Wash

It's almost big-laundry time.

When training at the Gracie Academy in LA, the expectation is that students have a fresh gi for each session. For most people this is not a problem. A typical student attends 2 or 3 classes a week.

In my two-week period there, I will be attending 26 classes. If I don't want to have two dozen uniforms, I'll have to do laundry; lots of laundry; all the time.

I have 5 uniforms. That will last the first two days.

The last time I was there, laundry got done every day. The hotel we stayed in had a weird little laundry room only accessible from the parking lot. It was sort of outside. This meant that when my weird internal alarm would go off at 5am, I could start the wash without bothering any of the guests.

This visit we'll be staying with Denise, our friend. I seriously doubt that dawn laundry will be an option. An opportunity will have to be found at a more normal time of day.

I have my eye on a new extra-baggy gi, so I will actually have more uniforms than needed for any two days of the training.

That means I can get away with twice a week. It would be more, but 2 classes each week are no-gi, which means shorts and rashguards instead of big, white suits.

That might seem organized, but it really isn't. We are not just mellow folks who will sit around Denise's place chatting, drinking tea, and doing laundry on a controlled schedule. Every spare moment we're out, checking out new areas of town, or going to malls, or to the beach, or our activities, or Disneyland, or maybe Hollywood.

That means that if an opening for a load of washing or drying happens, I'll grab it. If I don't, we may want to be out having sushi or walking Venice beach when my supply of uniforms has run out. I have to try and keep the fluffed and folded pile up to date.

There is even an emergency backup. The Gracie Academy has a system of renting uniforms for $10. If Disneyland or Outlet Malls cause me to run out of suits, I can break down and go that route. It would be over a couple of hundred bucks to do the entire trip that way. I find that unacceptably high, but a day or two using that route is an option.

I suppose I'll have to squeeze our normal laundry in there somewhere.