Last night's class was kind of underwhelming. Granted, it was the third night of jiu jitsu in a row so in addition to being a little fatigued, I was in a somewhat less than tolerant mood.
Rodrigo had two new guys--including Tapper, the new guy who swore that he'd tapped out Tommy. Tommy says the guy is a "nice guy." But I don't buy it. Apparently, when he came to look at the class--Tapper, who allegedly has no experience in jiu jitsu--was convinced that there wasn't any body who was "very good" for him to train with. I'm sorry, but "nice guys" don't talk out of their asses like that.
Anyway, two new guys. So Rodrigo spends the first 30 minutes working with them. He has Stefan, who was rolling with Jeff the Blue before class, lead us in some drills. Let me say it now: God save me from uninspired advanced belts! I got stuck with Stefan, who is usually a good guy. But he had absolutely ZERO enthusiasm for leading us in drills. We did a few armbars from the guard. Then he suggested chokes from the guard. Apparently he'd gotten his trachea jacked up rolling with some of Eric Dahlberg's warrior jiu jitsu guys, so I couldn't really choke him back.
Then he did some open guard stuff from the bottom where I'd try to switch my hands to the inside or outside and he'd transition to triangle. But when it was my turn, all interest in the pretense had completely disolved. Abel and Shaka showed up (no gi) and started a conversation with Stefan and that was pretty much it for our warm-up drills. The other two pairs kept working: Jesse the Blue and Jeff the Blue, Arnell and Ryan. I sat there feeling like an idiot while Stefan, Abel and Shaka chatted it up about how much money it would take for any of them to fight Mike Tyson (like THAT conversation has never happened before).
There was some sad news--it sounded like Shaka's wife or girlfriend had a baby that was born too prematurely to live. Condolences from the rest--as a premie myself, I'm sympathetic. But we moved on from that to "would-you-fight-X-for-millions" ...
What made me embarassed was that Rodrigo kept looking over at us--seeing us sitting around not doing the drills he wanted us to do (and I would have preferrred doing). I couldn't see the look on his face, so I don't know if it bothered him or not. But (a) we weren't doing what Rodrigo wanted us to do and, (b) I could have used that time to work on some real techniques.
It really set me off in a bad way--kind of clouding the whole evening. I'm still very annoyed about it--"authority misused" is one of my biggest bete noirs. It especially sucks because I've gotten such a good impression of Stefan in the past. Whatever. It just reminds me of why I'm glad I train at South Seattle instead of Ballard. At this point, a diet rich in white belts is more helpful that a diet of brown and purple.
