Missed the bus and training on the beach at the same time :,(
I was going to take the bus back to San Jose tonight, sleep there and have lots of time to get to the airport in the morning. The last bus was supposed to leave at 5:00 pm, which was right when we had time to lay the mats out on the beach and roll. That meant, that I couldn’t join the training because I had to catch the bus. This bus just never came. I waited at the bus stop for 75 minutes with no luck. This means, that I have to get the bus at 6 am tomorrow morning in order to make it to the airport in time.
It totally sucked to wait that long for nothing and miss the training, but I could do nothing but trying to make the most of it. It meant that I got to go with the guys to a bar to watch UFC, so it wasn’t all bad.
Tomorrow afternoon, I am flying to Oakland in California to visit my friend Søren and his wife for a few days. He is an old friend of mine from back home and I haven’t seen him for a long time, so it will be good to catch up.
Vamos a la Playa!
Surfing today was GREAT. I had one of the best sessions of my (short) career, feeling really confident out there and catching lots of amazing waves. What a great day in the water!
No-gi sparring at Athletic Advance last night
I felt pretty overtrained yesterday. Every muscle in my body was sore and I had a sling fever. Nevertheless, I decided to go and roll a little bit with the guys at AA. Before I went to Costa Rica, I few people independently of eachother told me, that this gym had a very high level. I didn’t really think much about it before I came here and saw it myself. Really high level, technical and tough guys there, I highly recommend training with them if you have the chance.
I got tapped a few hundred times and felt great afterwards. It was nice to warm up my body a little bit after being so tired all day.
San Jose afternoon walk
Photographing cities always posses quite a challenge in finding the interesting details between a constant bombardment of impressions. There is no beautiful landscape presenting itself with a panoramic sky and lots of interesting colors and details, ready to be captured in the first attempt – a city demands ones concentration and patience. It usually also involves a good amount of footwork to find the right shots, why I normally like to do city photography on a bicycle. Today, I had to do with my sandals.
I have been feeling slightly overtrained today, so I decided to skip afternoon training and just relax instead. I went for a walk around town this afternoon and caught a few shots.
Tonight is a no-gi class and directly after that, I jump in the car with some of the guys from the gym and drive to the beach for the weekend, where we will train on the beach and go surfing.
Location:Avenida 4,San Pedro,Costa Rica
Made it to Costa Rica, trained + finally got pockets!
It was a tough trip to Costa Rica, since I had to get up ridiculously early to catch my flight at 6:00 am. I only had about three hours of sleep plus a little bit in the plane. I got a nap when I got here, but combined with the hard training last night and traveling in general, I have been really low on energy today.
I went to Athletic Advance tonight to train and it was great. If you are a regular reader of my blog, you kind of know the drill. Knew noone on beforehand, it was awesome, cool guys, good training, nice place, etc. etc. etc. It almost feels stupid how easy it has become for me to travel random places and find experiences like this using BJJ as engine. I caught myself laughing a little bit at it, as I walked home in the rain after training tonight. Anything seems possible at this point.
I enjoy Latin America a lot. It is cool to see something different and I am listening to “learn spanish” podcast every day to catch up with daily communication. Like surfing, it is cool to try and learn a new skill from bottom up and language is always a great basic tool to have in your gameplan, I think. For the last 10-11 years, I have basically only tried to learn BJJ and nothing else, so I am excited about learning something new :D
On another note, something really great has happened for my trip. I finally got shorts with pockets. After traveling over three months in fightshorts with no pockets, these new bad boys are like sent from heaven. Who invented this genius device? There seems to be no limit to what they can hold! I am psyched about pockets apparently.
(P.S.: I was too zombie to take any interesting photos today + it was raining, but I promise to do some good ones soon ;))
Location:Avenida 4,San Pedro,Costa Rica
