Both sides

An individual who is truly alive should not settle for anything less than the totality of experience. -Daniele Bolelli, On The Warrior’s Path





Lunchtime BJJ at Gracie Seattle. I wore the pink gi. Several of the guys, as soon as they saw it, asked if it had been a laundry accident. That makes me laugh. Obviously those are the guys who have turned a load of undies pink a time or two in their lives! They know a laundry accident when they see one!

Carlos (chuckling): "Keetsune...what you say when you open washer door?"

"I said, 'F^(K!'"

"Careful the language on the mat!"

"You *ASKED* what I said, and I'm telling you!"

I ended up partnerless for drills at first, reinforcing my theory that a pink gi makes guys take you less seriously on the mat. Then a latecoming white belt got stuck with me.

Carlos made us do the same ugly conditioning drills from last night- with the addition of a very special agony. One person doing pushups WHILE hir partner does pushups in north-south with hands braced on hir shoulders. Mark (my white belt partner) was lighter than Hedge had been last night, but I still fell flat on my face with the very first attempt at being the bottom layer of the two-teir simultaneous pushup. I got back up and managed to crank them out, but they were micro-pushups.

One person has guard, 2 cuff grips, feet on opponent's hips. Opponent frees one hand and reaches around your thigh preparatory to trying to pass. You grab hir collar, hip out, swing leg around and replace closed guard. I was grabbing the wrong collar at first. I said to Mark- "Stay on the same side," Unfortunately Carlos was lurking right there and reprimanded me, "BOTH sides!" "I can't do it right on ONE side yet!" "Both sides!" Arrgh. I know he wants us to drill both sides, and I appreciate why, and I'm delighted to do so- but not on something new that I can't even do correctly on the first side yet.

Then you have guard, break opponent's posture down by pulling hir elbows, then immediately transfer grip to hir wrists- one palm toward you and the other toward hir. Pull and push, respectively. We drilled this for a while and then added the triangle. My triangles still suck- even on Mark, who isn't very big.

Timed matches with Benny and Marc. I stayed on top of Benny for a gratifyingly long time. He always tapped me in the end, though. He is a small guy, and one of the ones I always like to watch as an example of what I would like my BJJ to look like someday.

Marc- he tapped me two or three times today, and I didn't get a tap on him at all. Did reasonably okay positionally. I set up the choke from last night... I could see the moment when the light bulb went on and he realized what I was about to do... it was funny. "I thought that seemed familiar!" I set it up another two times, and I managed to roll him, but my nonchoking arm was not in the right position when we finished the roll. I hung onto the gi collar, thinking I could maybe shift position and choke him with it anyway (once I almost transitioned to the bow and arrow), but no joy. He tapped me out once with a triangle. I'm frustrated to be getting caught with these so often lately, when I had been doing so well for a long time staying the heck out of them. I think I'm just getting distracted with too much else going on in my game to stay focussed on watching for the triangles.

I did get something on him that I'm very happy about- another one of those improvised reversals that I just figured out on the fly. He ended up in bottom side control, and I don't know which of us was more surprised.

Tired now. I sat on the wall and watched Carlos and Tom try to kill each other for a while.


I sent LD an e-mail and asked if she has enough gas in her tank for our Tai Chi class today, or if we'd be better off pushing it back till next week after she's done with the radiation. She begged off. Poor girl. I feel so bad for her.




(pic- Glenn (on top))