Wednesday - A Walk and some exercise
My morning routine is the usual. I don’t swim very long or far - I’ve noted that at the end of the longer swim I had on Monday, I found that it was beginning to get difficult to keep the fingers together so as to efficiently displace water. One thing I know I can’t use tonight is weak fingers.
The lady whose job it is to ask our room numbers and whether we’d like to be seated asks how my climb went and seems impressed that I went climbing at all. She advises to be on my guard when doing BJJ tonight. I fully intend to be.
There’s a few work related things I need to take care of (registering for the evening event on Thursday among them) and that takes a bit. I am inexplicably tired as well, so have an early nap as well.
Then, I go exploring. I come by a hairdresser (again) and decide to try my luck. I get the money I figure I’ll need to the end of the week and then (on my way back to the hotel - I plan not to carry that cash all over town) stop at the hairdresser. They don’t speak English, but communication really isn’t that hard when the subject area is limited and one isn’t afraid to look a little funny.
What’s left of my head hair gets the machine treatment, the beard is done free form with scissors and then I get a close shave with a straight razor. I try to relax, which isn’t quite easy…
Having dropped off the predominant part of the cash in my hotel room safe, I head out again into Ipanema proper, roughly bound for Leblon. I find a (guide-recommended) Café in a side street where I can sit outside with an inexpensive sandwich and a glass of water and watch life pass me by.
It’s hot today, and there’s a lot of young Cariocas out, dressed for the beach. My reverie is broken by the excruciating noise of a pair of brake pads looong overdue for a replacement. I look for the source of the squeal in annoyance, and catch the eye of the guy in the passenger seat of the offending vehicle. Who is a huge, powerfully built black man with tattooed arms who gives me a disarming smile and a thumbs up. I can’t help but grin at that and happily focus on my sandwich again. It’s such a nice contrast between what I expected and what happened. Rio seems to offer a number of these bright, happy moments arising in the most unexpected places. As the car moves off at the next switch of the light, I look up again, make eye contact again and offer a thumbs up of my own. The gesture is returned, with a smile and the car leaves (luckily not having to brake again until it’s out of earshot).
I look at some of the local handicraft, but find nothing that would seem to be a nice “Mitbringsel”. I do find a bookstore (again, guide-recommended) in which I buy a collection of short stories (Phillip K. Dick) and a CD (Metallica’s “Death Magnetic”). It’s also been on my to-do-list for a while and also cheaper here than it would be at home, but I decide that this is how far that particular justification is going to.
It’s a long walk back down much of the length of Praia Ipanema. Rio’s youth is out in force today. The beach is *packed* with people (mostly of the young, fit, heavily tanned Brazilian type). There’s a few left-over hippies in one stretch of the beach which, apparently for that reason, is colloquially referred to as “Elephant’s Graveyard”.
A bunch of the Cariocas are busy keeping a football in the air in circles of people, others play a game involving batting a wooden ball back and forth with wooden rackets. The sharp “crack!” of each impact and generally very flat trajectory tells me that I do *not* want to step between players of that particular game. Stepping between the footballers is nigh unavoidable, though - all the sports activities happen in that small stretch of sand that is regularly swept over by the waves and therefore provides more resistance than the deep, dry sand (which is also the reason I prefer to walk there).
Those that aren’t busy doing sports, are busy hanging out, eating and drinking. As I get closer to my exit and late afternoon turns toward evening, they pack their folding chairs and towels and, without a visible exception, leave their garbage behind. I’m too stunned to even be enraged.
The line for the buses back from Ipanema beach, three to four people side by side, is well over a hundred meters long.
I’m back in the hotel to meet up with Brian and head out to the Gracie Gym again. The streets are literally choked with cars and it takes the taxi over 45 minutes to cover a distance I could probably have run in the same time (assuming I wouldn’t get mugged on the way and didn’t mind arriving in no shape for two hours of Jiu-Jitsu). Maybe it’s because of the football game - the Brazilian team plays another national team tonight in Macarana stadium.
Royler Gracie seems to have forgotten my Gi but sends a guy to get one for me. With a car key. I’m thinking that if the guy is going to drive *anywere* now, I’m not likely to have a Gi before the training session is over. But the young man returns shortly thereafter with a Gi which is (roughly) of the right size, covered in the usual patches and was signed with a textile marker by Helio Gracie (Royler’s dad, who founded Gracie Jiu-Jitsu). I’m a happy camper. And practice is fun. I learn an interesting drill how to get from a mounted position into a mount and force the opponent to tap out from there, and once get to roll with one other white belt during the sparring part of the training session. I manage not to have to tap out.
It was a good session. Brian and I are both ravenous afterwards and dare to get away from the hotel strip (if only by one block) to find a small local equivalent to what in the US would be called a “diner”. The food is cheap, decent and a lot. We make short work of it and then head our ways. Tomorrow is the big day.
The lady whose job it is to ask our room numbers and whether we’d like to be seated asks how my climb went and seems impressed that I went climbing at all. She advises to be on my guard when doing BJJ tonight. I fully intend to be.
There’s a few work related things I need to take care of (registering for the evening event on Thursday among them) and that takes a bit. I am inexplicably tired as well, so have an early nap as well.
Then, I go exploring. I come by a hairdresser (again) and decide to try my luck. I get the money I figure I’ll need to the end of the week and then (on my way back to the hotel - I plan not to carry that cash all over town) stop at the hairdresser. They don’t speak English, but communication really isn’t that hard when the subject area is limited and one isn’t afraid to look a little funny.
What’s left of my head hair gets the machine treatment, the beard is done free form with scissors and then I get a close shave with a straight razor. I try to relax, which isn’t quite easy…
Having dropped off the predominant part of the cash in my hotel room safe, I head out again into Ipanema proper, roughly bound for Leblon. I find a (guide-recommended) Café in a side street where I can sit outside with an inexpensive sandwich and a glass of water and watch life pass me by.
It’s hot today, and there’s a lot of young Cariocas out, dressed for the beach. My reverie is broken by the excruciating noise of a pair of brake pads looong overdue for a replacement. I look for the source of the squeal in annoyance, and catch the eye of the guy in the passenger seat of the offending vehicle. Who is a huge, powerfully built black man with tattooed arms who gives me a disarming smile and a thumbs up. I can’t help but grin at that and happily focus on my sandwich again. It’s such a nice contrast between what I expected and what happened. Rio seems to offer a number of these bright, happy moments arising in the most unexpected places. As the car moves off at the next switch of the light, I look up again, make eye contact again and offer a thumbs up of my own. The gesture is returned, with a smile and the car leaves (luckily not having to brake again until it’s out of earshot).
I look at some of the local handicraft, but find nothing that would seem to be a nice “Mitbringsel”. I do find a bookstore (again, guide-recommended) in which I buy a collection of short stories (Phillip K. Dick) and a CD (Metallica’s “Death Magnetic”). It’s also been on my to-do-list for a while and also cheaper here than it would be at home, but I decide that this is how far that particular justification is going to.
It’s a long walk back down much of the length of Praia Ipanema. Rio’s youth is out in force today. The beach is *packed* with people (mostly of the young, fit, heavily tanned Brazilian type). There’s a few left-over hippies in one stretch of the beach which, apparently for that reason, is colloquially referred to as “Elephant’s Graveyard”.
A bunch of the Cariocas are busy keeping a football in the air in circles of people, others play a game involving batting a wooden ball back and forth with wooden rackets. The sharp “crack!” of each impact and generally very flat trajectory tells me that I do *not* want to step between players of that particular game. Stepping between the footballers is nigh unavoidable, though - all the sports activities happen in that small stretch of sand that is regularly swept over by the waves and therefore provides more resistance than the deep, dry sand (which is also the reason I prefer to walk there).
Those that aren’t busy doing sports, are busy hanging out, eating and drinking. As I get closer to my exit and late afternoon turns toward evening, they pack their folding chairs and towels and, without a visible exception, leave their garbage behind. I’m too stunned to even be enraged.
The line for the buses back from Ipanema beach, three to four people side by side, is well over a hundred meters long.
I’m back in the hotel to meet up with Brian and head out to the Gracie Gym again. The streets are literally choked with cars and it takes the taxi over 45 minutes to cover a distance I could probably have run in the same time (assuming I wouldn’t get mugged on the way and didn’t mind arriving in no shape for two hours of Jiu-Jitsu). Maybe it’s because of the football game - the Brazilian team plays another national team tonight in Macarana stadium.
Royler Gracie seems to have forgotten my Gi but sends a guy to get one for me. With a car key. I’m thinking that if the guy is going to drive *anywere* now, I’m not likely to have a Gi before the training session is over. But the young man returns shortly thereafter with a Gi which is (roughly) of the right size, covered in the usual patches and was signed with a textile marker by Helio Gracie (Royler’s dad, who founded Gracie Jiu-Jitsu). I’m a happy camper. And practice is fun. I learn an interesting drill how to get from a mounted position into a mount and force the opponent to tap out from there, and once get to roll with one other white belt during the sparring part of the training session. I manage not to have to tap out.
It was a good session. Brian and I are both ravenous afterwards and dare to get away from the hotel strip (if only by one block) to find a small local equivalent to what in the US would be called a “diner”. The food is cheap, decent and a lot. We make short work of it and then head our ways. Tomorrow is the big day.