Cross your fingers--on the road again, maybe!

Recently my friend Steve, aka Hawaii 5-0 (he's from Hawaii, see, so we thought that was a funny nickname), found me through the CrossFit website! (I have been featured in a couple recent issues of the CrossFit Journal, including the most recent one, courtesy of Becca, who writes a regular column). I knew and trained with Steve in Chicago many years ago, and he has since moved to South Africa! So now that we're back in touch, he has big plans, including getting me out to Johannesburg to help him with the first annual Carlson Gracie memorial tournament in South Africa and maybe do some seminars to drum up interest in grappling and BJJ among women. That would be really cool! So cross your fingers that it pans out; if it does, it will be this summer, I believe.

Meantime re: traveling, want to get back to maybe paying visits to area academies; it's always okay with Johnny and John, and I owe visits to some people. So now that my schedule is ostensibly a little freer, maybe I'll do that.

In other news, yesterday was the Angie challenge at Petranek Fitness. The Angie is one of the workouts, consisting of 100 pullups, 100 pushups, 100 situps, and 100 squats for time. In January those of us who wanted to participate did the workout to get a baseline time and contributed $30 to a kitty. Then yesterday, we did the workout again, and the male and female winners were determined based on who had the fastest time combined with the biggest decrease from the baseline to yesterday's time. Um, somehow I won; I came in third for the women and I guess I had the largest decrease in time, something like 7 minutes. Most of those minutes came during the pullups; between January and now, I have FINALLY learned how to kip, and that took 5 and a half minutes off my pullup time.

So thanks to Andy, Becca, and PF for helping me continue to improve myself physically, mentally, and sometimes financially. Life is good and I'm grateful.