Training with martial arts legends in NY (part 3)
[Click HERE for part 1…and HERE for part 2]
RGA – Day 2…
After our marathon training schedule on Day 1, when 6:45am rolls around Tuesday morning I barely remember getting up to turn off the alarm on my Blackberry and fall right back into bed! Chase is worn out as well, so while Sensei gets up and goes over to RGA to watch (but not take!) the morning class, we stay back at the apartment and catch up on much needed sleep!
I finally wake up and get out of bed at about 11:30am! This gives me a enough time to check email, grab a shower and eat a PB&J, apple, celery & peanut butter, and potato chips lunch. Chase and Derek had been out earlier on a smoothie run, but my need for sleep was infinitely greater than my need for calories (as you can tell from my pics…especially standing next to GSP, both of us in rashguards!). 🙂
By 12:30 the three of us head out into the urban jungle ready for class. The sounds and smells are already starting to fade into normalcy, though during one trip when Sensei and I get stuck behind a guy who smells like what the inside of a drain disposal looks like, I suggest to him that NY should install poles on every other street corner that spray Fabreeze as people walk beneath them. THAT would be taxpayer money well spent!
We arrive and change. It’s a purple belt class (which is actually blue, purple and brown combined) and I’m secretly excited because it’s the first time I get to roll in my newly acquired and freshly washed/shrunk to fit RGA gi! I’m hoping it will confer some amazing ability, stamina or other esoteric ninja skills that will enable me to dominate all who come near!
It does not.
I don’t get utterly dominated like I did the day before, but I do get tapped a number of times, particularly by bigger guys. I also get kicked in the face inadvertently by a blue belt about my size who decides that today is the day he’s going to practice his flying triangles (even though we start from our knees). I’m sluggish and aching already, so why not add a black eye to the mix??
TRIANGLES!!
I swear I’m channeling the ghost of Chael Sonnen on this trip! (Yes, I know this statement is rife with multiple theological errors!)
Of the dozens of times I tap this week, I’d guess more than 75% of them are from triangles…or armbars as I’m defending the triangle. In fact, other than a guillotine clinic that I unknowingly helped a black belt perform yesterday morning and a rear-naked that the first guy I tapped put me in as soon as we rolled again, I can’t remember a sub that I fell victim to that WASN’T some variation of a triangle/armbar combo.
Of course this means that triangle defense will be well on my mind for the next few months (as will preventing my guard from being passed so easily!), but for the moment it’s extremely frustrating.
After class, we head back to the apartment and rest up for the evening class. Our bachelor-pad-for-the-week has, at this point, become a shirt-optional zone. And since I’m the most hot-natured, sweaty-backed person you’ll ever meet, I rarely put mine on!
We take a few mins after classes to record short videos of the techniques we learned, though we have to use my camera-camera because my Flip HD camcorder mysteriously stopped working for some reason. 🙁
We have every intention of resting and going back for the evening classes…but by about 5:30, we look at one another and realize that we are near death’s door! Derek makes the executive decision that instead of training, and to preserve ourselves for tomorrow’s classes, tonight will be our dinner out on the town!
We are WAY too tired to walk far, and my feet have LITERALLY been bleeding through my socks from all the walking we’d done so far this week…
So through his magical iPhone sorcery, Derek locates a well-rated, yet not too expensive sushi place 4 blocks from where we are. It’s called Kodama and it is wonderful!
I end up getting 2 rolls–a small one with salmon, red pepper and cream cheese, and a larger one with too many things in it to remember. It’s the best sushi I’ve had since last year when Renzo took us out for sushi after an autograph signing when he was in Charlotte for Roy Nelson’s fight against Stefan Struve (that was the best sushi I ever had, mainly because Renzo paid! Haha!)
On the way back, we stop in one of the hundreds of tourist trinket shops so Chase can get some souvenirs for his family. It really is amazing how random the contents of these shops are. For instance, I came across this random Colin Powell bobblehead…
…holding a lighting bolt?
There were so many other ridiculous pieces of junk for sale, but this one made me chuckle so I wanted to share it with Dojo readers. 🙂
When we get back to the apartment feeling fat and happy and only slightly less sore than before, we set up my laptop for a movie. The first night we watched Red Belt (which Sensei had never seen) on DVD. Our place had a nice big screen TV…but no DVD player! So we had to watch movies on my laptop. Knowing my love of terrible movies (i.e. “Turkish Star Wars“), Derek decides that it’s time I see his favorite horrible movie. So we settle in, open up Netflix streaming and watch the epic and aptly named “Aliens vs. Ninjas“!
After making it through what ends up being something of a cross between The Guyver and Flipper, with some Power Rangers choreography sprinkled in, it’s off to bed.
Today was our slack day. Tomorrow morning we hit the mats again bright and early!
[To be continued…]
Categories: Arts and Culture, Blog, Martial Arts