European Nogi Championships 4/5/14 - 4/6/14

I spent Saturday exploring Rome. I was a bit concerned that I wasn’t going to make weight on Sunday, so I wanted to get out and walk around for a good portion of the day in the hopes of burning down some calories and to also get a chance to see the city. What I didn’t expect was to be walking around for 9-10 hours. 

I started off at a Piazza del Popolo, where the tram dead ends. I walked around that area snapping some photos, and eventually finding a little Italian cafe to grab a small sandwich at. I somehow found the Spanish Steps, and waited around there for 10 minutes just people watching. It seemed like every tourist place had street urchins out trying to pawn their cheap goods to people. They had sunglasses, toys, and imitation purses for sale. While I was at the Steps, a policeman came by, which sent the urchins running with their goods. 

There is a main street, which connected the Piazza to the old city and eventually the Coliseum. That’s where I wanted to go. You see it on television, photos, in magazines, and online. This was my chance to finally get to see it in person. I like old history, especially from the old Roman days. It’s cool to look at and try to imagine what might have been going on some random day in the past. I took a bunch more pictures and then headed off across the street to various old houses and temples, but it looked like a garden. The gardens area was pretty big, a lot more walking than I imagined it would be. I ended up spending a good couple of hours there alone, just taking pictures and meandering about.

When I decided it was time to head back, I thought it would be cool to go and see the Vatican. The walk was probably going to be an hour or so there, but I was up for it. When I finally made it, they were closing things up. Just the square portion was still open. Was standing about, I had a couple of Chinese woman come up and ask if I would take their picture, I smiled and agree to but only if they would do the same for me in return. They giggled and agreed. We did the pictures and then one of them said that her friend wanted a picture with me, I laughed and said OK. After that was done, I told the picture taker that it was now her turn to take a picture with me. She turned a bit read in the face, giggled, and ran over next to me for the picture. 

My legs were starting to go a bit numb. I don’t think I had walked this much since I was in the military. Being in the Mid-West of the United States, I really don’t have to walk much. In fact, the cities are pretty much built for driving a car around all the time. I ended up getting lost, thinking I was at a different area then I though I was. Thankfully I found a shop that had someone who spoke decent English to get me back on track and back to my hotel. When I made it back, it was dinner time. 

The next morning it was time to get up and go back to the venue. I wasn’t slated to fight until around 12pm again. I spent most of the day running into different people that I had trained with earlier in my Trip. Wim, the black belt from Brasa in Belgium and I chatted for a bit. I ran into Darrough, the brown belt from East Coast BJJ in Dublin, some random French guy who didn’t speak English but wanted to say hello, and I saw Olga the brown belt from the Carlson Gracie Amsterdam academy. It was pretty cool to look back and think that I’ve trained with all these cool people in all these great countries over the past few weeks. 

It wasn’t too much lounger and my division was being called. I ran into my Greek friend again while waiting in the pit, it appeared that I would be fighting one of his countrymen in my first round of nogi. He didn’t know the guy, but they chatted like old friends anyways. I weighed in around 90.7 or so. About .8 kilos below what I needed to be. The night before I was joking that drinking a beer would shed .1 kilograms, and I had a couple of them, so I guess it worked! I wouldn’t recommend it, as I was pretty dehydrated that whole morning. 

We were called out onto the mat, only to have the referee tell me that my ankle supports were not allowed for competition. I sighed, I said they were, and he ran off to check with the tournament director. The tournament director said they were fine, now we were back in action. I felt like i set the pace of the round, looking for entries into hip throws, but never finding one. My opponent kept shooting single leg takedowns, only to have me sprawl on him but not be quick enough to take advantage of being in the better position. We both were eventually hit with penalties for “stalling” because neither of us could hit a takedown. With a little more than a minute left, I let my guard down and my opponent managed to get the single leg he was looking for. I immediately rolled into my goto half guard, the lockdown. My thoughts were simple, I have a good lockdown, and I don’t think many Europeans are familiar with the sweeps and the electric chair submission from here. It should be cake to get the tap and move on. 

Sadly, things didn’t work out that way. My opponent pretty much realizing he wasn’t getting out of my lockdown just laid on top of me like a dead fish. I wasn’t able to move him around very well, and thus screwed my attempts from the position. At some point I lost my cool and looked up at the referee, giving him some hand gestures to the effect of “are you going to doing something about this guy stalling?” He called one penalty to my opponent, but that wasn’t going to be enough. Time was running out, I was going to lose due to a takedown. Samir was yelling at me from the sideline that I needed to move my ass. One last hurrah. I disengaged my half guard and came up on an elbow, looking to cause a scramble and possibly come out ahead in the final few seconds. I wasn’t quick enough, the buzzer sounded, but the referee nor my opponent heard it. I ended up having to fend off a choke for about 20 seconds before Samir finally got the referees attention to stop the round. 

That was it. I was done. No chance at the Open division, no more matches. I had failed. The biggest thing was that I failed myself. I don’t feel that any of my opponents that had beaten me were any better than me. They were all good, but I felt like I was the better grappler. I had failed to show it. But, there were lessons to take away from the whole ordeal, and Samir was cool enough to offer me much needed advice.

I talked to Samir about it for a bit, and the resounding thing I’ve been hearing lately is that I need to be more aggressive. I tried to get some more from him on how to become more aggressive, what did I need to do? But he had trouble putting it into words other than I need to stop waiting for other people to make a move. He also said you compete the same way that you train. I feel like I train pretty hard back home, but maybe it’s not hard enough. Samir also said that becoming more aggressive can be a difficult thing to achieve, that a person really needs to dedicate themselves to it. 

I need to get rid of grips right away. Don’t allow the opponent to get grips before I get mine. This makes a lot of sense, especially with having some Judo experience. All the high level Judoka will grip fight until they get what they want and then execute their throw of choice. I need to be doing the same. The small thing that I was overlooking was that when I remove grips, I need to keep them for myself, don’t just throw their arms away and disengage. 

I also need to stay low when the match starts, like wrestler low. I like to keep my elbows and knees separated too much, which leads to people pulling guard. With your knees and elbows connected, it becomes much easier for you to defend against the guard pull because the opponent won’t be able to get their legs around your torso

Some other solid advice Samir gave me was that I need to posture up in guard more. I know I have a tendency to lay in peoples guard, one of the passes I’ve been working on for like a year is the “sao paulo” guard pass. So I hit Samir up for some advice on that too. When going for the cross face, I need to make sure it’s an undertook cross face and not an over hooked one. Another key point I was overlooking is that I need to switch my hips, making them perpendicular to the ground, then passing on the opposite side of where my cross face is. 

After everyone was done competing, we headed back to the hotel so that everyone could shower up before dinner. We headed back to the Pizzeria for our meal, and had a huge feast. We were probably a bit too loud from time to time, judging by some of the looks the other patrons were giving us. We didn’t care, and honestly it wasn’t that bad. We were having a good time. Luciano decided that we would be playing a drinking game, only to tap out about 3/4 of the way through because he was starting to feel the effects. Igor, who was capable of speaking English, ended up only being able to speak Swiss German and Croatian at the end of the night. He was nice enough to start giving me lessons in Croatian, but I think that was mostly the alcohol talking. Dario and I ended up staying for another beer, before buying one to go and chatting at the hotel before heading to bead. The guys were getting up early to make it out to the Airport to fly back to Zurich. I, on the other hand, would be flying to Hungary in the morning and taking a train to Pecs. 

IBJJF Rome Open 4/4/14 - 4/5/14

When I asked Samir about hosting me while in Zurich, he said he could but that he would be leaving for Rome on April 3rd to compete. I asked how long he planned n staying out in Rome and he said that he was leaving on April 7th. This worked out great for me because I had already planned on going to Rome from Zurich on the same dates. I asked him where he and his team were staying and Samir said they had accommodations near the venue and if I wanted I could chip in on a room that had a spare bed in it. I didn’t hesitate to tell him yes. I had already been checking around for Hostels in Rome, and a lot of them were not as cheap as I would have liked, and they were far away from the venue also. 

We had to be up early on Thursday morning to met with a couple of Samir’s guys on the team, drop his car off, and hit to tram going to the airport. Their flights left pretty early, around 0730 if I recall. My flight wasn’t leaving until 0900. That was fine by me, I could get some sleep at the airport and catch up on some reading and social media stuff. I had a layover in Austria, another country I can say I visited, even if I didn’t leave the airport. Even though I was concerned about making weight for the nogi portion, I decided to eat some bratwursts, potatoes, and sauerkraut while in Vienna. Samir and the guys had already arrived in Rome and already checked into the hotel. He was sending me updates via “whatsapp”, and throwing me the tram and train info so that I wouldn’t get lost on my way to the hotel. 

It was a pretty straightforward trip from Rome’s airport to the hotel. I thankfully didn’t get lost, nor did I need to ask directions from anyone. It was all of jumping onto a “fast” train from the airport to “Termini” (and by the way, the train was slow), then hopping a tram from Termini to a stop near the venue and walking a few hundred meters. One of the guys from Samir’s team was in the lobby when I got in and ran up to grab Samir to help me get checked in. The hotel wanted copies of everyones passports, which I though was a bit odd. 

The guys had been out exploring Rome all day, and got back to the hotel maybe an hour or so before I arrived. They were beat from all the walking, which I would endure in a couple of days in order to help lose some weight for the nogi portion of the competition. Samir said we would all go eat in about an hour. I went to my room, which I was sharing with Adriano and Dario, two blue belts from the academy. Samir was sharing a room with Luciano, a cartoonishly built man who was originally from Italy, and Igor who was tattooed up and originally from Croatia. These guys had been my adopted team the past week, and would turn into a bit of an adopted family over the next couple of days. 

We decided to go to a Pizzeria just across the street from the hotel for dinner that evening. This would be my first real Italian meal. Sure, we have Italian food back in the US, but I view it much like Chinese food in the US. We started off with pizza as antipasti, which has pretty much zero in common with American pizza. The crust was nice and light, like a very slim flaky flatbread, lots of cheese, and the toppings were not abundant like they are in the US. I also noticed there wasn’t a lot, if any, tomato sauce on the pizza. I could have probably ate about 5 of these pizzas on my own. When it can time to order the main course, I resorted to ordering just a steak and a salad. You can’t go wrong with protein and greens. The steak was OK, it wasn’t worth the 20 Euros I paid for it, but meat it more expensive in Europe. Back in the US, the same steak with side dishes would have run me maybe $14-15. 

Thankfully we had Luciano with us to help with the ordering of everything. He spoke to the waiters and who I presume to be the owner, and they took a pretty big liking to us. I noticed we got quicker service than a lot of the other patrons in the restaurant. It felt like something out of a new age mob movie. At some point one of the waiters asked Luciano what band we were in, I’m guessing due to the tattoos, mohawks, and other stereotypical things we had going on about us. Luciano chuckled and told the guy we were in town for the IBJJF tournament, and from there had to explain was jiujitsu was all about. I’m not positive, but I think there was some explaining of “sweaty man love” thrown in there for good measure. 

After the meal, I decided I was going to go grab some bottled water if I could find a store open. Well, I didn’t find a store open, but I did find a German Pub that was run by an Italian guy who spoke very little English. The beer on tap was nothing I had ever seen before, and I stupidly didn’t take a picture or write the names down. I will however say, the couple of pints that I had were pretty good and VERY strong. Strong enough that I had to put an end to the fun and go back to the room in the hopes of not hanging a small hangover in the morning. 

Friday morning was competition time. My division wasn’t slated to start until the afternoon. I met my opponent for the semi-final match in “the pit”. He was about my height, but a bit lighter than myself. He was from Crete, and was a bit surprised that I knew where Crete was. We chatted for a bit, and then were called out to out mat to wage war. 

My goal was to take things to the ground on my terms, via Judo. I’m not as confident in my Judo as I would like to be. Much like my BJJ I’m a very reactive Judo player, waiting for the person to make a mistake to capitalize on. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is when there is a time limit. My opponent figured out that what I was up to and jumped guard after about a minute. No problem, I thought. I’ll just pass. At some point he broke my posture, I left my right hand on the mat too long to help me base, and the next thing I knew I was getting swept and he was going right into mount. Shit! It’s OK, I’ve been here before, and I have a trick up my sleeve for getting back to my original position. A lot of the people from the academy I train at are familiar with my “lapel guard”, and how effective it can be from certain situations. Mount is one of these positions.

I quickly pulled my opponents right gi fabric from out of his belt and looped it around his back, grabbing it with my left hand. I then threw one of my feet into the fabric, then the other, walking them higher and higher into the lapel to give me the leverage I needed to explode my hips up and towards my feet. Then I feel a hand removing one of my feet, I look up and see the ref standing there, so I put the foot back in the lapel. He again removes the foot, awards me a penalty, and tells me I can’t have both feet in the lapel. I can say nothing, or I will be disqualified. This is one of the rules of IBJJF competitions, you don’t talk to the ref or the opponent during the match. With timing running out, I had to move quickly. I exploded up onto my side in an attempt to escape only to have my foe take my back and score more points. He was sinking in a choke, one of my chokes, the “bow and arrow”. I could feel the blood row decreasing from my brain, my eyes starting to get tunnel vision, I was going to pass out. I turned into the arm holding the lapel that was choking me to relieve the pressure and allow the blood to go back to my head. It was just enough to keep me from being submitted or worse…choked out.

The round timer rang, I had lost. We got up, my opponent was very humble in his win. He told me not to worry, we could fight again in the Open weight division since I had secured 3rd place during out fight. I walked over to Samir and relayed my anger and frustration at the referee. I was going to contact the head referee and make my complaint over the lapel guard incident. I knew that the match wouldn’t be reversed, and I wasn’t looking for that. My opponent had bested me, I was not out to take that from him. I was however out to make sure the referees know the rules. 

After finding the head referee, I stated the situation to him and told him that I had read through the rules a few times and found no mention of two feet in the lapel. I told him that I was aware that you could not have your feet on the inside of the lapel, but the outside was fine. I stated that I know I had them on the outside, because I use the move fairly frequently and do it the same every time. I also said that I knew it was on the outside because the referee only took one foot out. The head referee asked me to wait a minute, whir he ran over and grabbed a rule book. Sure enough he couldn’t find anything against my claim, telling me that I was correct, but that he couldn’t change the match results. I told him that I wasn’t looking for a result change, but rather just concerned that the referee know his job correctly. He told me he would talk to the referee and apologized for the incident. I thanked him, and went to sign up for the open weight division. 

The quarter finals of the open division had me slated against the Ultra-Heavyweight gold medal winner. The man was a beast, big and hairy. I know from the couple of guys at my gym that you don’t want a man this size on top of you. Rather, you get them on their back and you should have a pretty easy match. Every foot sweep or leg technique I attempted on the guy was met with resistance and strong arming on his part. He tried a few single leg takedowns and then resorted to just trying to throw me like a rag doll. I have a very deceptive build and weight, I don’t look nearly as heavy as I am (about 94 kilos or 204#). He seemed a bit surprised that he couldn’t throw me around like the incredible hulk. He was warned by the referee for stalling on his part. Towards the end of the match I lucked out as he attempted a takedown I threw him to the side, thus scoring the takedown points myself. I immediately went knee on belly, but the time ran out. It didn’t matter, I won. 

As I was waiting in the pit for the semi-finals, my knew Greek friend came up and said that he thought his opponent wasn’t showing up and that we would probably end up fighting again. I laughed and said that would be just my luck. He told me not to worry, that I would probably do better this time, that I was a good opponent and now knew his game. Sure enough, we were meeting back on the mat again to wage battle. This time, things would go a little differently. 

We spent a minute or two on our feet, with both of us trying to secure the takedown. Neither of us could best the other, so my opponent decided to pull guard. I knew better than to let him trap my arm again if he broke my posture down, which he did try a few times. I tried every guard pass I knew, knee to butt, standing, the “sao paulo” pass, and none of them worked. I could not break this guys guard. Next I tried going for a choke I like to use on white belts, and yes it’s from top guard. Newer people don’t realize that this choke leave me open to an armbar, but my opponent knew it and as soon as I felt his hips move I postured back and quickly removed my arm from danger. Time finally ran out. The match was dead even, no points, no penalties, no advantages. It was going to come down to the referees decision. The referee awarded the win to my opponent. I was now 0-2 again the same guy. On a positive note, I was able to shut his game down. 

That was it for the gi. Two 3rd place medals. Now I would have to wait for nogi in order to bring back a gold for my academy back home. I also forgot to mention a huge thanks to Samir for coaching me from the sidelines for all my matches. 

                                   A bronze in the open weight division

                                       Another bronze in the heavyweight division

Ruckus Clan Zurich 4-2-14

Morning:

I opted not to train last night. I needed to catch up on my writing and I wanted to give my body some needed rest. It was no-gi night, and the Universe knows I could have used the practice. But I said screw it. If I’m not ready for the European No-Gi Championships now, I wouldn’t be ready for it with one more class. Besides, I had my trusty lockdown and electric chair to carry me through, right?

Samir has an early morning class on Wednesdays that starts at 7am. I woke up around 6, and got my stuff together for the day. After class he was going to drop me off at the nearest tram station so that I could get to my companies office. I’ve only been taking the tram to the main Zurich station and then walking the rest of the way (around 4-5km or so I think). The walking will help me make weight this weekend for no-gi. I weighed in this morning at around 91.3kg, a little too close for comfort. 

We arrived at the training location to find that we were the first ones there. Not a big deal, I’ve noticed that Samir and I have been the first ones there other than on the first day that I arrived. We dressed out and headed up to the mats. Before too long the purple belt who’s flat we went to the first night I was in town showed up. It was just going to be the three of us. I had received some advice from Samir the night before (I’ll go into that at the end) about passing the spider guard and wanted to try it out on him. Now, I’m fully aware that the technique wouldn’t be close to even 10% to working on him, but I wanted the experience anyways. 

The setup for the morning was going to be 6 minute rounds, with one person in the full six minutes, and the other two people switching out at the 3 minute mark. At the end of the round, the last person in would stay in, and so on. Makes sense, right? Well, that just meant a lot of pain and suffering for me at the hands of Samir. The purple belt I wasn’t sure about, but I figured that the worst case scenario would be us fighting to a submission on me here and there. 

And that’s pretty much how it went. With the purple belt more suited towards my skill level, and me being lucky enough to pull a submission off on him randomly. It was a pretty decent matchup in my opinion, and it kept my motivation in place. Get beat up by Samir for three minutes, have a good three minutes with the purple belt. I tried my damnedest to work my spider guard passing on Samir, but I just couldn’t get even remotely close to a somewhat decent position on him. It was a great workout, and I was really only in it to help me make weight for the weekend. 

Samir drive me out to the tram stop and gave me directions on how to get to the main station, since I wasn’t familiar with this stop. I made it to the main station and then started my walk out to my companies office. When I arrived, I noticed they were still serving breakfast. I hurried up and showered, threw my dirty clothes in the wash (they even had a laundry mat on site!), and headed for some quick light breakfast. After I was done, I headed up a couple of floors to a relaxing lounge area to chill out and plan some of the rest of my trip and do some writing. We had training again at 1900, so I needed to make sure I hit the trains early before the rush. 

Evening:

I made it out to the training area a bit too early, I was there by around 1800. But that was OK. I took the opportunity to get some more notes and writing in. Not any great writing, but some writing none the less. Before I knew it Samir had arrived and we headed in to change out. Again we were the first ones there, but I knew people would be showing up because it was a night class. Before too long there were more than a handful of guys, all blue belt and above, on the mats. 

It was a pretty painful night for me. My head just wasn’t in the sparring at all. I had been reading some grappling book while on the trains, and the advice I had gleaned from what I read was pretty much “instill your game on your opponent, and this will allow you to control the match. Do not be a reactive player, because eventually you will miss something and get caught.” I was trying to be offensive and control the flow of the match. However, my brain wasn’t cooperating with my body. It was a mess. My motivation just kept going lower and lower with every tap, and there was a lot of tapping. I remarked to Samir after class that it was a rough night, he just kind of laughed and shrugged. He didn’t mean anything bad with his actions, it was just more of a “well, that’s jiu jitsu”. 

Afterwards we talked philosophy for a bit. He echoed what I had read earlier about controlling the matches. I needed to be less reactionary, and more offensive. Play my game, not my opponents game. If you spend all day worrying about “what-if” scenarios, you’re just going to psych yourself out and mess your game up. That made a lot of sense to me, one of the brown belts back home that I take private lessons from had essentially said the same thing. Go in with a game plan, don’t deviate from that plan. When I took the gold at IBJFF Dallas early last year, I did exactly that. Wait for them to pull guard and just smash through for the kill. The gold match lasted roughly 20-30 seconds due to that advice. I need to get back in that frame of mind and stop doubting myself and my abilities. I think I also need to stop messing around and experimenting so much, it may be creating some bad habits on my end. 

Samir and I also discussed my back escape, which seems to work a lot, just not on him. If you’ve read Saulo Ribeiro’s “Jiu Jitsu University” book, then you might bee familiar with the escape in question. You have your back taken, and the opponent has their hooks in. You “load” a leg and fire it with a kicking motion (while having the same side elbow wedged somewhat in or on their thigh. One you break the hook, said elbow shoots down between their thigh and your hip to block the hook from coming back in. From here you want to take the arm that isn’t blocking the hook and press it into the same side knee to help you either posture up and through into their guard or to do a single leg attack from the escape. I was using the former, trying to come up in Samir’s guard. It didn’t seem to be working. Samir suggested that I angle myself a bit more away from my opponents bodies, before attempting to come up. Otherwise, the opponent is going to get the mount. 

We chatted about some other things, some BJJ related, some life related. We are headed out to Rome early in the morning for the competition. I believe he has about 5-6 guys going out to Rome to compete, and thankfully none of them are in my division. That would really suck to have trained with them all week to only face one of them in competition. I think it would be even worse to beat them. Either way, it wouldn’t be a fun situation. 

                                                  The  team

                                                         Samir and I

                                                    Ivan on the bottom

Ruckus Clan Zurich 3-31-14

I spent most of the day at my companies local office in Zurich. I did this for a couple of reasons. The main one being that I knew I would have an internet connection. Having internet meant that I could get some of the back half of my travel plans set in stone, that being one less thing I would have to worry about. Secondly, I would have somewhere to eat, for free. With the expensive prices in Zurich, this would be a budget saver and a half during my time here. It took be about 19 Swiss Francs to travel out to the office, but I would have spent more than that one breakfast and lunch alone, and that’s not counting paying for internet access on top of it. When it was time to go train, I took the public transportation out to the athletic center that the gym was situated in.

After arriving and getting into my gi, I headed up to the training area. Igor, who was one of the senior purple belts, and the guy who runs the no-gi classes, was also taking charge of the warmup. Initially the warmup seemed pretty tame and what I would normally have to do back home. It stated off consisting of running, moving inside and outside, doing ankle slaps, and running knee raises. Then things switched up into a different rhythm. Now, keep in mind that Igor was running everything in German, no English at all. I had to watch everyone else to see what it was that I was supposed to be doing exactly. We kicked off into a large amount of jumping jacks, then a front jumping jack kind of motion. This went on for a couple of rounds, and my legs were starting to burn from the warmup combined with all the walking and stair climbing I had been doing. Next we started doing body weight squats, well shit…here we go! We did a couple of rounds of these and at the end we stood in a lunge position for a 30 count for each leg. Funnily enough, I almost ate shit during each lunge hold from quadriceps failure. The exercises seemed to be never ending, sit-ups (or crunches for me), leg lifts, leg extensions, leg holds, and then finally it was all over with 5 minutes of stretching. 

Next we started the drills for the evening. The first drill consisted of standing with uke in open guard in front of you. You want to grab the gi pants and base out with Saulo’s “headquarters” position. The headquarters position looks like a wide legged squat of sorts, which I probably looked drunk doing due to my quads being shredded already. Next you want to hip forward, effectively stacking your opponent, but with one knee in-between ukes legs, and the other bracing the leg of the side that you’re going to pass on. The hand opposite of the passing side will reach out and grab onto ukes ankle to help pull his legs away from the passing side. 

The second drill added to the first, but included bit more towards the passing portion of of the drill. Again, grab the lapel opposite of the side that you’re passing on. Keeping your elbows in as tight as your can to help block against the knee shield. When doing this, you will want to have your posture down low with your ahead approaching ukes chest. If you’re afraid of getting choked, like me, you shouldn’t be. When executed fast enough, you won’t be in a position to get choked anymore. The next thing you want to do is it hip in and pressure, like we did above. Bring your knee into ukes thigh, close to the groin (in compeition, you should probably just put it in the groin for added effect) and pointing forward. You want your free leg bracing for base but never fully extended. 

During the second drill I was having issues with keeping my based due to my overused thigh muscles. I kept messing up the positioning and putting myself where I felt more comfortable as opposed to where I would have been more effective. The partner I was working with, an older blue belt, was trying to help me out with pointers here and there. Keep your feet forward, don’t overextend the leg, get lower, and come further in when stacking. 

The final part of the drill was finally shooting for the pass. I have a very bad habit of hipping into my passes entirely too much, leaving myself open for a knee shield (which always comes). I’ve been trying to correct this over the past few months, but in the heat of a roll the bad habit always rears its head and I end up getting a knee shield up in my face and chest. 

After the drilling portion of things we moved onto sparring. Finally getting some good sleep paid off overall with a lot of the matches I was in. Surprisingly I kept finding myself in my go to half guard, the lockdown, that I had learned from the 10th Planet academy in town that I originally started my BJJ journey at. Maybe it was from watching Metamoris 3 that I was subconsciously trying to channel my inner Eddie Bravo, sans the “heefer” as Master Renato Laranja would say. I have trouble from the lockdown, I can hold it pretty damn well against most people. However getting into position for the sweeps is usually a difficult task that takes a lot of patience on my part, waiting for that exact moment to strike. I was able to get a couple of sweeps out of it in class, and one full fledged “electric chair” submission with a tap. All in all it was a pretty good night. 

Ruckus Clan Zurich 3-30-14

Samir had contacted me on a thread that I posted on Sherdog about my wanting to find places to train at in Europe. He hit me up and told me he trained out in Zurich Switzerland and that I was more than welcome to come out and train with the team. I was told about how expensive Switzerland was, but didn’t realize it until I started searching for hostels around the area, and even more so when I got into country. 

We had been communicating back and forth over the course of a couple of weeks. It finally became evident to me that in order to keep the trip going I was going to have to reach out to people for a place to stay. I hit Samir up for accommodations and he thankfully said it was no problem. He also offered to pick me up from the train station when I got into town, I just needed to give him the train info in advance. 

Per the previous day…errr this mornings Metamoris escapades, I was again dead tired when I hit the train station in Strasbourg. Thankfully I didn’t miss any trains, and was able to hope on down to Zurich with ease. When I got into Zurich, I wasn’t sure where exactly to meet up with Samir, as we had not discussed that portion of things. I searched high and low for free wifi, only to find wifi that wanted my mobile number to SMS me an access code. That would be great and all, but I didn’t have any cell service in Europe at all. I finally found some pay phones in the basement and struggled to figure out how to exactly use them. I noticed there was an SMS option on the phones (I know, right?) so I texted Samir a message giving him a description of myself and what street I would be on. 

I didn’t have to wait very long for Samir to find me. He came strolling up with his flat billed cap and his Shoyoroll jacket. I would later find out that Samir was fond of collecting two things presently, Jordan shoes and Shoyoroll gis. We hopped into his car to head out to go train for the afternoon.

Samir wanted to grab a quick coffee, and I agreed that caffeine was needed badly. We chatted on the drive out to a local Starbucks about my trip and the like. When we walked into Starbucks to order coffee Samir must have seen my eyes building out of my skull. I was looking at the prices and noticed that a SMALL coffee was a bit over $7 USD. He kind of chuckled and offered to grab the coffee on him, I thanked him graciously. I don’t think I had any Swiss Francs on me at the time anyhow. We made our way outside to chat a bit more before heading off to the training center. 

The training location was in Schlieren, a bit of a drive outside of Zurich proper. The scenery on the drive out to the location was beautiful. I was finally away from the cold and dreariness of the countries that I had previously been to. The landscape was covered with buildings, but every view beyond them offered lush green mountains to look at. Samir explained that the Sunday training was a relatively new thing for the team. He felt that in order to fight well, you needed to be in shape. At first I thought it was going to be a conditioning class, my attitude sunk a bit. Personally I don’t like going to a BJJ class for conditioning, it’s not what I’m there for. I’m there to either drill, learn a new skill to drill, or fight. I can do my own conditioning outside of class. Fortunately, it was a full hour of rolling. 

We were running slightly late when we arrived at the training center. Samir was renting space in it, much like Wim was doing up in Leuven. We headed to the locker room to change out, and then up to the training area. It was a small area, but large enough to train in. In fact, it was about average size compared to the rest of the gyms on my trip. I started my normal warmup of stretching, with mostly loosening the knees and hips up as I use them the most when grappling. 

A lot of the rolls and specifics are really eluding me at the present moment. I do recall having some good rolls, and some not so good rolls. One of the rolls that does come to memory was against a rather big, and seasoned, white belt. He didn’t say much, nor have much in terms of facial expressions. He was big, fast, strong, and young. And this wasn’t his first year of training. Samir would tell me later that this specific white belt had come from another school, one that was populated with a lot of smaller training partners. This white belt was the largest by far, and the strongest. His game developed into one of strength and speed, as he was doing only no-gi in the couple of years prior to joining the Werdum Ruckus Clan in Zurich. A lot of what Samir said made sense looking back on the match. The white belts sole intent seemed to be to out power me in every position. I would eventually get him onto his back, but keeping him there would prove to be a chore. 

At some point I ended up catching an elbow right to the top of the eye, putting me out for a few seconds or so I believe. I just remember feeling heat, seeing stars, my vision going black, and realizing I had whoever I was grappling in my half guard tight. I suppose thats a plus, unless someone is continuously raining blows down on my face from above. 

The time finally came for me to roll with Samir. Samir is a four stripe brown belt, on the verge of getting his black belt at any moment. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, but what ended up happening I wasn’t expecting at all. Normally I feel like I can roll for a bit with any skill level without feeling like it’s my first day again. Every once in a great while I will run into someone who’s skill level is just light years ahead of mine and they absolutely destroy me. Samir would be no different. 

We slapped hands and he immediately came after me. His grips were ridiculously strong, so strong that 90% of the time I couldn’t remove them.   Samir pulled me into his spider guard, I popped down into the “headquarters” position that we had learned from Saulo Ribeiro during a seminar last year. The next moment I was flat on my back, struggling to get back some semblance of guard. I succeeded in roping him into my half guard, only to have a powerful knee slide pass performed on me. Now I was in side control with a skilled behemoth on top of me. Without much effort Samir took the mount position, and then rolled me over into his full guard like I was a rag doll. Armbar, triangle, omoplata…the submissions and sweeps just kept coming and coming. Everything I tried he immediately found my weak point and capitalized on it. The bell rang, I was relieve to get away from Samir with what little pride I had left. 

Talking with one of the purple belts directly after the round with Samir, I exclaimed my surprise at Samir’s skills, speed, strength, and technique. The purple belt just laughed and said “I know, I know”. I’m glad I wasn’t the only one in the gym who struggled against Samir. I would be looking forward to watching his matches in Rome, I had a feeling that he would end up dominating his division pretty easily. Seeing him in the Open division would be even more impressive. 

Overall I thought the evening went pretty well. Like i said, I had some good matches and some not so good matches. The biggest thing to take out of this is that a lack of sleep will degrade your performance on the mats. I’m sure this isn’t a relegation to anyone (including myself) reading this. But actually living through it was a great reminder to be well rested and in good condition before even thinking about stepping out onto the mats for a competition. 

Ozaka Academy (somewhere outside of Strasbourg) 3-29-14

I misunderstood Yannick about where we were supposed to meet. He gave me the tram route and stated they would meet me “at the station”. I interpreted that as the main station, rather than the last stop which is what he meant. I made my way to the main station and looked around for a good wifi connection, finally I found one. I messaged Yannick and he said they were running a bit behind and would be at the station in a minute. After a bit I messaged him back, and told him where I was standing. It turns out he was at the last stop before the main station. But not to worry, they were on their way to pick me up and take me to their normal Saturday training location. 

I ended up seeing Yannick before he noticed me and walked out to meet him. We exchanged pleasantries while walking into the direction of our ride. I had originally thought that we were taking a train out, but one of the guys from the academy was going to drive us to the other academy. We were running behind schedule. We jumped into the Mini Cooper and started our journey. The guy in the backseat with me I had not meet the night before. He introduced himself and asked me a bit about my trip. He was originally from Finland and had moved down to Strasbourg with his wife. He wasn’t working at the present time, for whatever reason, and spent his free time training when he could and taking care of their child. He seemed like a pretty nice guy. 

We arrived at the academy after about 25-30 minutes of frantic driving on the French highway out of Strasbourg. The academy was situated in a smaller village. The guy who owned it wasn’t training that day but owned the house behind the academy and usually trained on Saturdays. From the outside it looked like a nice little place. The inside was equally pleasing. A decent sized entryway with mats and exercise equipment, good sized locker rooms with full sized showers, and a decent sized mat area for training both BJJ and kickboxing. I’d say the main area could accommodate around 20-30 students at a time, snuggly. 

The instructor for the day was a purple belt, who had been out at CREPS the night before. He was a bit smaller in stature, but pretty fierce on the mat. When I got dressed out into my gi, I headed out onto the mats where the drilling for the day had already started. 

The first exercise we worked on was creating space for the leg lasso/spider guard. The instructor showed, and insisted, that it was better to have the lasso hook in deep rather than shallow. He emphasized that it should be nearer to ukes butt rather than the chest or the arm. Doing so would give you better control of ukes hips, which is always a good thing. However, if all you can get is the arm or torso, it’ better than nothing. 

The next part of the progression was a sweep from the lasso/spider guard. You want to get cat claw grips on both arms of uke. Next you want to hip out (shrimp), then you extend uke to break down their posture and help to make space. You want to then apply your leg lasso. I shrimped to my left, so the left leg was the first lasso that I applied. As I said in the last paragraph, you want to get it as deep as possible, keeping your left side elbow as tight to your hip as possible. If you need to, crunch up to help get the elbow tight. Then you want to open up your hips and knees in the direction of your leg lasso. You should be able to push uke over just from this action alone. If by chance uke has a strong base, then you want to use your free leg (in my case my right leg) to kick through ukes arm and torso to force the sweep. The kicking motion should be high into the armpit and in the direction that you want to take them. 

The next movement was an arm bar from the lasso, although it should be noted that it’s from a failed omoplata set up (or a faked one). Your right hand will reach across for a crossed cat claw grip, while your left hand reaches for the gi pants. From here you start to sit up and reach your left hand to cross grip ukes free arm, again with a cat claw grip. Hip out to make some space, with your right leg coming up and over ukes same side arm (which would be his left arm, but on your right side). You need to go very deep with this, so deep that your place your foot as a hook below ukes butt. You keep your left hand with it’s cat claw grip, while scooting forward on your butt until your hamstring/thigh can hold ukes left arm by itself. I should note that when you have the opportunity that you should cat claw grip that arm you have trapped again with your left hand. Your right arm will come across ukes chest, reaching under his right arm through the armpit with your palm clutching the upper back or shoulder. You want to place your left foot on the ground close to ukes leg, also letting go of your left handed grip to place your hang onto the ground near you to help you with the rest of the movement. From here you push off with your left leg that is on the ground in the direction of your right shoulder. You’re going to backwards roll over your right shoulder to complete the movement. As your push off and your right shoulder starts to touch the ground, you want to kick up and through with your right leg (remember the hook you had here?). This will help you to keep your momentum while rolling through. You should end up in knee on belly, while trapping ukes left arm with you right arm (not as difficult as it sounds). From here you keep that arm tight against your body, moving your left leg over and over his head. This is a very tight position when executed properly, with minimal chance of escape for uke. 

We rolled for a time after the drilling session. My mind still wasn’t as clear as it should have been, probably due to the exhaustion of traveling. I need to start taking notes directly after training and rolling. There were some pretty good matches, with me throwing in some “lockdown” for good measure here and there. Funnily enough, right before the Metamoris match between Bravo and Gracie. My main focus throughout these rolls was to get to, and maintain a dominant top position and pressure. 

On the ride back to Strasbourg, Yannick mentioned he was having a Metamoris viewing party at his flat later that evening. He asked if I would like to attend. I said sure, but inquired as to the time. He said it didn’t start until 2300. I told him I wanted to make sure I made it to the train early in the morning, and that I also didn’t want to show up at my couch surfing hosts house at like 0200 or 0300 in the morning. Yannick said he would check and see if his roommate would be home, and if note that I could sleep on his couch. I said that would help me out a lot and I would wait to here back from him before canceling my hosting option with Troy. 

I got back to Troy’s place and we talked for a bit about the different things he was working on. Mainly that he was developing a business plan for “democracy engineering”. I’m not going to go into the details about it here, because it’s a very intricate subject that would be better explained by him. In short, I find it to be a pretty interesting idea but I have my reservations about it due to the amount of work and marketing that would need to be put into such a venture. However, more has been done with less in the past. Troy pointed out some cool local tourist like locations that I should check out in my free time. I took up his idea and told him I would be back in a few hours. I also notified him about the possible plans I had with Yannick, but that I was waiting to get a definite answer from him (Yannick). 

I roamed about the Orange Park, the Council of Europe, the European Court for Human Rights, and the European Union Parliament buildings. I like to take artsy pictures. Before I was laid off work 4-5 years ago I owned a pretty nice DSLR camera that I used to take a lot of good pictures with.  Sadly I had to sell it before becoming employed again just to pay bills. Before my trip to Europe, I picked up a basic run of the mill Nikon “point and shoot” camera. So far I’ve been very pleased with the pictures I’ve taken with it. 

I ended up between the European Court for Human Rights and the European Union Parliament building, realizing I had to use the restroom…and use it soon. It slowly dawned on me that I wasn’t in the United States anymore, where we have public toilets on just about every street corner. In Europe, toilets are hard to come by. My options raced through my head, could I find a grove of trees out of public view? What about those buildings on the other side of the road? The European Parliament building also looked like it could be a good private spot. Hell, what about that bridge there next to the Parliament building? No, no, no, and no. I noticed a sign up ahead for a tennis club and restaurant/bar. Surely I could fake my way in there and handle my business. And that’s just what I did. I’d like to report some sort of awesome story about it, but sadly I just walked in and took a piss. 

I heard from Yannick and I was going to be able to stay at his place that evening. I notified Troy when I got back to his flat, he seemed a bit let down that I wouldn’t be spending the night there to converse more with him. The feeling was mutual, he seemed like a pretty damn interesting person. However, I felt that it was only fair for me to give the rest of my time to the team that allowed me to train with them. 

I made my way over to Yannick’s, we were slated to meet most of the people who were going to watch the fights at his place for dinner at a “Chinese” place for dinner down the street at 2100. When we arrived at the Chinese place, I noticed a lot of familiar faces who were going to eat with us. I fielded a lot of the same questions over and over again through the night about my trip. I started to feel like a broken record, and probably became a bit annoyed about having to repeat myself again and again. So, if any of you are reading this, I apologize if I seemed a bit annoyed. My personality is such that I don’t like to repeat myself again and again, it’s very uninteresting for me. However, I didn’t want to seem entirely rude and ignore the questions, so I rolled with it. 

Metamoris ended up lasting a hell of a lot longer than I thought it would. It was interesting to be around a bunch of French people, speaking only French about 75% of the time. Every once and a while they would switch to English to bring me in on the jokes and into the conversations. Metamoris ended up being much like the last one, predictable and pretty boring overall. I really only wanted to watch the Bravo/Gracie fight, but was pleasantly surprised to see a Rickson Gracie black belt (Casey) step in for Vinny Maghalas (spelling is wrong) and fight Keenen Cornilias (spelling). We ended up wrapping up the night around 0430, and I needed to be up to catch my train to Zurich at 0730. Another day of sleep deprivation. 

Hopefully Rome will offer more chances for sleep due to being in one spot for a few more days than I have been and being around a bunch of guys that are competing. 

Gracie Barra 67 3-28-14

I had a rough night of attempting to sleep at the hostel in Leuven. Some younger Russian guys had checked into the hostel earlier in the evening, and I was also told that the night to go out and party was on Thursdays in Leuven. Needless to say, I figured I would go out myself and have a few good Belgian beers to help lull me to sleep in the hopes of not hearing any noise in the hallway until I had to be up at around 6am. Sadly, things didn’t work out at that. 

When I did wake up, I was running late. I had to run from the hostel to the train station with my 25-30 kilogram pack attached to me. I was still half asleep, so it was a good wakeup. When I arrived at the ticket counter at the station, I had no idea what line was for what, so I took a gamble and jumped into one. My 50-50 gamble didn’t payoff. When I arrived to the ticket person, he told me to go into the other line for a ticket to Strasbourg. Looking at the other line, there were already 5 people in it. I walked over to the other line, knowing that time was running short. By the time I got the ticket I was informed I had two minutes to make it to the proper platform.

I was off running again, from the ticket office to the platform, which wasn’t too far. I had to run up a couple of flights of stairs and back down a few more to make it to platform 1. As I glanced over at the tracks from the top of the stairs I could see that the train was still there. Perfect. As I got onto the platform and approached the train it pulled away. Rather than being angry, I went back to the ticketing office to see what my options were.

The ticket person was pretty nice during the whole ordeal, and hooked me up with a different route. The route would take a little more time, but it would put me into Strasbourg with more than enough time to get to the training center that the Gracie Barra 67 team trained at. It was difficult to catch up on sleep during the train ride. I had four different train changes along the route and I was deeply afraid I would miss one due to my getting on the wrong train on my route to Leuven just days before. 

When I arrived to Strasbourg I was completely spent. Going off just a few hours of rest wasn’t enough for my body. I needed rest and food, but not too much food as I was still a couple of kilograms heavy for my no-gi weight limit in in about a week away. I spent about an hour running around the train station trying to find free wifi. There seemed to be a ton of open access points, but they all required me to register or input a mobile number (which I didn’t have access to). I finally found a wifi access point that I could connect to without any requirements and messaged Yannick, my French connection. 

Yannick had originally offered me transportation to and from training, but his car had just blown a tire out and he wasn’t going to be able to pick me up. My host from couchsurfing.com had also messaged me and told me that he had some other arrangements come up and that he wouldn’t be able to meet up with me until later in the evening, which was fine for me because the BJJ training wasn’t done until that time anyhow. In the meantime I downloaded the map route to my phone via the wifi connection and then set off for a much needed coffee from the McDonalds across the street. 

I’ve been playing a fun game of “don’t act like an American” while in most of Europe. In Iceland, I assume due to my viking like beard, I would walk into places and have people have a conversation with me in Icelandic before I would inform them I didn’t speak Icelandic. They were good sports. In the Netherlands and Belgium if I needed something, rather than outright speaking English, I would ask people in Portuguese if they spoke Portuguese. I knew that it would be a very minimal chance that someone would speak Portuguese in either country, and they would always in turn ask if I spoke English. Of course I would inform them I did with a perfect American accent, but that never seemed to bother anyone. I still played dumb in France, even when ordering my coffee at the McDonalds, requesting in Portuguese a small coffee only to have the worker behind the counter look at me perplexed and offer to take my order in English. It wasn’t until the next day that I ran into a Frenchman who actually lived in Brasil for a time and spoke better Portuguese than me and my illusion was broken. 

I decided to head to CREPS early, just in case I was to get lost in my sleep deprived state. And in case you’re wondering, I did in fact get lost. My GPS on my phone was acting up, so there were a few times I thought I was going the wrong way and would get off the tram and jump onto another one. At some point I ended up close to where I needed to be and decided to walk the rest of the way. According to my map there was a short cut from where I got off the tram at, and the club should only be about 600-700 meters from my current position. As I started walking that direction I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to make it through the forrest or the tall wall standing in my way. I backtracked and ran into some people that I asked desperately for directions to CREPS. After discussing the proper way to go amongst themselves in French for a few minutes, they informed me that I would have to go around the long way.

Off I went again, walking and walking. Probably a few kilometers to cover. By this point the burning on my shoulders from the weight of my pack was giving way to an ever so slight numbness, which was a bit of a relief. I ended up making it to the complex, but slowly realized I didn’t know which of the many buildings it was located in. I again tried to find some open wifi network only to be denied access again and again. Finally it dawned on my that I had my inbox of messages on reddit.com open on my laptop with Yannick’s directions to the gym once I got to CREPS. It was a bit like a scavenger hunt: look for this building…that’s not it, follow it’s path over a brig, keep going through a grove, out the other side you will see a building, that’s the place. Thankfully, I found it. 

As I walked in, class had already started. There was no-gi for an hour and then gi for an hour. I noticed a couple of guys standing with half their gi on and walked up and asked if they knew “Yawn-Ick”. They said they didn’t, I told them that he had invited me out to train for the evening. I pulled out my laptop and showed them the name, which I of course was mispronouncing, because they immediately said “Oh yeah, he’s over there!”. Yannick was training a distance from us and as I looked over his way he happened to be looking our way. He jogged over and introduced himself in person. I told him I was pretty tired and would most likely skip the nogi portion of things. However, I knew if I didn’t get out and train I would end up falling asleep on the bleachers. I reluctantly ran over to the mens room and changed out into my no-gi gear and headed back out to the mats. 

Yannick was nice enough to stick by my side and interrupt the important bits to english for me. We worked on five different triangle setups. Ranging from the traditional pop the arm through and elevate the hips to some others which I can’t remember due to my tiredness at the time. I do recall doing a sparing session that the bottom person could only use triangles as a submission, no sweeps or other submissions. The top person was only allowed to attempt passes, no submissions. I ended up paired up with a young lady by the name of Marie, who seemed very intense about her training. She was also equality interested in my trip, asking me all kinds of questions. I thought it was pretty cool that someone would take such an interest in my little journey after only knowing me for a few moments. There were a few other training partners for the drill, but honestly a lot of it was a blur. 

 *note* I had to confirm the rest with Yannick because there was a block of time I don’t recall. I do remember telling him multiple times that I was going to fall asleep on the mats at anytime. I guess I went into autopilot at some point. 

After no-gi was over, it was time to suit up for gi. All the guys were dropping their no-gi stuff out in the open, down to their underwear. At my academy we would get yelled at like a five year old for doing such things. I was too tired to care about my American modesty, so I followed along and dressed out right in the open. We lined up and started the class with a light warmup. My legs were burnt out from all the running around and walking I had did through the day with my decently heavy pack on me. Just lightly jogging around the mats was a huge task.

After the warmup, we ended up doing some functional drills. The first that we did was standing from the guard. It was essentially placing your hands on the partners ribs and jumping up into a standing position. This is a bit different from the couple of ways that I’ve seen standing in guard, but I went along with it. My partner was a rather large, and Eastern European sounding dude who didn’t talk a whole lot, other than to apologize for putting a ton of pressure on me during the drill. When it was my turn against I had to fight against my legs giving out on me, the exhaustion was really getting to me. I needed sleep badly. The next drill was simply sliding the bottom hook into an opponent who had turned away from you, be it in side control or from the turtle position. While I prefer to slide the overbook in first with the legs, this is the second time I’ve seen an academy in Europe shoot for the underside hook for taking the back. There was another drill that we performed, but neither Yannick nor I recall what it was. Before sparring, Salah (the head brown belt of the club) showed us a choke from knee on belly, where you grab the lapel from behind the opponents neck. 

Yannick helped me remember the choke we went over with the following:

From sidecontrol, you grab the far side lapel, feed it under the arm to your free hand. Then you go knee on belly, and the free hand grabs the lapel, palm up, but passing on the same side you're on. After the second hand lets go of the lapel, reach over the head, grab the lapel again and bring the forearm in front on the opponents throat, and then you press down. We also variation where the opponent blocks the hand from getting the last grip, in which case the hand pushes the blocking arm away into an arm triangle. (Thanks Yannick!)

The sparring portion of the class came next. I was dreading this a bit. It’s not my goal to destroy anyone at any of these academies that I am visiting, but I do want to look like I am a proper blue belt and uphold Rodrigo’s name. The exhaustion was there, but I knew as long as I stuck to my basics, I would be fine. There were some alright matches on my end, and some pretty lackluster ones. The one match I recall in particular was with another blue belt. When he motioned for me to come over, he said “lets go light and easy”. Great, I thought. That’s exactly what I was in the mood for. The next thing I knew I was tapping to a pretty strong arm bar. I got up, a bit visibly angry, and said “well, so much for going light?”. My training partner said “sorry, when I see a submission I go for it”. I should have known better, as there is a stereotype that when you hear someone say “let’s go light” that it’s going to be the exact opposite. Talking to some of the guys later, the person in question always goes 110%, not out of ill intentions though. But rather that’s just his style of grappling. My anger had worn off before the match was over. I was too tired to care. 

                                                             The Gracie Barra 67 Team              

                                          Salah, me, Yannick

The negative of Yannick’s car being out of commission meant that I was going to have to navigate to my hosts house blindly. I had no google map downloaded for the return trip from the club. Thankfully Yannick and Ahmed (one of the purple belts of the club, and a cool guy) spent most of the journey back with me, with Yannick walking me all the way back to make sure I didn’t get lost. We arrived at the hosts flat, said our goodbyes and planned on meeting up in the morning at the train station.

I walking slowly up the stairs to my hosts flat. I had contacted Troy through couchingsurfing.com in the hopes of having not having to pay a big amount for a hotel or hostel in Strasbourg. Troy stood out from the rest of the hosts in the area for a couple of reasons. First of all he had very high couch surfing ratings from other couch surfers, always a plus. Next, reading his information on the website made him sound like a pretty intelligent guy. I figured there would be some interesting conversations to be had while in his company, and I wasn’t let down.

There was a younger German couple staying in the flat also, which meant I would be sleeping on a  bedroll on the floor. I told Troy that I was so tired I wouldn’t mind sleeping on the floor itself at this point. He seemed a little surprised about that and insisted that I place some couch cushions on top of the bedroll with a sheet on top to hold them in place. It turned out to be a brilliant idea.