Belt Balance

I usually claim that getting a Purple Belt in Gracie Jiu-Jitsu is more-or-less the same as getting a Black Belt in most other martial arts.

This tends to upset Black Belts from other martial arts.

Let's look at three of my friends; Elizabeth, Tobias, and Rob. They all started training in Jiu-Jitsu at the same time that they started doing Hapkido.

All three will be testing for their Hapkido Black Belts about four months from now with every expectation of success. At that time, they should all have reached the Gracie Jiu-Jitsu rank of Blue Belt Stripe Three. For the most senior of them, Elizabeth, a Gracie Purple Belt will still be 3-12 months in the future.

When they get their Hapkido Black Belts, they will have done about 3.5 years training in both arts.

This, however, is only part of the picture. They also train twice as many hours per week in Gracie Jiu-Jitsu as they do in Hapkido.

If I pass for my own Purple Belt when I take my test in 2016, I will have done 4.5 years of Jiu-Jitsu training. I earned my Shotokan Karate Black Belt in just over 4 years.

I have already trained longer in Jiu-Jitsu that I did to earn my Shotokan Black Belt, and I am only a Blue Belt Stripe Four. Like my friends, I train more hours per week in Jiu-Jitsu than I did in Karate, but not twice as much.

If anything, a Gracie Purple Belt is a bigger deal than getting a Black Belt in either Shotokan Karate or Hapkido.

If that is true, what does it mean to get a get a Gracie Brown Belt, or even a Black one?

A Shotokan student keen to progress can take the test for Second Degree Black Belt after two years. Two years after earning a Gracie Purple Belt, a student can reasonably expect to receive their third stripe. The fastest they can get a Third Degree Black Belt would be three years after that, at which time a Gracie student would have reached a Brown Belt with three stripes.

Best to just round these things, and say that a Brown Belt is about the equivalent of a Second Degree Karate Black Belt, and a Gracie Black Belt is about the same as a Karate Third Degree.

Sunday

I've loved Sundays for all of my adult life.

I used to regularly work Saturdays, so maybe that set in my love of Sundays so much. Helen always preferred Saturdays, as it meant there was more of the weekend left.

Now, we are both retired and it's kind of silly to prefer one day of leisure over another, but I still really like Sundays.

For many years we used to head out for Sunday buffet brunch. That seems to have gone out of style around our home, as none of the restaurants do that anymore. Sometimes, we still go out for bacon and eggs, and it's always a fun treat.

Today it's Sunday, and the sky is bright. Helen has something written on her calendar, so I don't think a restaurant breakfast is in the cards. It doesn't matter. Things still have that lazy, Sunday feel.

These days I am remarkably scheduled up for a retired dude. I have Jiu-Jitsu classes to attend just about every day, sometimes two. None are on Sunday. I like Jiu-Jitsu a lot, and look forward to it, but it's kind of nice to have a day when none is possible. Rest day.

So, sooner or later Helen will head off to her activity, whatever it is. I might have pants on by then, but maybe not. In either my pyjamas or pants, I'll most probably still be lodged firmly in my big, puffy chair.

There are recorded fights to watch, and video games to play. It is possible that I'll feel like chores, but it's just as likely that I won't.

Sunday.

Refugees

I hate all the crap people throw up about the Syrian refugees that are about to be brought to Canada.

I know you've heard this one; “We can't even take care of our own homeless/veterans/poor and they should be first.”

Possibly, but we aren't going to take care of them wither or not refugees are let in. That's not how it works. It isn't a zero sum.

It's like people giving to charity at Christmas. It might be nice if we gave all year, but we don't. Some people get all preachy and loud about it, but all such an argument does is discourage people from being generous during the holidays. The overall effect is less for the poor, so just shut up about it.

Denying charity to the Syrian refugees doesn't mean more for Canada's existing poor, it just means we'll be doing less good in general.

And how did that argument about not taking care of Veterans creep in? Our former government did all it could get away with in cutting back on Veteran's care. That was before the Syrian crisis. It was a deliberate policy by a right-wing government to screw over a deserving portion of our population while cutting corporate and wealth taxes. That party, although defeated, still got the second largest portion of the vote. Not much voter outrage, it seems.

Or how about this? If you are using the “take care of our own” angle in your thinking, start writing to your MP and the PM telling them that you want spending increased enough to take care of all our own needy, and for Syrian refugees as well.

Think we can't afford it? That's nonsense. We can afford what ever we choose to. For the six years between 1939 and 1945 Canada put over a million men and women into uniform, and maintained them with a reasonable level of care, and paid them. This, at a time when our total population was just over 11 million. There are currently over three times as many of us, and if you think we can't find food and beds for 20,000 Syrian refugees for a little while, you're nuts.

I also really hate the anti-immigration argument that he foreigners are coming to take our jobs. Economies don't work that way. Let's say a country has a population of “x”, and they have “y” number jobs. Double the population to “2x”, you end up with “2y” jobs. Of course, the number of refugees coming in represents more like 0.05 percent of our population, so the increase in jobs will also be 0.05 percent. Granted, it is not instantaneous, but that's how it really works.

People also fear there are secret ISIS moles within the refugee population. There just might be, but they are saying that we should refrain from taking care of people that need help because we are afraid of a tiny threat.

And do you honestly think that an ISIS terrorist couldn't get to Canada without hiding amongst the refugees? That really seems like a ridiculously inefficient way to go about it.

Just when did Canada become such a land of cowards?

France was the victim of the recent attack, and they are refusing to be scared into denying the refugees safe haven. Their attitude seems to be that,“we decided to do what was right before we were attacked, and if it was the right thing to do then, it still is now. We will not be bullied into compromising our beliefs.”

At War?

Let's get one thing straight. If you are at war with somebody, and they kill some of your citizens, you should not be surprised.

And you also better get straight the difference between intentions and actions. When western countries say they are using surgical air strikes, they may be trying hard to hit only “military” targets, but they miss more than they hit. The bombs kill more innocent bystanders than they ever do the people they are meant to kill.

France has been involved in air strikes against ISIS in Syria for quite a while. They are one of the leading western nations in this regard.

Air strikes are an act of war. They are not a form of policing. They are death from the sky. Is it surprising that ISIS decided to strike back?

Clearly they can't launch air strikes of their own, so they use the limited tools they have available. This should also not have been a surprise.

They aimed at civilians, and killed civilians. Air strikes aim to cripple an enemy, and yet still kill civilians. In a balance sheet of death between by western airstrikes in Syria, and deaths in Paris, I'm confident that the western countries have killed many, many more people.

Our new Prime Minister pledged that he would end Canada's involvement in anti-ISIS airstrikes. He is sticking to this despite both domestic and international pressure not to.

I agree with his decision. Bombing is an act of war. Canada is not currently at war with anyone, and should not be conducting air strikes against anybody. To do so would be immoral.

If we decide that we are, in fact, at war, then we better be ready to take losses due to acts of terrorism. They will strike back, and their choices of methods are quite limited.

Perhaps you will have noticed in the news how much Britain seems to be reacting to the Paris bombings. This is because their contribution to the anti-ISIS air campaign is much greater than France's.

Russia has also exploded on the scene by getting involved in the air war. Within weeks they also had one of their civilian aircraft brought down, with no survivors, by an ISIS explosive device planted on board. Do you see a pattern?

War is not one-sided. You kill theirs, and they'll do whatever it takes to kill yours.

It this, they will succeed.

Genoa and Home

October 25-November 1

Genoa was a funny place. They kept claiming weird things. They claim to have invented foccacia bread. They also claim to know which house was Columbus's. It seems to be the only surviving residence from that era. Strange that in the real world the consensus is that there is no evidence linking him to Genoa other than his own claims. They also say they invented blue jeans, as opposed to everybody else's opinion that they were created during the 1848 California Gold Rush. There's a lot of that kinda thing here.

Anyhow, our days filled with street walks, mini train voyages, hunting around for food, and visiting museums.

Might be a good time to compare our rooms across the entire trip. The cruise will be left out.

All of the accommodations have been fine, but very different. In Vienna we had a shower and sink, but the toilet was communal and down the hall. Everyplace else we had sink, shower and toilet. Salzburg was exactly that, but every place in Italy seemed to think a bidet was a must. Venice, Monterosso, and Rapallo all had nice ones, which we got quite into using. The last stop, Genoa, was different. No separate bidet, but a horrifying looking nozzle built into a very strange and ancient toilet seat that we assume was supposed to fulfil the same function. We kept our hands off the controls.

Water pressure varied widely, but was good enough. We sink-washed laundry everywhere. Venice had a problem with drying due to humidity until we figured out how to blast the heater to Sahara level.

All of the breakfast setups were swell. In Salzburg, it wasn't included so we found our own downtown each day.

We ate differently in each town. In Vienna we had a slew of schnitzel meals. Helen had a few herring buns, and I had vaguely Asian noodles from fast-food stands. In Salzburg, we ate absolutely nothing but pretzels and pastry for three days. Venice was pizza and pasta. Monterosso we did pasta and calamari several times, and our one eat in Rapallo had Helen having a chicken salad and I had lamb and squid on sticks. In Genoa it was mostly stuff from wee shops that we ate on church steps or walking, and sometimes groceries in our room.

So finally our last day arrived. We were up at 4am to catch the 5:24 bus from the train station to the aeroporto. We were waddling up the street by 4:30. The only difficulty was that Helen's injured leg decided to hurt again. She was limping. Got to the bus stop in plenty of time. There was one other person waiting when a taxi came and offered to take us for the same price as the bus. We took him up on it.

The airport was small, and with a slightly non-traditional layout. We got to gate 2 with a comfortable margin.

The plan called for a flight to Paris, then another to Amsterdam, with the final ten-hour leg to follow.

The first flight was right on time; landing us in Paris's Charles de Gualle airport at terminal 2g. We had to figure out that we needed to go to building 2f to get to our gate. That entailed a bus ride, followed by a long walk for Helen's sore leg. We made it. I don't like tight connections at all.

So they loaded us on. The seat next to mine turned out to be empty, which gave me extra stretch-out space. The bad news came that we would be camping there a while due to heavy fog in Amsterdam. As they are KLM, they broke out sodas and snacks while we waited. We could only hope that our Canada-bound plane would still be there for us.

More snacks and drinks once we were in the air, but it turned out that Amsterdam was still a fog bank. We got as far as Rotterdam, and then had to circle, awaiting the OK to finish the flight. After a few loops, we did.

Just before landing, they announced the connecting flights that would be tight, and the two that were impossible. It seems the missed flight only mattered to 6 passengers, out of several hundred. They said all others were OK, but to hurry.

We hurried, and covered the hundred miles or so to our gate. Helen was amazing. We got there exactly at boarding time, and so got into the queue before most of the folks seated and waiting. Helen got another window seat, this time not directly over the wing. On our other four flights she always had an obstructed view. The flight was on the same kind of plane that we came on; 8 seats across. I think the middle 4 must suck. First thing, I got the trip-tracker view on the tiny screen on the seat-back in front of me.

Off we flew. I stopped caring about delay time, as our Vancouver ETA was 2:38pm. That worked for us. That made a 5:30pm ferry possible, and a 7:30 a definite certainty. Even the later boat would get us home before 10:00pm.

Racing like lunatics through airports, with three flights totalling over 13 hours crammed into very restricted spaces. It is doing no favours to Helen's leg injury, and also had my mildly arthritic knees nicely aching. This, even considering that these are the best airline seats for comfort that we've sat in for a good many years. KLM is wonderful compared to what North American airlines consider adequate leg room. Neither of us is even tall, or has any real mobility issues.

On a North American airline I can only really handle maybe Los Angeles range. Even going to Florida is a trial. Might have to at least investigate business class prices. I doubt we can choke those down, but sometimes there are Economy Plus seats with more room at less astronomical rates.

There was then customs to get by, and a skytrain to catch.

It all actually went very smoothly. Rode the train to town, and waited a bit in the rain for the bus to the ferry. After the boat, there was an express bus waiting to take us swiftly to our town. It being Sunday, there was no connecting bust to West Sechelt, but there was a taxi sitting nearby, which we grabbed for the last few miles to get home.

It all added up to about seven more hours of travel after we got off our flight from Europe.

Ronda Falls

Just watched the Ronda Rousey and Holly Holm fight.

It is being called the biggest upset ever, and here's my two cents about what I saw.

First off, the fighters' backgrounds.

Ronda Rousey is a Judo savant. Her takedowns and ground game are just about perfect. Since joining mma, she has worked hard to fill in the holes in her game, notably striking. She found herself a boxing coach that she likes, and has made him her top coach. As a result, she's a pretty fair banger now.

Holly Holm is a boxer, and is world class. She has also trained in kickboxing, and her mma fights clearly show that she has top-level kicking in her game. She says that she's been training with Rousey in mind just about forever. That implies a lot of work on take-down defence and on grappling.

Perhaps Ronda's biggest weakness is that she trains and fights on emotion, and has a very big ego.

Out the two women came, reached boxing range, and started to exchange. Both scored, but Holly clearly was getting the better of it, especially in hard shots landed.

For most of the first round, it was Ronda chasing after Holly, reaching punching range, and stopping to punch. Of the two, Holly was faster going backwards than Ronda was going forwards.

Ronda was moving her feet like a boxer, but Holly was not. She was moving fast, like a Karate or Tae Kwon Do fighter. She would dodge under a Rousey flurry and be half way across the ring before Ronda would get turned around again. Holly moved fast.

After a few exchanges, it became clear that Ronda wanted to grapple, but she kept moving like a boxer. She would chase Holly, catch up, slow down, and box while moving slowly forward. Holly would flee, let Ronda catch up, and punch while still moving backward too fast for Ronda to close on.

At one point, Ronda took Holly down, but Holm scrambled away fast. The few other times Ronda managed to grapple, Holly got out. Ronda should have never permitted that, but it seemed she was more concerned about throwing a few shots as Holly escaped rather than doing everything possible to stop her.

You could also see Ronda lose her level of comfort. She is usually totally composed in the ring, and even though intense she fights relaxed. Being all banged up and confused, she was burning way too much energy to no good effect. She was breathing hard on returning to her corner after round one. She never breaths hard.

Between the rounds, her top coach (the guy that has taught her to punch and to move slowly like a boxer), told her to keep doing what she was doing. What she was doing was getting her ass kicked.

So round two was a continuation of round one. At one point the exhausted Ronda slipped, and got up facing away from Holm. This was a rookie mistake caused by fatigue and confusion.

Bam; a headkick took her down, and it was all over.

Holly fought the perfect fight. Ronda did not. Holly has clearly trained in exactly the right way to fight Ronda, and the reverse was clearly not true.

For the rematch, the biggest thing Ronda needs to change is her understanding of distance.

In fighting Holm, she needs to be either safely out of range, or all the way in and grappling. Hanging around in punching range is not where she wants to be. This is something her boxing coach is not equipped to teach her. She has to learn how to blitz through the intervening distance, not plod.

She has also been training with too many distractions. She has become involved with Hollywood movie making nonsense, and has boyfriend issues. It is an axiom of fighting that too much of this sort of thing seriously compromises training focus.

Anyhow. That's my two cents.

Broken Trails

October 20-25


Monterosso is a sweet, twisty little place stuck on some steep hills beside the beautiful Mediterranean Sea. Both Google Maps and my gps map app agreed as to where our hotel was, and were both wrong, but we found it anyway. Very comfortable, and with the Gold Medal breakfast so far.

The town of Monterosso is the most northern in a series of similar, but unique, towns called the Cinque Terra (5 lands). In between are world-famous walking/hiking trails. During Mussolini's day, tunnels were blasted through the rugged terrain further connecting the towns by train, and also to the outside world. Later, roads were added.

On our first day we hiked to Vernazza. Hiked is sort of a misnomer, as half of the way involves climbing stairs up, and the next half is climbing stairs back down, and the third half is a regular rugged trail. I think there was a 4th half as well, and maybe a 5th. It was only 2.5 km, but took us three hours. I haven't thought about my knees in months, but this "walk" did them in. Very beautiful, though.

After getting to Vernazza, we strolled about gawking and taking pictures, then caught the train down to the southernmost town, Riomaggiore. The train took us home after that.

The next day we trained down to Manarola, and gave it the same treatment, followed by a swim in the Med. Is that the same as name dropping, I wonder?

Corniglia was the final town to visit. There, we went as far as we could on the closed coastal trail towards Manarola. It was a nice walk by the sea. We then climbed a million steps or two up to the tiny, non-coastal town. The guide books were correct about much smaller crowds. Had some kick-ass gelato there, then train rode home.

Time then, to move on to Rapallo for one night. No real reason, except I saw pictures of it that looked pretty, and it's halfway to our final destination of Genoa. The train tickets remained a bargain, but there was a warning that our train had a "delay 2," whatever that means. So we sat, hoping for the 10:07 regular time, and it showed up precisely as promised.

Rapallo is a very sweet, resort style town. Lots of small shops and eateries, and a nice promenade by the sea. It is our first Italian stop that doesn't cater to out-of-country visitors. It was bustling like a beehive when we arrived, but about 2pm it was as if a switch was thrown, and everybody vanished and everything closed. It was creepy. The switch flipped back late in the afternoon and all was hustling again. Final shutdown was 7pm-ish, but with the bars and eateries just getting started. Italian time.

Rapallo was just a one-night stand, then on to Genoa for the final week. It's a major city.

We were right in the Old Town, amidst the skinny, zigzag alleyways. The original plan for this stay was to take things as they came. Helen decided that she didn't want to miss anything, so that idea went out the window.

Vienna, Salzburg, Venice, Monterosso, and Rapallo all had good wifi, but our Genoa place did not. It did downstairs, but our room was five floors above that. The signal where we were was weak, slow, and intermittent. Only the cruise ship was worse, and that only because we won't pay their rates.

In the middle of our week I ordered Helen's new iphone, and an Apple TV box. I did that down in the breakfast room where the internet worked fine.