was so good. The curry was delicious too, and the pino grigio I had was a nice addition. It was a great meal, complete with minor scuffle over the check. I had it dead to rights until John poked me in the armpit, which is one of the places I am ticklish. And then Danni wrested it away from me.

Can you believe how fortunate I am? Not only did these good friends take me in, show me a terrific time, let me do my laundry, and back up the data on my computer (thanks, John!), but then they insisted on taking me to dinner. And although I know Brazilian jiu jitsu, it was 2 and a half to one (though I think my five-year-old friend would get my back, now that I think about it. Still, 2 to 1 ½ isn’t great odds). So I let it go. But I’ll show them: When I find a place to live, they are welcome ANYTIME! So there.

It has been terrific visiting with Danni, John, and their adorable son. They have a wonderful life in Hailey, and I look forward to being able to return the hospitality they have shown me once I decide on a place to live. :)

Tomorrow it’s on to Boise. We’ll see what new adventure awaits me there!

More Utah, then weekend in Hailey, ID

As promised, here is a picture of the view from Route 80 in Wyoming. Very pretty! I have been really lax the past couple days about taking pics of the scenery, so I’m gonna do better in Idaho than I did in Utah, where the only pic I took was of me and Pedro Sauer’s black belts.

Happy belated birthday to my friend Julie! I started writing this on the 20th, which is her actual birthday, but haven’t had a chance to post because I’ve been having so much fun! I trained all weekend at the Orem academy and it has been amazing. I went to class twice on Thursday. At the morning class I met two instructors. Rick received his black belt at 19, the youngest American ever to do so. He’s a ripe old 20 now. (These kids, I tell you. What the heck was I doing at 20? Engaging in underage drinking and skipping class, probably.) And Spaghetti is one of those black belts whose belt looks gray because it’s so faded already. Spaghetti is so named because he is incredibly flexible. Like freakishly so. When we were sparring it didn’t matter where I was: on his back, at his head, in side control; eventually his crazy feet would appear out of nowhere and grab under my arms so I couldn’t do anything.

I got to spar with both Rick and Spaghetti about a half hour each. I was so happy because it was really fun for me, but it’s always fun for me to spar with a higher belt. But they both said sparring with me was fun, especially Spaghetti, who kept telling me how great my technique is.

After class I had a nice encounter with the hotel staff: I was just chatting with the girls who checked me into the La Quinta I’m staying in, and I told them about my trip. They are young girls, and they sounded really excited about it, and the one in charge upgraded me to a Jacuzzi suite. That was pretty nice of them, don’tcha think?

I went back to Sauer’s academy for the evening classes and got to meet Professor Sauer himself. I had spoken to him on the phone earlier; I had called the academy to get directions and he called me back! What a nice guy. Unfortunately for both him AND me, he has just had shoulder surgery, and for a snowboarding accident, no less. So that means he can’t train or teach, which means I didn’t get to learn directly from him. But I was glad to meet him. I didn’t get a picture because class had already started—and I was teaching!

Well, I did the warm-up for Spaghetti for the beginner class; he asked me to because I was the highest-ranking student. So we ran a little and then did some drills that I’ve learned from various instructors. Rick asked if I knew a lot of drills and when I said, “Oh, I cherrypick from the very best,” he asked me to show a couple more. And eventually we put our heads together so I could share some more with him. How cool is that? A black belt is asking me for technique suggestions. This is cool 1) because it means I actually know something, and 2) because Rick is one of those black belts who truly does leave his ego at the door. I mean, I believe you can learn from anyone, but I don’t know that everyone thinks so.

That being said, the guy is amazing. I think I showed him two things tops that he had never seen (and keep in mind that what I showed him is what I learned from other, more experienced black belts, not stuff I can take credit for in any way), and the rest at least he had seen before, and more often than not showed me a more effective version.

Here is a picture of me with Spaghetti on the left and Rick Lundell, the youngest American ever to earn his BJJ black belt, on the right.

I got to spar with Rick and Spaghetti a LOT. It was so great, and their technique is incredible. Frequently on the message boards, people will talk about how a certain person’s technique is “sick,” meaning it is really really freaking good. To continue the metaphor, in Rick and Spag’s case, their technique is on its deathbed (that means it’s even more than “sick.” Bad joke. Good technique.)

The next day, Friday, I got to talk technique with Rick and then train with him and Spaghetti again. We hit on the terrific idea of videotaping moves, so now I’m building up a little library. It’s so much easier to see a technique than it is to take notes about it, so that will be incredibly useful. Plus, I can share the videos with people like Sharon, whom I excitedly called after Rick showed wristlocks from the turtle position, even though I know she’s in Brazil for a competition called the Mundial.

The next day, Saturday, was wristlocks from turtle courtesy of Rick, and then it was a 4 hour, 320-mile drive to Hailey, ID, on I-15, I-84, and state roads 93 and 75. I am so grateful to Rick and Spaghetti for giving me so much to think about and so many simple fixes that I can definitely work into my game. I know I will be so much better technically as a result of my visit to Pedro Sauer's academy. And now I have two friends in Orem, whereas on Wednesday I had none.

I am now in Hailey, visiting my college friends John and Danni. It is GREAT to see them, and I’m not just saying that because they fed me and have given me a great guest room to sleep in and their 5-year-old son (said he was 6 in a previous post, but he’s 5; I won’t make him grow up any quicker than he has to) wrote the cutest welcome in chalk on the front porch.

(Originally it just said "Hi Val," but he added the "I heart" part after hanging out with me for a little while.) Part of it has to do with re-establishing a lost connection with people I genuinely enjoy. And part of it is that we sat around and complained about the decline of the English language (e.g., “irregardless” is not a word, but the dictionary has added it, much to my chagrin), which is one of my favorite pastimes.

Hailey is a gorgeous town nestled in the beautiful mountains I guess I have started to take for granted. None of that! Ketchum and Sun Valley are nearby; I think we’re going to take a drive tomorrow during the hot part of the day. (Did I mention that it’s still HOT? Rick and Spaghetti came to pick me up yesterday and it was so hot waiting on the curb that I had to sit on my gi, otherwise my legs would have burned.), and before that it’s French toast and exploring in the yard with my new 5-year-old friend.

I also continue to make plans for future legs of my trip. I spoke with the friends of my family who live in Boise and whom I’ll go visit next week when I check out Craig Kukuk's school. (And btw, I learned that "Boise" is pronounced "Boy-see," not "Boy-zee." Who knew?) I made plans with a fellow BJJer to hang out when I get to Vancouver. I talked to Debbie and found out that she had wanted me to stay longer in Juneau than the week I’m planning. Well, I’ll be there for a bit, so we’ll make the most of it! I made plans with another BJJer, who is going to get me into the MMA event he is reffing in Anchorage; I rearranged my schedule so I could be there.

Okay, there’s always more to report, but I gotta get some sleep. That French toast isn’t gonna eat itself in the morning, and I didn’t sleep much last night either (sense a pattern?). More tomorrow after a big day in Hailey!

Blink (hundreds of times) and you'll miss Wyoming

I'm outside of Salt Lake City today after a loooooooong drive yesterday from Denver, north on Rte 25 to Cheyenne, then west on Rte 80 all the way through Wyoming into Utah. Then south on Rte 15 a little to SLC. I had some errands to run in Denver before I left, so I didn't get on the road until about 1.

It was an 8 hour drive, even with a speed limit of 75 (and, of course, 75 = 85). I talked on the phone to a couple people when the service wasn't cutting out, listened to a little more of On the Road (he's in New Orleans now), watched the scan function on the radio spin around and around, not finding much, and avoided what seemed to be a disturbing number of blown out tires that were just strewn in the road. Maybe that last has something to do with the speed limit, and/or the noticeably large number of tractor trailers on the road. I always get a little nervous when I see those runaway ramps, and there's also nothing like being sandwiched between three of them.

I'll post a picture tonight of the view from the highway, which is really beautiful. It was close to dusk by then and had been alternating between being sunny and raining.

Last night I got the best night's sleep I have gotten since I've been on the trip, and even so, I woke up a couple times because I was dreaming I was still behind the wheel--that happens to me after long drives. But when I woke up I felt wefweshed, as Madeleine Kahn said in Blazing Saddles, and went to scope out Pedro Sauer's academy. He has two: the flagship one in Sandy and another in Orem, which is where I am now.

I'm headed to class in a little bit and will post more later!

Hot damn! Just bought plane tix to Alaska

It should be a great leg of the trip. I'll arrive in Anchorage on August 9, in time to go to some MMA fights that a fellow BJJer is refereeing that Saturday; he said he could get me in! I'll train at Ted Stickel's academy for a couple days and do some sightseeing, and then after the weekend I'll head to Juneau to visit my friend Debbie from high school. She is a midwife and a doctor of naturopathy there. She has delivered hundreds of babies and has helped me with naturopathic remedies. (She has not delivered hundreds of my babies.)

I've visited Debbie before and liked it so much I'm going again. Last time I visited it was April, which is cold and dreary, obviously, because it's Alaska. This time, though, it will be light for about 20 hours a day, the town will be full of seasonal workers and tourists, and all the fun stuff to do in the summer will be going on. I can't wait! In the meantime, she sent me a great birthday package, complete with homemade brownies, Mad Libs--and a harmonica! I'm gonna get all John Popper up in here. (That's how the kids talk.)

Just packing up my stuff to leave Denver and head to Salt Lake City. I'm still reeling at how much I learned and how great everyone was here in Colorado, and I will definitely be back! I had a hard time sleeping again, this time because I kept going over and over the techniques I learned. I'm excited to hit the road again; the travel bug definitely has its little pincers in my hide. Tomorrow it will be training at Pedro Sauer's academy for a couple days, and then it's on to Idaho.

Life is good on the road. Life is a highway. Or so I've heard on the radio. I'm gonna drive it all day long, at least for today (8 hours to SLC).

3 academies in 24 hours, plus a little culture

Continued thanks to everyone who is reading my blog, including but not limited to Aunt Harriet, Jennifer*, Todd, Tracy (who liked what I wrote about him, fortunately :), Colette, Noah, Melissa, and Fat Tony, who is providing much-appreciated and very Fat Tony-like running commentary. I aim to please, so I hope you are enjoying reading as much as I am enjoying writing. Now if I could just figure out how to make a living writing about myself! Well, stranger things have happened.

I am running on very little sleep. I got about 3 hours Sun night; couldn’t get to sleep and then when I tried I couldn’t stay there and woke up about 5. I guess I do that every now and then. Not sure why. Last night was better, but I still tossed and turned a little and woke up well before my 8am alarm. I’m thinking I got maybe 5 hours. Tonight is anybody’s guess; I’d like to be up around 8 to run some errands before I leave Denver for Salt Lake City, and I have some writing to do before I go to sleep.

It’s official: I must wear a BJJ shirt everywhere I go from now on. I have the most random encounters that way. Yesterday I was wearing a Carlson Gracie t-shirt (navy, but similar to the one in the pictures from my birthday). When I stopped in at Mailboxes, Etc., to buy stamps for postcards that may be headed your way even as we speak, a guy there asked me, “So how many people know who Carlson Gracie is when you wear that shirt?” The lady behind the counter said, “I guess you do, huh?”

Guy: You bet I do.

Lady: Who is he?

Me: He was my Brazilian jiu jitsu teacher.

Lady: I have no idea what that means.

Me: It’s a martial art. He has passed away, but he was one of the people I learned it from.

Guy: Did you train with that guy, what’s his name?

Me: Stephan Bonnar? (He’s a Carlson student who was on the UFC reality show.) I know him, but don’t train with him b/c he’s too big.

Guy: That dude’s a bad ass.

Me: He’s a good guy.

Guy: I really want to train but I have 3 kids and travel for my job.

Me: Well, maybe when they get a little older.

You get the picture. It’s a nice little connection.

Yesterday I futzed around some more and then went to Boulder because I love it there. I came to Boulder on a whim last summer; for some reason, I woke up one day and decided I needed to visit. I was convinced I was moving there and everything. It’s a great little city with lots of BJJ, and the weather and outdoor options leave Chicago looking like some kind of Siberian gulag. It may be obvious that I didn’t move there, but I do have a soft spot in my heart for the place. I had decided to go to the Dushanbe Tea House, which is a beautiful building in Boulder that came to it from its sister city, Dushanbe, Tajikistan, in 200 crates. Lacey said it sat in the crates for some time because the city didn’t want to shell out to put it together. I’m glad they did, though, because it’s beautiful, with all kinds of ornate tilework and carvings, and was a nice place for me to write some postcards and plan the next legs of my trip, including the Alaska legs! (Debbie, you can go to the ends of the earth, but I'm still expecting to sleep on your couch.) Here are pictures of the building itself and some of the ceiling.

Pretty, eh? Boulder is northwest of Littleton, so I took state highway 36 to get there, rocking out to Let’s Go by the Cars on the way. That song made me so happy it gave me the chills. Okay, I may not be seventeen, but I won’t give up. (Confidential to my sister: I also heard Cruel to Be Kind by Nick Lowe, and anything by NL reminds me of you. :)

Upon arrival in Boulder, I passed by a huge banner near the university (UC Boulder) of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, which Boulder sponsors every summer. I had wanted to take a picture of the banner or find a flyer for my sister and brother-in-law, because they would have loved it. They are both English professors and Chris especially is fond of the Bard. But it was a busy street and there was no place to stop, so I’ll try to find a picture online.

Fortunately, they get to go to Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, in a couple weeks for the Shaw Festival, a theater festival celebrating the works of G. B. Shaw and his contemporaries. For the past two years, my parents and I have tagged along, but this year none of us can go, me because I’m itinerant and them because my mother’s going to have her radiation treatment (5 days a week for 5-6 weeks). It’s a shame, because we usually have a lot of fun: seeing plays, drinking wine, going to high tea at The Prince of Wales hotel. Even if you don’t like tea, try high tea some time. Yes, it’s dignified, but it’s not snooty; plus, you can get champagne, and the little finger sandwiches and scones are really tasty. Last year we had an awesome waitress named Octavia, who brought out a little tea service for my then one-year-old niece. She didn’t know to appreciate it, but we did. They also have high tea at Dushanbe, but I didn't get that. But it's a nice thing to keep in mind for the next time my family gets together.

Later in the day I washed my car. It’s the only home I have, so I want to keep it tidy. Plus, I’m convinced that cars have feelings. One time I was driving a friend around in the last car I had, and mentioned that I was thinking of getting a new car. Three days later, my car broke down. And the Triple-A guy who came to pick me up and tow it said that he had about 20 years of experience working around cars, and he believes too that cars have feelings. So if you’re going to get a new car, don’t talk about it in front of your old one.

I still think about what to name my car. It’s this burnished tan color, so I was thinking if it were a stick shift, I could call it the Gold Standard. Clever, eh? Maybe I still will call it that. Or Goldie Hawn? Brass Monkey? Well, I’ll figure something out. And in the meantime, it’s all clean, at least till I get on the road again.

I spoke to Danni too; she and her husband and son are expecting me on Sat. My change of plan is okay by them. They live in Hailey, ID, and I’m looking forward to seeing them! I probably haven’t in about 10 years. Danni is from New York, and John is from northern California. And they love Idaho.

Then, starting last evening, my life has been a jiu jitsu whirlwind: I attended class at 3 academies in 24 hours. It’s been absolutely terrific. First, I went to Amal Easton’s academy in Denver. Amal is a black belt under Renzo Gracie, and his Denver academy is relatively new; the flagship academy is in Boulder. I went to the Boulder academy last year when I decided to try Colorado on for size, but didn’t get an opportunity to meet Amal or his student instructor, brown belt Eliot Marshal. Fortunately for me, they were both there last night! As I mentioned, I have been noticing HOW instructors teach, not just WHAT they teach, because I feel learning how to teach is the next step in my own BJJ education.

Eliot taught both of the classes I took—beginner and purple belt—and his style is very methodical and step-by-step. It was helpful to have techniques broken down and to work the steps in unison with Eliot before we went on our own. I had two great rolls during the randori part of the class. Randori loosely translates as “anything goes,” and corresponds to the sparring, when you work with a partner to implement the moves you have learned in the class, among others.

First was with a brown belt named Sus, and he was compact and sturdy, but he let me move. We sparred for about a half hour, and he said I spar “beautifully.” Then I went with Eliot, who is as smooth as water. He is competing in the Mundial in a couple weeks, which as I have mentioned is a world jiu jitsu competition in Rio. Eliot has won at the Pan Ams at every belt level and is ready to take on the world. Good luck, Eliot!

Here are two pictures of me with Eliot Marshal on the left and Amal Easton on the right. I had a great time at their academy. Thank you for the hospitality, Amal and Eliot!

This morning, I went to Mauricio Zingano’s school in Broomfield, CO. Mauricio’s black belt is under Caique, and he is also a good friend of David Ruiz’s; the students at David’s school recommended him highly, so I decided to go learn from him! And learn I did: As usual, I sat in on both a basics and an advanced class, and came away with my head spinning from both classes. Even though I am technically an advanced student, I always try to attend basics classes whenever possible, both because I want to spend as much time learning from an instructor as I can, and also because no matter how well I think I know a technique, I always learn something new every time I go over it again.

In fact, the basics classes are more humbling than the advanced ones because they cover things I supposedly know. But the only thing I know is how little I know. I think that’s one of the things advancing through the belt system gives you: perspective on how complex BJJ is and how there is always more to learn. Amal even said he goes to basics classes.

Mauricio’s advanced class was great too; there were some really friendly guys in it, and he showed a nice sweep and a funky set-up for a triangle choke. I also got to spar with him, which was so fun! Those of you who do train know how great it is to get thoroughly manhandled by an expert BJJ player. Those of you who don’t train: just imagine being humbled and exhilarated at the same time, while being rolled around on the ground, not of your own volition, and that approaches it.

I attempted what’s called a figure-4 foot lock or a toehold on Mauricio. I didn’t get it, of course, and then about 5 seconds later, Mauricio slapped it on me instead. He did get it, of course. And I tapped like the little drummer boy, smiling the whole time. I got to chat with Mauricio too, and he is a laid back, friendly person. As I was leaving, he gave me one of his academy t-shirts, and you can bet I’ll wear the thing out. Thanks to Mauricio for a great class!

Here are two pictures of me with Mauricio.

Tonight I went back to David Ruiz’s academy and finally got to meet him. What a terrific guy. He has such a calm air about him, and as I told him, his academy and his students are incredibly welcoming. He had been out of town at a seminar run by Rigan Machado, and he came back with lots of great ideas. During one of our chats, I also found out that his training partner at the seminar was none other than Ryan Fiorenzi, a black belt under Rigan and also one of my very first BJJ instructors, in Michigan. I have lost touch with Ryan, so I asked Dave to give him my very best.

Plus, the technique sequence he showed was exactly what I need to work on: maintaining an open guard. And the way he broke things down was very useful; I may have intuitively thought about some of the things he mentioned, but having him describe them overtly was very handy. After the technique sequence, we did a drill to practice what we had learned, and that was a ball too. I also got to spar with David a little, but then we ended up having another great conversation. And talking with David is the only thing that would make me willingly give up the opportunity to spar with David!

Here are some pics of us:

I have a couple pictures with some of his students, namely Robert and Zack, that I will also post when I'm less sleepy (it's almost 2am). I can’t say enough nice things about David or his academy. I can’t say enough nice things about BJJ in Colorado. I’m excited to get on the road again, but I’m going to be very sorry to leave. My stay here has been terrific, and there’s no doubt that my BJJ game has benefited greatly!

Birthday and last day before Lacey and Tallulah leave

Yesterday was a beautiful Saturday as well as my birthday. I am 36. I had a great day: Lacey, Tallulah, and I drove to Crested Butte, about 3 and a half hours away, to hike and walk around in town. On the ride, we chatted, enjoyed the gorgeous, sunny weather, and sympathized with Tallulah, who gets car sick. She didn't have any accidents, but she seemed kind of queasy.

I’m pretty sure that if you are a Colorado resident, it is a state law that you have to like Big Head Todd and the Monsters, a band from Denver. Fortunately, I do, although I didn't take advantage of my friend Paul’s offer of a BHT concert ticket for their July 4th show at Red Rocks. (I still don’t think he has forgiven me; he is a Colorado native.) The album Sister Sweetly was a good soundtrack for the trip, through gorgeous mountain passes and rustic mountain towns, including Gunnison, where Lacey lived for a couple years.

My college friends will be unhappy to know that the Collegiate Range, a group of mountain peaks we passed that are higher than 14,000 feet, includes a Mt. Princeton, but not a Mt. Princeton Sucks. Speaking of my college friends, this trip reminded me of my trip with Gary, Ken, and Tom about 10 years ago; we went hiking and camping in Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. It was great too, aside from the embarrassing fact that when we were setting up camp in the dark one night we mistook a fat man’s snoring for the growling of a bear.

There’s something about the mountains—and being with good friends—that makes me feel so content. The soundtrack for that trip was The Joshua Tree, by U2, particularly One Tree Hill, which I remember listening to in the car one evening at dusk when the light was red and the mountains were beautiful. I also remember hearing Jane’s Addiction’s version of Ripple by the Grateful Dead on that stretch of road and thinking that was incredibly appropriate too. So Gary, Ken, Tom: thank you for one of the most enduringly precious memories of my life.

Lacey, Tallulah and I arrived in Crested Butte in mid-afternoon. We drove through the town and out to the head of the Dark Canyon trail, a trail that allows horses as well as people. This meant 3 hours of avoiding pasture patties and being eaten alive by flies that were also probably feasting on the pasture patties. It’s times like these that make me wonder why I like to hike. But then I am reminded:

After the hike, Lacey and I had dinner at The Secret Stash, a restaurant in CB that serves the post-hike crowd. This was fortunate for us, because we were grimy and dusty. We sat in comfy overstuffed chairs and had some pizza, and I drank my beloved Fat Tire. You can't really see the label, but it has a bike on it. My friend Moike (his name is Mike, but he's Australian, so when he says his name, it sounds like "Moike," so that's what I call him) thinks Fat Tire sucks. Moike is crazy.


While we were eating, it started to rain. But then the sun came out while it was raining. And THEN, there were not one, but two rainbows. I took that as a good omen on my birthday. I also took as a good omen that the fortune in my fortune cookie (yes, this pizza place gives out fortune cookies.) read: “You simplify your life in many ways and find great rewards.” Finally, some proof that being homeless and unemployed can lead to enlightenment! Okay, the "proof" is a pre-printed piece of paper baked into a bad-tasting wafer, but I'll take what I can get.

We had been planning to stay in Crested Butte or Gunnison for the night, but ran into a snafu with dog-friendly accommodations. So we drove back the same night, still dusty and grimy, and, by the time we got home, practically delirious.

People keep telling me they hope I find what I’m looking for. I appreciate that so much, and have been thinking about what exactly I AM looking for. I’m pretty sure it’s just contentment and joy. The trick is to figure out what it will take to bring those things to me consistently. But if my birthday was any indication, I’m headed in a good direction. More and more, as this trip continues, I am getting better at enjoying the present moment. I think about the future insofar as I need to know where I’m going to be sleeping tonight and where I need to drive/train tomorrow, and I think about the past insofar as I’m grateful not to be at my old job and in my old life. But other than that, it’s nice to be able to be here now. Or to be. Here. Now. It’s taken some practice, but I’m getting better. So happy birthday to me. Literally.

Today was another morning trip to the dog park, where Lacey and I finally posed for a picture together.


Isn't she cute? It was about 100 degrees out, but the air is so dry that it felt fine. I love this dry air, not only because it doesn’t feel that hot, but because my gis, which usually take overnight and then some to dry in Chicago, dry in about 3 hours here.

Speaking of which, Tallulah and I did some laundry,


and the three of us hiked a nearby trail called Deer Canyon. I also talked to my friend Greg, who runs a BJJ academy in Billings, MT. I had been planning to visit him for a day or two and train there, but it turns out it’s not the best time for me to visit him. So when I leave Denver on Wed, I will head to Salt Lake City to train with black belt Pedro Sauer instead. It’s kind of nice to be able to turn on a dime if I want to, which apparently I do in this case. I also haven’t decided yet whether I’ll get to Montana at all, but what’s nice is that I don’t need to decide yet.

I also played phone tag with Natasha, who is one of the most hilarious people I know. She lives in Chicago, and before I left, I was trying to figure out how to record her telling some of her stories, because I can't do them justice. No dice. So with any luck, she will show up on Saturday Night Live or something and you can see for yourself.

I did some strategizing with Sharon, too, about the turtle position I keep getting caught in while sparring. I wrote about it more in my training journal, but I'm really grateful to her for helping me see that position as one where you can attack rather than just defending. Thanks and good luck in Rio, Sharon! (There's a BJJ competition there called the Mundial at the end of July.)

Lacey leaves tomorrow on a business trip. I will stay on till Wed to train at Amal Easton’s new Denver academy tomorrow night, Mauricio Zingano’s academy on Tues morning, and Dave Ruiz’s academy again on Tues night. You may recall that I haven’t met Dave yet because he has been out of town. He will be back on Tues. I joked with some of his students last Fri that I’d be back “to worship at the altar of Dave.” None of them really laughed, probably because that’s what they do on a regular basis. Hot damn! I’m excited to train with him. With all of them.

I’m going to miss Lacey and Tallulah. They’ve been such great hosts, and I’m lucky they have put up with me for as long as they have. Thank you, Lacey and Tallulah!

More Submit Pit pics

When I was in Somerset, KY, hanging out with Darin and Linh at The Submit Pit, my camera batteries died on the day we wanted to take pictures. Carey, Linh's student, very kindly took pictures with her camera and sent them to Linh, who sent them to me. Thanks to both of them for making sure that leg of my trip is captured for posterity! So here are some pics from July 5, 2006, The Submit Pit, Somerset, KY.

Me with the owners and proprietors of The Submit Pit (and also terrific friends), Darin and Linh Durham.

Front row: Chad. Second row: Darin, Justin, Josh, Brittany, me, Amanda, Linh. Third row: Randy, Steve, Larry.

Me and Chad:

Me in front of the pictures Darin has of our teachers: the late Grandmaster Carlson Gracie, Sr. (RIP), and "the Prince of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu," Carlson Gracie, Jr.

Darin and Carlson Gracie, Jr.

Thanks for the birthday wishes!

Thanks to everyone who has called, texted, emailed, and posted wishing me a happy birthday. (Wow, there are lots of ways to contact somebody nowadays.) We are about to drive to Aspen and Crested Butte for some hiking and exploring in little towns along the way. And at the end of the day, I'm having me at least one Fat Tire, which is a yummy amber brewed in Fort Collins and named by mountain biking enthusiasts.

I'll definitely post some pics later on! Meantime, thanks again, and I hope your my birthday is great!

More CO BJJ training, more Munch

Tried to go for a hike this morning and ended up not making it. I stayed up till maybe 2 or so, after having gained an hour recently. The point is, I stayed up pretty damn late. I tried to sleep a little later, but couldn’t. I was wakeful anyway, and Miss Tallulah wanted me to get up and play with her. I haven’t been sleeping well; I keep staying up really late and getting up really early, and having trouble getting to sleep when I finally do try. So far I don’t think I’m any the worse for wear, though it will eventually catch up with me. But it isn’t the sleep trouble I was having a couple months ago, when I was all stressed out. This time it’s fun, excited insomnia, I think.

I arrived at the MMA class nerdishly early. (While I was waiting for class to start, I talked to my mom, who sounds really good. Hooray!) The class was supposed to start at 9:30, but nobody showed up till about then, when a handful of guys came. Again, everybody was incredibly friendly and welcoming and only became more that way. Well, everybody except this guy, who was really standoffish.

See my training blog for details about the MMA class, which turned into a no-gi class, and about the no-gi class. The short of it is that it was another great time, and I’m looking forward to training with those guys again—and I think they will be happy to see me again too.

As I mentioned, Mike Nickels showed up later. I got a chance to chat with him a little and, of course, get a picture. Again, one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. I freaking LOVE this sport.

Next week I’ll train at Mauricio Zingano’s and Amal Easton’s academies and then go back to David’s. Mauricio is good friends with David and sometimes teaches at his academy; he also has his own that I will check out.

Later in the day it was back to the dog park, where we hung out with Daisy, Munch, Holly, and Michael again. Turns out Michael, who wanted me to use his full name, Michael Street, is a stand-up comedian. A pretty funny one, too. Among other things, he writes bits about Munch.

And after today, he’s gonna have a lot more material. Let’s put it this way: Munch does not have any inter-species hang-ups. Lacey, Holly, Michael and I were hanging out by the lake again while Tallulah played tug of war with Daisy and Munch tried to hump Tallulah. Well, eventually, I got tired and sat down, and eventually, Munch got fickle. He started to hang out by me, I petted him, one thing led to another, and then he tried to hump my arm. Repeatedly. I got mad that he didn’t even offer to buy me dinner first, so I stood up. But then he tried to hump my leg. Repeatedly.

Lacey, Holly, and Michael can attest to this: I tried to walk away from him, and he got on his hind legs, wrapped his front ones around my calf, and humped while I dragged my foot. He followed me to the bathroom. I carried him around for a while to try to get him to stop humping my leg, and then when I put him down, he tried to hump my leg again.

As Shakespeare would say, here is some ocular proof of my violation:

The thing that sucks the worst is that I’ll probably never hear from him again now that he got what he wanted. And now things between me and Tallulah are strained.

Tomorrow Lacey, Tallulah and I are going to drive to Crested Butte and Aspen to hike and drink Fat Tire beer. Tonight I’m going to cry myself to sleep over Munch.

All good things: Hiking, bagels, dogs, BJJ

When I woke up today, I pretty immediately started to whistle. I don’t whistle spontaneously unless I’m in a good mood. This is a good sign that I’m having fun, particularly since I woke up at 6am to go hiking with Lacey and Tallulah after relatively little sleep. This is the view from Lacey’s driveway. How can you not be in a good mood?? Even my car is happy.



After the hike we met up for bagels with Lacey’s twin sister Lisa and her two kids. Then somehow I futzed the rest of the day away—making phone calls and running more errands on my computer. When you don’t really have any obligations other than the ones you impose on yourself, it’s amazing how quickly the day can go, and how pleasantly. Among other things, I started thinking about the next legs of my trip, got directions to Colorado BJJ, where I trained tonight, and petted Tallulah.

Before I knew it, it was time to go to the dog park again. We went to a part that has a lake and watched Tallulah romp around in the water with her Weimaraner friend Daisy and her Dachshund friend Munch. Daisy is named after the character in The Great Gatsby, and Munch is named after the character on Law and Order. All the dogs at the park were cute and fun, but I particularly liked Munch because he’s a big dog in a little dog’s body. Case in point, check out his life jacket floaty thing, which comes complete with handle so his mom and dad, Holly and Michael, can pick him up and throw him in the water.

Well, old Munch does not let his floaty, which I’m guessing the other dogs might find kind of dorky looking, keep him from kicking major game with Tallulah. He is totally smitten with her and follows her around incessantly, so much so that the handle on his life jacket floaty thing is also good for picking him up when it’s time to leave the dog park so he doesn’t follow Tallulah into Lacey’s car and go home with them. (I don’t know if you can see it, but his collar says, “Stud.” Ain’t it the truth.)

After the dog park, I went to a terrific class at Colorado BJJ. As usual, I was nervous to go, but as usual, once class started, I forgot to be. David Ruiz, the main instructor, was not there because he is doing a seminar (he’ll be back on Tues, so I’ll get to train with him then), but Matt, the student instructor, was great. He taught a takedown and a way to take the back from the de la Riva guard, both of which were fun to work on.

And as I was soon to find out, the guys there are INCREDIBLY friendly and welcoming. They are obviously so proud of their school and their instructor, and I ended up not getting to spar very much because I was too busy chatting, with Robert, Zack, Ben, and others. I had been planning to come back tomorrow for the no-gi class, and they convinced me to come early for the mixed martial arts class too. I had been hesitant because I don’t like getting kicked and punched (believe it or not, some people do), which is what goes on in MMA; I just like grappling. But as Robert said, being familiar with the kicking and punching aspect is part of self-defense, and they apparently don’t go completely full bore in the class. Plus, that particular class is taught by Mike Nickels, who is a former competitor on The Ultimate Fighter, a reality show in which aspiring mixed martial artists live together in a house and get world class training while competing for Ultimate Fighting Championship contracts. Mike didn’t get the contract, as I recall, but he did make a good showing. Plus, he’s famous and I wanted to get a picture with him. I’m not proud.

So I was sold. I left there feeling SOOO happy and excited about BJJ, Ruiz’s academy, and what I had just learned, and I rocked out to Everybody Wants You by Billy Squier on the way back to Lacey’s. (What does “You take your pension in loneliness and alcohol” mean? Meh, who cares? It’s an awesome song!)

Marcel, be sure you want what you ask for...

My friend Marcel is giving me a hard time because I haven’t mentioned a Brazilian jiu jitsu/grappling message board that he and I both post on. It honestly hasn’t been a deliberate oversight, so before I forget, it is at http://www.mmaportal.com/idealbb. Marcel posts there as Letmbleed (from a Tori Amos song, I think). I post as Valhalla (Viking heaven; also a brand of BJJ gi).

The thing is, everybody on that message board is very un-PC. The Jews make fun of the Cubans, the Cubans make fun of the women, the women make fun of the Asians, the Asians make fun of the Irish Americans. There’s also lots of bad language and so on and so forth. So enter at your own risk.

I’m glad I remembered to write about this, because it gives me a chance to talk about Marcel. He is one of those people who derives pleasure out of being unhappy. And I am certain he would agree with that assessment. For instance, when he fell in love with a great woman and they decided to get married, it pissed him off because that was a good thing that made him happy. On the other hand, when people in his daily life do stupid things like misuse the English language, he gets to be angry about it and crush them with invective and righteous indignation. Not even perpetuating stereotypes about Jews on mmaportal.com gives him more satisfaction.

So anyway, Marcel, here’s the shout out. Unfortunately for you, I can use the English language as well as you can, which means you’ll have to find some other way to retaliate.

PS: I’m glad we’re friends!

BTW, I'll be posting more about my trip through Kansas and eastern Colorado and will be backdating it, just to be completely confusing. So when you check back, look for a post that's dated July 12, which will be below this one on the screen.

Out of Kansas, into Colorado

I forgot to mention that I talked to my friend Adamarie the other day while I was in Abilene, KS, stretching my legs and getting some postcards. Adamarie is my hero because she did basically what I’m doing, only she did it with much more gusto. Yes, I quit my job, sold my home, and went on the road, which is probably the gutsiest (and I know for some people “gutsiest” = “stupidest”) move I’ve made in a while, if not ever, but it took me about a year and a half from the time I decided my job wasn’t right for me to the time I actually quit outright. First I went half time and did that for a year. Then the rest of the things—selling the home and planning the trip—fell into place quickly once I decided to quit completely, but I can’t help but think it was a LOOOOONG time coming.

Adamarie, on the other hand, tore the bandaid off with one jerk. Dove into the deep end of the pool. Held her breath and jumped. What I mean is, she quit her job outright, packed up her stuff, and within 2 months was living in a monastery in the Poconos, contemplating her navel and basically doing the mental/emotional/spiritual equivalent of a juice fast after some hard time at McDonald’s and Dairy Queen. After the monastery, she got in her car and drove around until she found a place that felt right for her to live, which turned out to be Albuquerque. And then she moved there and has been living there, happily, ever since, about a year and a half now. All without a backward glance. Well, probably with many backward glances, but certainly without my kind of hemming and hawing.

So I love talking to Adamarie, because she is living proof that you can do stuff that scares you witless and come out the other end into a good, happy life. In fact, in my opinion, she is living proof that you HAVE to do stuff that scares you to get the life you want. Somebody famous (Eleanor Roosevelt, maybe?) said she does one scary or impossible thing every day before breakfast. That’s kind of a good credo. My take on it is that if I ever say, to myself or out loud, “Oh, I could never…” then I have to do what I said I could never. This is how I ran a marathon, started training BJJ, and have done numerous other rewarding things. Now whenever I start to say it, I smile and figure out how to get done what I just thought I couldn’t do. Hence this trip.

Adamarie and I just shot the breeze; it’s strange how normal it seems to be on the road after only 2 weeks (“Yeah, I’m sitting in my car outside the Abilene, KS, visitors’ center. Yesterday I was in St. Louis, tomorrow I’ll be in Denver, and in a couple weeks I’ll be in Alaska.”) but she gets it—and was a little envious about my unfetteredness. (My spellcheck is telling me that “unfetteredness” isn’t a word, but I kinda like it.) Anyway, thanks to Adamarie for always being a shot in the arm!

I spoke to my mother today too. She and my father were on their way home from the hospital. She sounded great: in good spirits, in relatively little discomfort, and happy to be headed home. She needs to take it really easy for the next couple weeks and then the radiation treatment starts. The one drawback to the successful procedure is that she can’t play the “cancer card” anymore; apparently for a short while there she was saying things to my dad like, “Honey, can you please take out the garbage? I can’t do it because I’m busy having cancer.” It’s difficult to render my dad speechless, but I’m sure this did. Way to go, Mom!

I arrived in Denver today after a 300 mile drive from Colby, KS on Route 70. Bright sun interspersed with rain and lightning. Denver is the Mile-High City, but it didn’t seem like I gained much altitude; I remember much more twisty-turniness on Route 70 when I’ve driven it in the past, but that’s probably farther west.

Before I left, I ate lunch at a cute, old-timey feeling place where everything was homemade and you could tell.

The woman who ran it was very friendly and asked me, “What’s a Submit Pit?” (I was wearing my shirt again.) Of course, the old-timeyness of the place was a little undercut by the Walmart Superstore looming in the background, but I didn’t put that in the picture. While eating my lunch, I wrote postcards and enjoyed the sunny weather. Colby seems to be kind of a bustling metropolis, relatively speaking. There are lots of hotels and restaurants all bunched in one area and there were tons of people in campers and SUVs looking very vacation-y. I debated stopping in the visitors’ center to see what’s so great about Colby, but decided against it. My sister will probably be disappointed. She got caught in a snowstorm on her way to Steamboat Springs, CO, right after she graduated from college and claims you can buy postcards there that say, “Greetings from Scenic I-70;” she wanted me to send her one. I sent her a different one—I hope she likes it instead.

Eastern Colorado is very flat. I always forget that when I drive through. I was trying to time my arrival at Lacey’s place so that I didn’t interrupt a conference call she was having, so on a whim I pulled off at the exit for Genoa, CO, when I saw a sign that said, “Point of Interest, This Exit.” They wouldn’t actually say what the point of interest was, which made it all the more interesting. The best part was driving through the “business district” of Genoa:

(And yes, the sign on the right says "Business District.")

The point of interest is the Genoa Tower and Museum, 20 rooms full of STUFF, some of it having some historical significance or meaning, some of it looking decidedly like junk. The proprietor was a sweet elderly man who charged me a dollar to come in and see some of the items the place was piled high with. He made me guess what some of the things were, which I was atrocious at. (I am troubled that I just ended the previous two sentences with prepositions, but I’ll move on. Dammit—that’s three!) Here are some of them:

A "stool sample" (get it?)

A tool for killing chickens (you put the chicken in a paper cone and snap its neck):

A piece of rubber from a Model T Ford tire (and a pic of the Model T):

There is also a tower, elevation 525 feet, from which you can apparently see 6 states. Here are pics of the view, including one with my car. In that one, you can also see the STUFF in the front of the museum.

And here are some pics of the tower and the building itself.

It was a cute detour. When I got back into the car, I talked to Debbie, my friend who lives in Juneau. I am going to visit her for about a week and then spend a couple days in Anchorage training at a BJJ school run by a black belt named Ted Stickel. I visited Debbie last year and had a ball, and this time will be even more fun because it will be high tourist season: lots of seasonal workers, lots of daylight, lots of tourists on cruise ships. So I’m definitely looking forward to that.
I arrived too late to make class tonight, so tomorrow I’ll go to Colorado BJJ, where David Ruiz is the main instructor. I also want to hit Boulder BJJ, where Amal Easton teaches. Sharon, a brown belt I know through the online BJJ forums, very kindly emailed me about a problem I’ve been having with my training. I keep getting stuck in a particular position called the turtle (see the BJJ glossary) and she has actually been working on this very position, going on the offensive even though it’s seen as a defensive position.

So Sharon is my new best friend, and I am very excited to try some of the things she suggested. I’m going to have to talk to her to really understand, but that will be a nice excuse to talk to her! And even just thinking about that position as an offensive one will be helpful to me the next time I’m in it. So thanks, Sharon! I’ll call you soon.

Instead of going to class, Lacey and I took Tallulah to the dog park, called Chatfield. I need to take a picture of myself in front of the sign for Chrissy and Brian; they used to live in Denver and take their doggies Deke, Schumi, and Miles to Chatfield, and they miss it. I can see why. Here is Tallulah, aka Ta-drool-ah, being cute. There's a heron at the top of the third pic.

Colorado is gorgeous. I really am drawn here, though I don’t know if I’m drawn to live here. I guess I don’t need to know that yet; I’ve only been on the road for 2 weeks and have tons more to see and do. For now, I’m just happy to be here for the time I’ve got, hanging out with Lacey and Tallulah, getting excited to train tomorrow, going out for Thai food tonight.

Discount candy

I found the Russell Stover factory outlet store and got there in time to browse. And it was actually called a "factory outlet store." For candy. It's in Abilene, KS, on Caramel Blvd, conveniently situated near an adult bookstore, so you can scratch two itches at once. It has the same look and feel as an ice cream parlor, and the same aroma as a store where you can buy reduced-price candy.

Strolling the aisles, I discovered that you could buy old Valentine and Easter candy, individually or by the carton. For instance, you could buy one Valentine heart full of assorted chocolates, or you could buy a carton of about 20 hearts. I also discovered that either Russell Stover owns Jelly Belly AND Whitman's (the people who bring you the Sampler), or they have engaged in some kind of unholy alliance, because you can buy both of those brands--at a discount--as well. I bought one little Whitman's sample 4-pack, and then I also bought a package of factory seconds chocolate peanut butter crunch.

I asked the lady behind the counter what "factory seconds" actually means, and she said it just means that maybe the pieces came out shaped funny or weren't completely covered in chocolate or something. All I know is that I got about a pound and a half of candy for 5 bucks. And since I'm not picky, that's a bargain. And the best part is that the Abilene store is #109, which means there are at least 108 others scattered around the country. Let's just hope they're ALL near porn.

Hooray! My mom is out of surgery and things look good

Just heard from my father that my mother is out of surgery. The doctors got all the cancer and the 3 sentinel lymph nodes they removed as a precaution all came back negative. So my mother is now cancer free!

My father gets to see her soon and then I get to talk to them later this evening. The doctor sees her again tomorrow morning and then she gets to go home! Radiation starts in a couple weeks.

Thanks to everyone who has been sending my mom and dad their best. I really believe that stuff helps, and I'm grateful and relieved.

I love you, Mom and Dad!

Deliciousness is good

No word from my father on how my mother is, so I'm assuming she's still in surgery. I'm sure everything is fine, though I am anxious.

So I'm keeping my mind off of it by enjoying some fantastic fruit. I mentioned that I've been able to eat fairly well so far, but it's been difficult to get enough fruits and veggies. So I bought about $15 worth of produce at a store across the street from the hotel, and have been eating handfuls of grapes and carrots one after the other. Next are the nectarines. Thanks, Nature!

And as an added bonus, I got to have a conversation about the UFC with one of the guys who works there; he saw the T-shirt I was wearing, which says, "Rey Diogo Brazilian Jiu Jitsu" on it, and asked me about it. So that's cool. BTW, Rey Diogo is a black belt under Carlson Sr. who lives in LA now. I'm planning to visit him and his wife and their son when I get to CA.

Now it's on to western KS, hopefully some slightly irregular Russell Stover candy, and maybe, depending on how I feel, the CO border. And most importantly, a call from my father with good news about my mother.

My mother goes into surgery in about an hour

Please send your good vibes, happy thoughts, prayers, whatever, to her...















...and to my father, who is waiting at the hospital.

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.)

On the 7th day, I rested (just like God)

Uneventful day today. Talked to my folks, finally, after a couple days of phone tag. They drive to Tampa tomorrow and spend the night before a 7am check-in at the hospital on Tues for my mother’s lumpectomy. She’ll have a local anesthetic and stay in the hospital for one night and then she gets to go home. I’ll call them tomorrow while they’re on the road to check in and touch base, and then my dad said he’d call after the procedure is done. I’ll be on the road for most of both days, so I’m hoping to actually talk to them rather than leaving or getting messages. They both sound like they’re taking it in stride. And then the radiation starts in a couple weeks.

Let’s see. Going to the laundromat is probably about as exciting to read about as it is to do. Suffice it to say that, to paraphrase Homer Simpson, clean clothes get seven thumbs up. Then I hung out at a St. Louis Bread Company for lunch and free wireless. Talked to Natasha for a while too, and then went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. Meh. Johnny Depp is great, and the special effects are fun, but it was long and I have the attention span of a small child. Plus, I was hungry.

Tomorrow I go back to SLBC for breakfast and more free wireless, and then I hit the road. I’ll get to Manhattan, KS, by 4pm or so, which gives me time to find the academy, Combative Sport Center, and scout out a hotel before class at 6. Jon from Rodrigo’s school knows the guys who run that school and very nicely called ahead to let them know I’m coming. He also very nicely steered me away from some places in Kansas City with a very high steakhead and McDojo factor. I had a feeling this would happen: that the longer I’m on the road, the more I’ll get assistance from people who know people, etc. It’s more of that BJJ connection. I also have to remember to say hello from Big Joe when I get to Amal Easton’s academy in Boulder.

My “training” today consisted of sleeping late and then sitting on my keister a lot and eating Hershey’s miniatures, which are partially melted b/c it’s hot in the trunk of my car. But I think my body needed a break, so I’m not begrudging myself the down time OR the candy. I also had a huge glass of iced tea, and I’m wondering whether the caffeine will keep me awake. I also got a chance to let some of my mat burn heal. Here is a picture of it. It doesn’t look like much, but it hurts like hell. And right under the mat burn on my toe is some healed over mat burn. Oh, and my big toenail tore too, from training. BJJ is not pretty.


A propos of candy and iced tea, I’ve been able to eat fairly well since I’ve been gone. It was easy with Darin and Linh—Linh is an excellent and healthy cook—but it’s more of a challenge when it’s just me. We took a trip to SAM’s club (which is a wonderful store) before my trip so I have snacks in the car, like Kashi granola bars (which seem to have more whole grains and decent stuff for you than other kinds), trail mix, and whole wheat crackers and pretzels, and those are better than chips or cookies. I also have a huge bag of dried fruit, but have recently remembered that it upsets my stomach; maybe it’s the preservative in it. So getting fruits and vegetables is more of a challenge, and all of those snacks have lots of sugar. It’s something to watch, and whenever I can, I grab fruit at the free hotel breakfasts and go for the spinach salad instead of lettuce. I guess it’s another thing I’ll get good at as I spend more time on the road.

Yes, it is a fascinating life I lead! Well, here’s something; I’m staying in a motel with some character; the rooms look like little houses, and there are garages for each of the rooms. So here is my home these past two days.


It’s right down the street from the bar where we watched the UFC, and the movie theater I went to tonight, so that was handy. (I’m finding that it’s easier to scope out the school I’m going to in a given place and then find a hotel nearby.) Of course, it wasn’t so great to hear people fighting late last night (“Fuck you!” “No, fuck YOU!”), but I never felt unsafe. It reminded me of the first night I spent in my condo/cash cow over 3 years ago. My friends Shane and Mark were in town for work and stayed with me. I must have been exhausted from moving because I didn’t wake up for this, but Shane and Mark were treated to one side of a drunken cell phone argument between some girl and her boyfriend; the girl was right outside on the street below. According to Shane and Mark, the exchange went like this:

“I’m not a slut. I am NOT a slut!”

(silence)

“I’m not THAT big a slut.”

It’s part of city living, or life on the road. And there are some nice characters here, including the lady who thought I smelled good (she was downwind from me, not inappropriately close) and the guy who had what looked like a portable cooler slung on a strap on his shoulder. I will be a little sad to say goodbye. Well, not sad exactly. I think it’s more a matter of establishing familiarity and then going someplace else that’s entirely foreign. It’s fine and good for me, but sometimes it feels like it takes a lot of effort. Maybe that’s why I like driving so much; it’s relatively straightforward and doesn’t require me to shore up my confidence, just to pay attention to the road.

Speaking of which, tomorrow is an early morning and then about 6 hours in the car to Manhattan, KS. I’m excited to get on the road again! I think the travel bug has finally sunk its teeth in, and I’m ready to get a move on. I started listening to On the Road on DVD, and it seems like this particular drive will be conducive to me paying attention, something I’m not the best at when it comes to audiobooks. Wish me luck.

St. Louis is okay by me

Great day to wake up in Paducah; the overnight temperature measured a record 57 degrees Fahrenheit, one degree colder than the last record set in 1983. In your face, global warming! Plus, donuts were available at the free breakfast supplied by the hotel. Being a card-carrying member of Team Donuts*, I had to show my support.

I “overslept” a little. Overslept is in quotes because I have to keep reminding myself that I really don’t have to be anywhere unless I want to be, and while I did want to get to Rodrigo Vaghi’s school in St. Louis in time for the 11am no-gi class, I was also exhausted from 3 or 4 days of training, driving, and staying up late blogging. So I got on the road a little later than I expected, driving through KY and IL about 220 miles on I24, I57, I64, and I44. On I57, I had the option of heading toward Chicago. I didn’t.

I encountered a little backup of traffic once I arrived in St. Louis, which didn’t help me get to class on time. I did see the famous arch, and was also thinking that St. Louis is where White Palace, that movie with Susan Sarandon and James Spader, takes place. Is it wrong that that’s the only thing about St. Louis that came to mind? Okay, how about the Cardinals, Mark McGwire, birthplace of Samuel Clemens? (Work with me; I think he was born somewhere in MO.)

Vaghi’s school is the first one I went to where I felt intimidated. It’s always a little uncomfortable to walk into a different school, but this was the first school where I felt like maybe I didn’t belong. And not because the people weren’t nice—they were—but because the people were HUGE. They grow ‘em big in St. Louis. So here I am, this 135 lb chick in her 30s getting on the mat with enormo-dudes probably fresh out of high school and college in muscle tees with lots of tattoos (or “ink,” as the cool kids say). For some reason, no-gi classes tend to attract more large guys than gi classes. This is true at Carlson’s school in Chicago as well as other places I have trained. Plus, there weren’t any women, not even one or two like there usually are. Check out the picture of Jon, the guy I repped technique with, and imagine a mat full of guys that size. Then imagine being my size and wanting to play with the big boys.

I could see Rodrigo doing a private gi lesson with a student so I eventually caught the eye of the person who seemed to be his second in command; this was Jon. I talked to Rodrigo too and he was very friendly; at first he asked me if I was there to watch but seemed pleasantly surprised when I said I was there to train. He taught two variations of a choke called an anaconda, which is when you use your arms to trap the opponent’s arm and head. The set-up for this series of chokes can be from side control of the turtle position (when the opponent is on all fours and you are kneeling next to him/her).

After the no-gi class there was about 90 minutes of free gi sparring. This raised an interesting issue for me about visiting student etiquette. I have 4 gis with me. Two of them are completely plain, but two of them have Carlson Gracie team patches on them. My two plain gis were dirty, so I checked with Rodrigo before I wore one with patches. He didn’t mind, but there are two interesting things: first, some instructors DO mind if you wear the patch of your own school, and second, wearing a patch or otherwise indicating that you are not from the school makes you stand out. I don’t think in this case it was a bullseye, but I can see how it would be at some academies. I haven’t figured out what the proper etiquette is, but it’s just an interesting political question. There are lots of BJJ players who are trying to be apolitical; they don’t care where you train or anything as long as you are there to learn. But there are old school politics and secretive natures among some of the older players, so you have to tread lightly sometimes.

Unfortunately, Rodrigo left before I could snap a picture with him, but you can go to his website to see what he looks like. I did get pics with Jon and Tracy; Jon is on the left below. I also have pics of just me and Jon and just me and Tracy, but of course they are not cooperating. So they'll go up later.

And now I need to write about Tracy, both because he is a great guy and also because my encounter with him is indicative of how cool the BJJ connection can be. I had posted on the forum that I was going to Vaghi’s school and wondered if anyone could tell me anything about it. Well, someone named Brian posted that I should look for a guy named Tracy. So here I am chatting with this really nice guy and his girlfriend, and all of a sudden he says he’s good friends with Brian. I narrow my eyes and ask, “Are you Tracy?” He looks surprised and says yes, and then bingo, we have a connection. He was plenty friendly before then, but after I mentioned Brian, he was downright familial. I mentioned that I was scouting out a place to watch the UFC, and he said I should watch with him and the rest of Vaghi’s team.

I hemmed and hawed, out of shyness rather than not wanting to watch with them, and said I needed to check my itinerary. And I love that he said, “Itinerary schmitinerary. You set your own schedule.” He was right. So I decided to stay in St. Louis rather than driving to Columbia, and I watched the fights with him and the rest of the Vaghi crew. And it was really fun. We watched at the St. Louis Sports Zone. It was a zoo. I was afraid it was going to be really smoky, but it wasn’t, and I got two beers for less than 5 bucks. And after we stood for a little bit, it looked like Tracy pulled some strings or something and got us a good table. So it was a great way to watch. Some of the fights were boring, some were bloodbaths, some were anticlimactic, but it was nice to have like-minded people to watch them with.

So that’s the BJJ connection. Immediately, you have a shared interest, a common passion, and it hooks you into lots of opportunities; before class, I had been alone and not sure where to watch the UFC, and then after class I had a place to watch and people to watch with. Other examples of the connection: I stayed with Darin and Linh for the better part of a week, Soneca was prepared to let me stay with him and his wife and baby daughter even though he doesn’t know me all that well, and at Nashville MMA, more than one person wanted to know how long I was staying in town and was disappointed that I was leaving so soon.

When I said I was going to do laundry today, Tracy offered to let me do it at his place. I didn’t take him up on it because I didn’t want to put him out, but I don’t know any other “hobby” where you make connections so quickly. When I was leaving, he made sure I had his number and told me to call if I needed anything. So the point is, BJJ is just cool for the instant connection you have. I’m not saying everyone is best friends, but it really is a family in the truest sense of the word; you have a bond to others who train, and it puts you in a special fraternity (or sorority J).

Another thing that’s interesting about BJJers is how multifaceted they are. I’m sure this is true of lots of people who don’t do BJJ, that they have multiple and far-ranging interests. But maybe because martial arts conjure up the image of a particular kind of person, it’s always fascinating to me to get behind the BJJ/MMA persona and see what else is there. For instance, Tracy and Jon have their own businesses, Tracy a sports clothing company called Blunt Force Trauma, and Jon a promotion business (he puts on professional events). Tracy is also a model.

And that’s what I mean about the discrepancy between what you would expect from a mixed martial artist and what you get. Tracy’s teammates give him a lot of crap for being a model, though of course it’s all in fun. Likewise, a guy that I trained with in Chicago, Hercules, is a huge, muscular, tattooed guy who grapples, is a personal trainer, AND…drum roll please…colors hair. He works in the Gold Coast, one of the tonier sections of Chicago, and does highlights and lowlights for wealthy clients at a high end salon. When I asked how he would color my hair, he surprised me with his response, which is that he’d have me go much darker with maybe some auburn thrown in to draw attention to my cheekbones. (I thought everyone was steered toward blonde, just as a general rule.) I mentioned to him that he had an eclectic set of interests, and his response made so much sense: "Well, all the things I do professionally help people feel good about themselves."

What a cool response. I'm glad there are people like Hercules in the world.

There’s also Rich Franklin, a UFC champion who has a master’s degree in education and used to be a high school teacher. Natasha said that Jeff Monson, also a UFC fighter, and a thickset, shaved-head, tattooed, anarchic slab of a person, has a master’s degree in psychology. (She also joked about how he got the degree by just bodily taking a diploma from someone else, crossing out that person’s name with a Sharpie and printing his own name in its place, and then punching the guy in the throat when he protested, but that’s another story.) I just like that yet another thing BJJ gives me is opportunity after opportunity to shatter my own preconceived notions about people and look behind their outward appearances to the person inside.

Okay, I’m babbling a little. Must be sleepy.

*Team Donuts is a group of people who train BJJ sometimes and who eat donuts more than sometimes. I have a TD patch on the seat of one pair of gi pants; I put it there because I figured that’s where donuts generally end up. A few years back, a member of Team Donuts named Karl and I actually had a donut exchange. I FedExed him apple cider donuts from an orchard in downstate IL near where my sister lives with her family, and he FedExed me donuts from Stan’s, a famous place in LA that sells flavors like peanut butter and banana along with the usual jelly and glazed. If you have never had an apple cider donut or a Stan’s donut, you need to do everything in your power to rectify the situation.

Traveling, training, thinking

I got two pieces of great news today.

First, my mother’s breast MRI results came back. There is no sign of cancer besides what the doctors have already diagnosed! Of course, there’s still the small matter of the lumpectomy, which happens on Tues, but it’s a relief that there isn’t any more than that to contend with. I’ve been playing phone tag with my parents for the past couple days, but I did get them to text me on their cell phones. I’ll call them this weekend and then after the surgery, when I’ll probably talk to my father while my mother is recuperating. Mom, I love you and am so glad the news was good!

The other good news is that people are actually reading—and, ostensibly, enjoying—my blog! Jennifer*, Maura, Chrissy, Marjorie, Harriet, Stimy, Brooke, and Marcel have all told me they are following my trip. Well, actually, Marcel complained that he hasn’t been mentioned yet, in true Marcel fashion. Just to spite him, I will never mention him. Oh, and if I don’t mention him, I can’t mention Alan either. So I won’t. But thanks to everyone who is following along!

Today I drove about 320 miles, leaving on I-40 from just west of Knoxville around noon, stopping in Nashville to train at Nashville MMA, and then driving on I-24 to Paducah, KY, which is where I am now. I spent the morning in my hotel room working on my web site and “running” some errands—writing checks, making phone calls, etc. Had some free breakfast, too!

When I got in the car, I decided to drive without the radio on, kind of to see what I ended up thinking about. Like I mentioned before, I feel like I’m incredibly busy on this trip; if I’m not driving somewhere, I’m researching where the next school is, or calling the next person I’ll visit, or checking my email, or sleeping like the dead (though it usually takes me longer to fall asleep than normal). And part of this trip is “BJJ,” but the other part is “vision quest.” So I just set cruise control, took in the sun and the beautiful scenery (TN is very hilly and verdant), and noticed what came to mind in the relative quiet.

I felt a little lonely, but was happy to note that I wasn’t afraid of it, if that makes any sense. I had known I’d feel lonely at times on this trip, and I’ve decided to just feel it while I feel it, and wait for it to pass. It always does. Of course, it always comes back, but welcome to being human, I guess. But there are things I can do about it. Just let it pass, listen to some music that makes me happy, call somebody, cry. All viable options. All options I have exercised in the week I’ve been on the road. This time I just let it pass.

I also noticed that I have ABSOLUTELY no desire to be back in Chicago. Like my job, Chicago has receded to the deeper reaches of my brain, and when it does surface, which isn’t very often, it feels like the person who lived there and had the experiences that are in my memory isn’t me anymore. (The foregoing is an absolutely horrible sentence syntactically, but I’m going to leave it because it’s midnight and I have a lot more to write before I get to sleep.) Maybe things will change, but for now, I’m pretty convinced that I won’t be living there after the trip is over.

So that realization made me a little anxious, because while I know where I don’t want to be, I have no idea where I DO want to be. I mean, if this whole deal--shaking up my life, giving away or selling most of my possessions, and stripping off an old identity, all to make way for something new--doesn’t give me some clarity, I am out of ideas. I have officially blown my wad.

But when I started to feel anxious, I just decided not to worry about it. It’s not time yet for me to know where I’m going to land b/c I’m still flying. My friend Tracy did an astrological chart for me, and apparently this time in my life is all about upheaval. (I kind of already knew that, but it’s interesting that that’s what the stars are telling her about me too.)

Eventually I got bored of being introspective, so I called my friend Lacey. She lives in Denver, and I’ll be spending about a week with her. Well, I’ll be spending a week at her place, starting next Thurs or Fri. She has to go out of town for her job after next weekend, but we’ll have a fun time together while she’s in town; there’s so much to do in CO in the summer! Then I’ll stay on for a bit in her place, train at various academies, and do some other stuff I wanna do (e.g., visit the main Muscle Activation Therapy office, visit Estes Park, hike). So anyway, Lacey is way cool and I’m looking forward to seeing her! She and I worked together at my first job in Chicago; she escaped before I did and moved to Denver, where a lot of her family is. And one of the great things about Lacey is that she told me I could stay for as long as I wanted, and she truly means it. I won’t stay THAT long, but it’s cool that I could.

When I arrived in Nashville, I stumbled onto Vanderbilt University. I wasn’t looking for it, but I had some time to kill before class at Nashville MMA, and when I stopped at the Borders I spent the afternoon in, there it was. It’s a pretty campus, what I saw of it, anyway. I did not find the Grand Ole Opry or Dollywood. It’s kind of strange, I guess, that I’m driving through all these places and not really sightseeing. That will change when I get farther west, because I’ll definitely want to go to some of the state parks. But this is also a different kind of trip.

Tonight I went to train at Nashville MMA. It is a Lloyd Irvin affiliate school run by brown belts Shawn Hammonds and Ed Clay, located in 100 Oaks Mall. The unassuming atmospheres of these academies never cease to amaze me. What I mean is, many of the academies I have visited are in gyms or storefronts or malls (like this one). They are all great spaces and get the job done, but in my opinion, these academies are hallowed halls of learning, so they should be housed in ivy-covered buildings with Doric columns and commissioned portraits and reading rooms full of mahogany furniture. Of course, it’d be difficult to train in a place like that, but that’s beside the point.

Anyway, Nashville MMA has an enormous space in the mall. I signed in, paid the mat fee, and suited up. Ed came right up to me to welcome me to the school (Shawn is in Las Vegas for the UFC tomorrow), and had the class give me a round of applause. It was a really nice welcome, needless to say. It’s always awkward doing the line-up to bow in when you’re visiting an academy, because different places do it differently. This time they had me stand at the head of the line of purple belts because I have stripes and none of the purples there do. Of course, as with belts, stripes don’t necessarily mean as much as you think, so I kind of wished I hadn’t been at the head of the line. Especially because I’m feeling really humble at all these academies. Every school teaches the same techniques with slightly different details, and I learn a ton at every place. Well, I have at all 3 places I’ve been to, and I have no doubt I will at all the others. And I have been to other schools in the past, just not as many as I’ll be going to on this trip.

To practice technique, I paired up with a hilarious purple belt who likes to use the words “shit” and “fuck.” He’d say things like, “Yeah, I don’t want to lose that shit (position) because I work hard for it and it’d suck to fucking lose it.” He asked me about whether the guys I date have a problem with me training, and when I said they generally don’t, he said, “Yeah, I’d think it was cool if my woman did this shit because we’d be doing the same fucking shit and we could do it together.”

Sparring was fun; after my first spar with the purple belt I described above, he said, “Wow, you got some fuckin’ hips!” (BJJ is all about the hips, so that was a compliment about my technique—I think.) See my training journal for more details. I got a picture with Ed and chatted with him a little bit; I also met a guy whose claim to fame is that he took down Cael Sanderson, an Olympic caliber wrestler, in a match. Ed asked me if I learned anything. I laughed and said of course, because as I mentioned, every school teaches things slightly differently, and you can always learn something from an excellent teacher. I recommend Nashville MMA to anyone going through.

One of the good things about training in a mall is that there are lots of mall concessions available, like this table full of candy. I had a handful of M&Ms after class. Oh, and Mrs. Durham’s banana bread is GONE. Like I always say, probably ad nauseam, BJJ is cool because you train your ass off and then get to eat it back on. Banana bread and M&Ms probably wasn’t the best dinner, but it sure tasted good. And I’ll get some healthy breakfast tomorrow.

I’ll get up early to get to St. Louis in time to train at Rodrigo Vaghi’s school, and then I’ll figure out a place to watch the UFC. I’m thinking I might stop in Columbia, MO, for that, which is where my sister got her master’s degree. I can give a shout out to her old stomping grounds. Right now I gotta get some sleep!

"Move your legs like a scissor"

Gross. I'm staying at a hotel tonight and instead of lugging my sweaty workout stuff into the room, I spread it out in the car to dry a little before I put it in the garbage bag that is serving as my laundry basket. I had to come down just now to find my cell phone (and to have some of the banana bread Mrs. Durham made for me), and now my car smells like wet dog.

I had to say goodbye to Darin and Linh today. Man, it was difficult. I am excited to get going on the rest of my trip, but I had such fun with them and they have such a wonderful life in Somerset. And I'm headed into the unknown. It helps to know that they had the same doubts I do, and that there are amazing things waiting for me. And a year later, they still talk about their trip as a life defining event; I'm sure the same will go for me. It was just a little lonely to drive away.

But soon after I left heard a Sheryl Crow song and one of the lyrics made me happy: "Everything's different but everything is fine." Couldn't sum up my life better right about now.

It was about a 2 and a half hour drive south on I-75 to Knoxville, about 160 miles. I didn't take the exit for Stinking Creek Road, though I was tempted, and given how my car smells, I would have fit right in. Oh, and I also heard Buffalo Stance by Neneh Cherry. Maura, if you're reading this, this song reminds me of you for some reason. Did you love it in high school or something? (Don't you get fresh with me.)

When I arrived in Knoxville, I scoped out Soneca's school and then a place to do some work on my computer. By the way, Soneca's real name is Helio Moreira. Soneca is a nickname that means "sleepy" or "nap." Check out the pictures below and you'll see that he does look a little sleepy.

As my high school English teacher, Mr. Hutchinson, would say, holy cats. I am as busy on the road as I ever was on my busiest day at work. I don't have any time to read the paperbacks I brought and planned to knock off and give away (thereby lightening my load a little at a time), look at my BJJ notes, or read my new Jiu Jitsu Unleashed book by Eddie Bravo. For example, today I responded to emails, wrote postcards, got directions to Soneca's place, posted the blog entries I wrote earlier this week, talked to my lawyer to make sure the money from my condo sale went into my account (it did--hot damn!), made a few phone calls, forgot to make a few others, drove to Knoxville, trained, found a hotel, and now I'm here. And I have a huge list of other stuff I didn't do but would like to. The difference, I guess, is that this is all stuff I want to do. So it's fun!

My hotel has wireless, so tomorrow I'm gonna stay here till checkout and work on my website and other stuff. Then I'll head to Nashville to train. Gotta call over to the school, Nashville MMA, to confirm the class time, find directions, repack my suitcases (things are already getting messy in my trunk), decide how far to drive on Sat, find a place to watch the UFC, etc etc!

Class with Soneca was terrific. He was so welcoming and introduced me around to all his students and wouldn't take a mat fee (which usually pertains when you visit a school). The title of this post refers to one of the instructions he gives when explaining a guard pass. I described the details of the class in my training journal (another to-do item: fix the link to the training journal!); it was an amazing class that gave me lots to think about. I was really frustrated that I didn't remember all of the details of the techniques he showed, so I bought his DVD (he gave me a discount!). And then I remembered that I don't have a DVD player. Well, I'll put it in the same place as the refrigerator magnet and then eventually I'll be able to use both of them.

Soneca had very kindly offered to let me stay with him and his family while I'm in town, even though he has a 2-month-old daughter, which must be incredibly tiring. I saw pictures; she's really cute. He also has a 4-year-old boy, also very cute. It turns out that he is driving to Chicago tonight, so he couldn't let me stay with them. It's fine for the children reason and also because I've had a little time to get some stuff organized (and didn't have to share banana bread, which I would have felt compelled to do).

He had changed out of his gi by the time I asked him to pose for a picture with me, but as you can see, he is a bad ass. And the funny thing is that even if he really were trying to choke me for real, I would still be happy about it. It was an honor to train with him! In the other picture, I am sweaty and soon to stink up my car with my workout clothes. Thanks to Soneca and his students for a great class!

Another great day: sightseeing, training, eating

Slept late again. Linh was already off to work, and Darin was packing us a lunch to take to Cumberland Falls. It was a rainy day, but the falls were beautiful. I didn’t get to see a moonbow, though this is the only place in the western hemisphere where you can see one. In the gift shop, I bought a couple of postcards and a souvenir refrigerator magnet, before I remembered I don’t have a refrigerator to put it on. I started buying them when I went different places b/c they are portable, as well as fun reminders of places I’ve been. So after I bought this one and realized I don’t have a place to put it, I figured what the hell and am going to buy them everywhere. That will give me incentive to get a fridge sometime in the near future, which implies a home to go with it.

At the falls, we saw some beautiful scenery as well as two cranky ducks. I say they were cranky because a couple we saw fishing said they (the ducks) had tried to bite their (the couple's) toes.

This time, on the way to the falls, the BJJ conversation was about how your techniques don’t need to be flashy to be effective, how Carlson Sr. is still so missed, and how the politics in BJJ is so frustrating and can’t everyone just get along? See, when you train BJJ, depending on the school you kind of pledge allegiance, and it’s considered bad form to jump around from school to school. What I’m doing isn’t bad because I’m not going to different schools in search of a promotion because I feel my main instructor isn’t helping me progress fast enough. But like with any other situation where human beings are involved, egos are involved in BJJ, which means you need to tread lightly. There are places where people from different academies do get along, but it’s not always the case.

And Carlson Sr, is Carlson Gracie, Sr., a BJJ legend who passed away earlier this year, and under whom Darin and I had the privilege of training for about 4 years before his death. We talked about how if Carlson Gracie, Sr. gives you your brown belt, which he did Darin, or your purple belt, which he did me, then you deserve it. Not many people can say that a living legend awarded them such an honor, down to tying the belt on our waists himself.

Anyway, we chatted about this on the way to Cumberland Falls and then again on the way to Darin’s parents’ place. I got to meet his mother and father and see his niece, Amanda and Luke’s daughter again. She had chased—and caught—a lizard AND a frog that day, and was in the process of making a caterpillar out of Play Doh when we arrived. Darin’s mom is sweet as can be; she made me some banana bread for my trip and fussed over us while we ate lunch. I also got to meet his mother’s parents, who live down the street. It’s really nice that his family is so nearby, and they love Linh like she was their own, which she basically is.

We stopped by Amanda and Luke’s to pick up a DVD Darin had loaned Amanda: the 2005 Abu Dhabi women’s competition. Abu Dhabi is a no-gi competition, and 200 was the first year they had a women’s division. I also met Gracie

and Sugar Bear there.

I'll fix 'em, I promise!

Then it was on to the academy for more cleaning before the competition cardio class. (Fat Tony, I took your advice and bartered for training!)

And here's me trying to look tough in my Submit Pit t-shirt. Mostly I just look irritated. And God in heaven, how I hate my hair.

I worked with Amanda again and gave her some unsolicited advice about just relaxing and enjoying herself. We exchanged email addresses and I hope we stay in touch. I love dispensing unwanted advice, and in all seriousness, it’d be great if she sticks with BJJ and goes as far as she wants to with it.

Linh arrived around 7 to train Carey, though I don’t think they got much done because Carey took lots of pictures of our class. The dumb batteries in my camera had died, so I’m going to get copies from her. Meantime, here is one picture of Chad and me sparring on the feet. Judging from the look on my face, either I’m having fun, or Chad has just insulted me in some way. (I WILL fix these! I'm just running low on battery power and have other things to do before the computer dies.)


Back at Bandit’s house, we watched the Abu Dhabi DVD while Bandit licked my feet again.

Bruce Buffer, the veteran voice of the Octagon, was also the announcer for this event. He was in the background on the DVD and was wearing a Hawaiian shirt. It kind of threw me (at the UFC, he’s usually in a tuxedo). Those women are so amazingly technical. It’s like watching a dance.

Well, even though everyone in town, it seems, has tried to get me to stay an extra day, I am heading out tomorrow. The longer I stay here, the harder it will be to leave! And I joke that I’m becoming a BJJ bum, but that’s too quick a transformation. Anyway, I also want to train with Soneca, and if I don’t get to his school in Knoxville tomorrow, I will miss him because he’s leaving for Chicago after the evening class. I didn’t know he was leaving, so I need to decide whether to stay and train there again on Fri without him or see if I can find someplace farther west in TN to try, maybe in Nashville somewhere. I’ll post on the forum and see if anybody has any ideas.

I guess this is one of those times when I just go with the flow, or flow with the go. I mean, I had my itinerary but it is changing. So I’ll just see what I feel like doing—what a crazy concept, being that free to do whatever the hell I want to. Life is getting better and better.

So the plan tomorrow is to fold my laundry, pack up (including Mrs. Durham’s banana bread), figure out where Soneca’s school is, find a Panera nearby (they have free wireless), and scope out a motel (also preferably one with free wireless). I also need to call various people and write the postcards I bought; my list of people who want them is growing exponentially. Fortunately I love to write them.

Anyway, I’m babbling now. It’s late—it’s amazing how busy my days are, in terrific ways. But I look around and all of a sudden it’s 1am when I had decided to get up at 7:30 to say goodbye to Linh. And I still feel like I have tons to do and say! Well, it will keep.

I’ve had such a great time in Somerset. I can’t thank Darin and Linh enough for their hospitality and inspiration, and I look forward to coming through again to see all the people I met this time around.

July 4 always reminds me of that Destiny's Child song, Independent Women

Just ended the best Independence Day in recent memory. Here’s how it went:

For future reference, it is never, ever a bad idea to start your day with a pork tenderloin biscuit from Rose’s Cafeteria in Somerset, KY. After we said goodbye to Bandit and left the house to head over to Carey, Alan, and Justin’s to go on their boat, we stopped to do this. Linh brought me what looked like a fast food breakfast sandwich, complete with scrambled egg, but was more like heaven wrapped in nirvana wrapped in carbs. I’m sure Linh and Darin were talking while I was eating my biscuit in the back of the car, but I didn’t hear them. I only had eyes, ears, and the rest of the senses for my breakfast, and was noticeably saddened when it came to an end. Rose should be canonized.

Carey, who trains with Linh, her husband Alan, and their 12-year-old son Justin, who trains with Darin, live on a beautiful stretch of sloping land with two very personable cats and lots of wildlife. Carey is a former hospital nurse who now does home health care. She warned us that she was off duty today, so if we did anything stupid to get ourselves injured, we were on our own. Fair enough. Alan is an IT guy for the nearby medium security prison. Justin is a funny kid who happens to be a big fan of hot sauce and chili peppers; we joked about how when he was little his parents would give him a jalapeno rather than a pacifier. I don’t think that’s too far off the mark, actually. They are a lovely family and showed us a grand old time today.

Our first stop was at Mill Springs Park in Wayne County, a still-working corn-grinding mill erected in the early 1800s. The land the mill is on is gorgeous and picturesque, and we had a nice chat with the guy who demonstrates on weekends how it works.

The gift shop sells the cornmeal from the demonstrations, though we didn’t buy any. Nor did we buy a plaque that says, “I’ve been on a diet for two weeks and all I’ve lost is 14 days.” But we chatted with two sweet old ladies who showed us some pictures they had taken on a recent trip to a nearby park. I swear, one of the pictures was of an outhouse, and the sign on it said that it was the restroom AND the administration building for the park. Well, it is a good place to get thinking done.

Next stop was Lake Cumberland, where we set Carey, Alan, and Justin’s boat in the water. And of course by “we,” I mean “they.” They are obviously experienced boaters, while I am not. But I am good at sitting and enjoying the sun, so I did a lot of that and was happy to share my technique. I hope I was able to teach everyone a thing or two. I am also good at floating in the water, though everyone else had that covered too.

Soon it was time to ride the “banana boat,” which is basically a giant floaty that up to three people can ride. You grab onto hand holds and either bend your knees like you’re riding a horse or sit with them out in front of you. Either way, it’s a little difficult to get the hang of balancing, especially in the wake the boat throws up in front of you. Linh, Darin and I went together, and my hiney still hurts from the dive I took when Alan banked. Not his fault; I am good at sitting and enjoying the sun, remember, so this was a stretch. Linh and I had better luck at balancing when it was just the two of us (and I think Alan took pity on us and went more slowly), and I honestly can’t imagine why anyone would want to do anything on a gorgeous, sunny, hot Independence Day other than chill out in the water, enjoy the company of old and new friends on a gently bobbing boat, and hang on for dear life to a nerfy torpedo that’s going 30 mph through the water. (I'm still fumbling around with how to size these, so I'll only post one till I get it right. Otherwise, it's kinda boring to see these pics with vague humanoid shapes in the background.)



Across the lake is Jamestown, kind of an aquatic oasis with boat slips, a general store, and a restaurant. We made our way over there, stopping for lunch and to watch the space shuttle countdown and takeoff. Darin and Linh were happy to go here; they grew up in Somerset, but have only recently moved back after years in Chicago, so they are rediscovering their own hometown. And life looks different on the water. Here are some enormous turtles (there are also koi fish) that hang out waiting for people to feed them. Sorry; you gotta turn your head sideways.



As it was time to leave, the sky grew ominous. The weather had called for rain eventually, and before we left, we (again, “they”) put up a cover on the boat called a Bimini top, wrapped our cameras and other valuables in plastic, and dug out some tarps and towels. Still, we were hoping we could outrun the bad weather.

No such luck. By the time we got out in the middle of the lake, it had begun to rain, and soon enough the water was coming down in sheets, the thunder was sounding like explosions, and the lightning was hitting mere feet in front of us. I’ve never experienced a thunderstorm on the water, and for a first time, we went for broke; Carey said it was the most violent one she has experienced on the water. I found it strangely exhilarating. I never once felt unsafe or like we were in danger, and kind of liked being at the mercy of the elements. I didn’t even mind being drenched, which we all were, from head to toe.

Eventually things died down, as they do, and we made it back to the launching place. When I checked my stuff, I found out that my camera and cell phone were bone dry and my new Eddie Bravo book (he’s a hilarious BJJ black belt) and new technique notebook were a little damp but still useable. The loose ibuprofen in my pocket didn’t fare as well; they turned into a little pile of pharmaceutical mud that stained everything they touched (my shorts, my towel, my ChapStik) a lovely maroon color.

We were still a little squishy when we headed back to Bandit, and spent the rest of the afternoon drying out and being weary from sitting in the sun and having a great day—that’s tiring! Later that evening, Linh and Darin’s students Ann and Larry and their daughter Brittany came over for dinner. Larry and Ann work at the same prison as Alan. To hear Larry tell it, the stuff Darin is teaching is very applicable to his work as a security guard; he even showed me how he uses a kimura grip to tie up a prisoner’s arms behind his back and cuff him. (I was glad he didn’t actually have any cuffs when he tied up my arms).

What’s awesome is that the three of them are serious BJJ addicts. Until recently, Ann said, they were coming 5 days a week (it’s more difficult now because Brittany’s softball team is doing really well, so all their time is consumed with that). They walk around their house with their chins tucked because you never know when Brittany’s going to come at you with a rear naked choke. Their gis hang in a row in the laundry room. And it didn’t take too long; Darin and Linh have only been in business for about 6 months, and Larry, Ann, and Brittany are already recruiting others to come to class.

It’s clear to me, even after only 48 hours here, that The Submit Pit is a community affair, not just a family one. There is something amazing about BJJ that, under the right leadership, has the capacity to change things for the better. Fortunately for Somerset, Darin and Linh are the right leadership!

And I could cry at how friendly everyone has been to me; people are trying to get me to stay longer and even convincing me that Somerset would be a great place for me to live. They could be right, and when I’m done with my trip, I’ll see what’s what. But in the meantime, I will leave here on Thurs with about 6 more friends than I had when I arrived, and that’s wonderful. Even Bandit is making his affection known; earlier this evening he licked my foot for about 5 minutes under the dinner table, and he is shameless in his quest for petting. I am also hopeless in my ability to keep from petting him.

Later in the evening we watched a few PRIDE fights; a training DVD starring the likes of Andre Galvao, Jacare, the Ribeiros, and Roger Gracie; and the first part of an Eddie Bravo DVD that chronicles the evolution of his signature move, the Twister. Hilarious. And informative.

Tomorrow is the competition preparation class, which sounds like lots of cardio, among other things. Definitely looking forward to that! Beforehand, I need to call Soneca, to let him know I’ll be heading his way (Knoxville, TN) in a day or two.

Right now, it’s time to sleep, perchance to dream of tenderloin.

Bluegrass Breed

I keep forgetting about the time difference; I lost an hour when I got to Kentucky. So I slept in later than I had anticipated. Linh had to work today, but Darin was up and had made me some breakfast. We had the second of what will probably be many chats about mixed martial arts, the academies I’m likely to visit, the theory and philosophy behind BJJ, etc. This time around it was about how MMA is written off as violent and the province of dumb jocks. We talked about how untrue that is, how intelligent you have to be to understand the entire landscape of the grappling arts, not to mention to contribute to them yourself, and Darin decided that Dean Lister, a top flight black belt, would make a good commentator because he is articulate and intelligent enough to win over civilians, and has the competition experience to make him acceptable to practitioners.

Talking to Darin is getting me so excited about the rest of the trip and made me eager to see his academy. And while Linh doesn’t train BJJ, she boxes and teaches boxing at the academy, and The Submit Pit is most definitely a family affair. It’s terrific to see; they are such a great team in so many ways. Before we went to the academy, Darin drove me around Somerset to show me some of the sights. We went to Burnside Island State Park, which is on the shore of Lake Cumberland, and was packed today, since it’s the day before July 4th. We also heard a bunch of fireworks going off here and there, and I’m guessing they were not legal ones. Reminds me of my childhood!

After class tonight, I am now the proud owner of two Submit Pit t-shirts, including one that has “Bluegrass Breed” stenciled on the back, and an SP bumper sticker, which immediately went on my car.

Darin and I also had interesting grappling conversation #104, this time about how it’s important to make sure sport BJJ remains true to its self-defense roots.

We got to the school around 4 and started cleaning. We were soon joined by Chad, one of Darin’s most eager students—and after sparring with him, I can say he has a lot of promise. We cleaned up the academy a bit: dusting, vacuuming, sending Chad outside in the 90 degree heat to do the windows while Darin and I sat on the couch in the air conditioned academy reading MMA magazines.

Darin’s sister-in-law Amanda (married to Luke, with whom we watched PRIDE last night) showed up soon after with her cute 4-year-old daughter, who treated us to a gymnastics demonstration of backflips, cartwheels, and roundoffs, all with funny running commentary about how Chad is a dork (she’s got a little girl crush on him, I think). Her brother Josh came too. He and Amanda are also dedicated students, and will go far with a teacher like Darin. There was open mat class before the kids’ class, and then after that was the adult class.

Amanda seemed to be happy to spar with me; for me, it’s always a treat to get to spar with another woman since they are so few and far between. I’m going to get her connected to the jiu jitsu forum I post on, especially the women’s forum, so she can get a sense of community. She’s planning to compete in a tournament in October, which is really terrific. I’ll be training again on Wednesday with them, so I’ll work with her as much as possible.

So the short of it is that Darin is a great teacher. He always was when we were training together in Chicago, but as with his actual sparring, his teaching has reached a new level since his trip last year. He does a great job of, as he describes it, breaking down techniques into their simplest elements for the kids’ classes, and I can’t help but think that would be a good strategy for beginners, too. I definitely wrote notes on the two take downs he showed the kids, because I can do those takedowns too!

And in the adult class, he showed rubber guard to omoplata, as well as a takedown sequence, again, breaking things down into manageable chunks. It’s obvious that his students love him; some of them call him Coach, and he and Linh said that they have seen a lot of positive changes among them both in terms of their skill and in terms of their confidence. Such a great thing! I, of course, learned a crapload and had fun with the technique, the situational sparring, and the open mat. Darin very wisely starts all the sparring on the feet, which I need loads of help with.

Oh, and by the way, lest he get a big head or something, it’s worth noting that Darin, who, as I mentioned in an earlier post, has accused me of being a “fucking blueblood” because of my name, has TATTOOED HIS FAMILY CREST ON HIS ARM. If that’s not bluebloody, I don’t know what is. Especially because the Durham crest is far more classy looking than the Worthington one. The Worthington family crest, much to the chagrin of my late grandmother, is three dung forks on a field of silver. But look at this!



Linh’s student, Carey, very kindly gave me a packet of brochures and magazines about Kentucky. This woman has never met me before and yet she took time to do that. This is what I mean about the support I feel from people. There are good people in the world, and I’m meeting a lot of them! Carey and her husband have invited us to go out on their boat tomorrow to celebrate Independence Day. Didn’t have to twist my arm!

Life on the road is good. And it’s only just begun. I’m happy and grateful.

More goodbyes

Whoa. Left my sister and brother-in-law’s place today after a weekend of hanging out with them, my nieces (the canine and the human one), and my parents. I had already left Chicago and my life there behind, but this goodbye was more wrenching than that one by far. Leaving Chicago just felt right, and the only thing that made me feel really sad was that I had to say goodbye to my friend Natasha for the last time. She’s friends with Darin too, and her message to him was, “Bite it. I miss you,” a message I dutifully delivered.

Leaving my family felt so hard. I was crying, and my parents started too; they walked me out to the car and watched, crying, while I drove away, crying. It’s not like I won’t see them again, but there was something about this leave-taking that seemed really profound. I guess I am on a vision quest, after all. A BJJ vision quest. In 2006. And my parents have been so involved in getting me ready for it that now that it’s here, all this pent-up emotion must’ve come spilling out. And we're all freaked about my mother’s surgery, which happens on the 11th. My sister and brother-in-law stayed in the house, which was just as well, because it was hard enough seeing my parents cry.

I was going to take pictures of everyone, but they would have been depressing. So here are some pictures of my canine niece, Nora. She is the best dog ever, and not only because she absolutely adores me. These pictures don’t show “happy tail,” which is when she is excited about something and curls up her tail so it is in a circle. I tried to get pictures of her with happy tail, but she wasn’t happy because she knew something was up when I was leaving (dogs are so perceptive). That’s also why I wasn’t able to get her to smile. But trust me; she has a great smile and adorable happy tail.




I tried to lighten the mood by telling my folks that after all this build up, my first stop after leaving there would be about a mile away, because I had to get gas. It worked for a minute, until I got to the gas station, when I started to cry again. So I pumped gas while crying and then got on I74 headed east. I had to pass a turnoff for Chicago, and like I said, NOT heading to Chicago felt like the rightest thing. So that was a good sign that I’m glad I could recognize even though I was, at that moment, thinking, “What the hell am I doing, again?”

I headed east through Indiana and into Ohio, then south on I75 into Kentucky. Past Lexington, past Berea, and onto a surface road that led into Somerset, about a 6-hour, 400 mile trip. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but even though this trip is amazing and is sure to change my life (it’d better, goddammit!), a lot of the mechanics of it are mundane. I drove with cruise control on, flipped radio channels, cried a little, realized a tiny bit of my road rage was back (though not nearly as bad as when I first moved to Chicago in 2000 and was driving every day from the suburbs into downtown at high rush hour to train BJJ), thought about stuff, thought about other stuff, cried a little more, stopped at a rest stop, etc. Oh, and giggled about the fact that I didn’t have time to stop at Big Bone Lick State Park (there’s that 12-year-old boy mentality again, but give me a break; I was traumatized).

One thing that’s really fun about long drives is scanning the radio. You can always count on hearing songs you have always liked but haven’t heard in ages, maybe because you don’t have them in your own collection. In my case, these are usually oldies but goodies from the hard rock stations, like Bad to the Bone (George Thoroughgood), Take It on the Run (REO Speedwagon, arguably their only good song), Shooting Star (Bad Company), Barracuda (Heart), Cuts Like a Knife (Bryan Adams), Enter Sandman (Metallica), Suite: Judy Blue Eyes (Crosby, Stills & Nash). When the stations were few and far between, I busted out the CDs my sister and brother-in-law gave me and sang along to Amie (Pure Prairie League), among others, and then listened to Superunknown (Soundgarden) for the first time in ages. That’s a damn good album.

One thing that isn’t as fun about long drives is the car that goes just about the same speed you do, so either you leapfrog each other for miles and miles or you are literally running neck and neck so you have to decide whether you want to 1) step on the gas to pass it despite the fact that cruise control is set perfectly or 2) not worry about it because the other guy will eventually either speed up or slow down so you don’t have to. This time around that car was a green Mercury Grand Marquis from Michigan. He usually slowed down or sped up enough so that I didn’t have to, but there were a couple times when I had to mess with cruise control. Annoying.

I hit Somerset about 8:30. It was dusk and some clouds were moving in. Somerset is set in some rolling hills, so the scene was really beautiful and otherworldly. I had heard that this part of the country is gorgeous, and like New Jersey, it gets a bad rap that’s not entirely deserved (although as one of Darin and Linh’s friends has said, “Yeah, in Kentucky, not EVERYONE is a redneck.”). I pulled into a parking lot and called Darin, who came to lead me back to his and Linh’s place.

What a welcome! Linh came out, the dog, Bandit, came out, the neighbor happened to be walking by and stopped to chat. They have a beautiful little house on a quiet street with a comfy guest room, they had an awesome dinner waiting, and they left me a present of travel-sized toilet articles (shampoo, mouthwash, etc) along with a card welcoming me and wishing me luck on my trip. If every one of my stops is like this, it’s going to be difficult for me to drag myself away from any of them. I continue to be amazed at how supportive and excited people are for me, and I want to go on record as saying that although I’ll never be able to pay back the Darins and Linhs in my life, I will definitely pay it forward. So if any of my friends or family happen to come through wherever I end up living after my trip is over, my doors are always open. And while I am unlikely to have digs as nice as some, I will certainly match the hospitality and enthusiasm I have already been shown.

Anyway, after dinner, when we started talking about the trip they took last year and about my plans for my trip, Darin asked if I wanted to go see the PRIDE fights at his brother’s place. I am so out of the loop on the entire world that I had forgotten about them, so I was stoked to go. (For those of you who don’t know what the PRIDE fights are, see the BJJ glossary). There were some good fights, and the spectacle rivals that of professional wrestling, so that’s always amusing.

So it was an enervating day, on all fronts. But I’m so glad I’m on my way, and I’m so glad that Darin and Linh are my first stop! Tomorrow we train at the Submit Pit, which is going to be most excellent. Right now I fall into bed exhausted.

A typical family exchange

Spending the weekend with my family (parents, sister and brother-in-law, and human and canine niece) before leaving for The Submit Pit tomorrow. Today at lunch, we had one of those conversations that I'm going to miss, and that probably explains a lot about me.

Note: My parents are happily retired on a golf course in Sebring, FL, but they were born and raised in New Jersey, as were my sister and I. And my brother-in-law is from Buffalo. So our humor has a little bit of an edge to it, which has gotten me into trouble in the midwest. Anyway, as context, my father refers to their retirement community as "God's waiting room."

Here was the conversation:

Dad: We put the house in your mother's name.

Me: Why?

Dad: To even out the assets. I had more in my retirement accounts than she does.

Mom: When the paperwork went through, I told him to start packing.

Me: Yeah, Dad, if Mom lets you stay, you won't be able to complain if she decides to have wild parties.

Dad: I don't care. I'll be dead.

Nice!

My sister and brother-in-law gave me a send-off/birthday present of 6 CDs of 70s hits! So I am stoked to drive along to:

Amie, by Pure Prairie League (some of my college friends may remember--or not--sitting in Hovey's Pub yelling at Rob the guitarist to learn this song, and then when he did, singing along in a most annoying fashion)

Rocky Mountain Way, by Joe Walsh (Hey! I'm gonna be in the Rocky Mountains!)

You Took the Words Right out of My Mouth, by Meat Loaf ("Meat Loaf" is two words, in case you were wondering.)

Dust in the Wind, by Kansas (Too cliche to listen to it while actually in Kansas?)

Shining Star, by Earth, Wind and Fire (I imagine listening to this one at night, while somewhere in the Badlands or someplace like that)

All by Myself, by Eric Carmen (For when I feel lonely, to exacerbate that.)

and the absolute best driving song ever, Radar Love, by Golden Earring.

Thanks, Marjorie and Chris!