The $606.00 Rash Guard

The $606 rash guard.

$257 train Ticket

$39 hotel room

$117 entrance fee

$120 cab ride

$73 food

Priceless?

What was the The Priceless Moment? That is what I was thinking about Sunday morning when I was looking at my wallet. The Mastercard commercial always has a priceless moment. As you probably already know, I am a procrastinator . I always wait till the last second to make a decision. In some parts of my life it has served me well because there have been times when waiting until the last second has opened up a lot more opportunities. Most of the time it has worked against me; this would be another one of those times. I knew a few days before that no one had signed up for my division at the No Gi Pan Ams, so I sent out an email to the Federation of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and had them move me to the Open weight class. I figured that I would get a match in the Open because there were other Black Belts in my age group and they were all heavier. I was wrong -- nobody signed up. So when they posted the brackets, I sent them another email to move me down an age group but Saturday morning when I looked at the brackets, I saw that it had not been done.

Usually this would not be a big deal because most tournaments want the Black Belts to compete so they will go out of their way to make a match happen. I learned Saturday morning that this was not going to happen even with Brazilian Jiu Jitsu legend Leo Dalla talking to the director of the tournament. His reply was that if he started with me he would have to do it for everyone. I was upset but he was right. I run the Mission Submission tournaments and our most time-consuming process is creating the brackets, so I can understand and actually admire them for sticking to their guns.

The rest of the time was spent explaining to everyone why I was not competing. One of my old friends asked why I have not just signed up for the Adult division to begin with. He said he knew I could hang with them. I went on to explain the major difference between the old man division and adults – 5 Minutes! In the adult divisions the matches are 10 minutes vs 5 minutes for my division. I trained for 6 weeks 2 hours a day 4 days a week. For multiple 10-minute matches I would have to double the training, which is almost impossible for me. Whenever I train for competition, my business and family suffer. I become very selfish with my time and the training is about me not my students. My wife also gets the short end because I become very aggressive and ornery all the time. In the past that didn't effect us because she knew what to expect when I was training but it is different now with Thor.

So back to the Priceless moment- I thought about what part of the weekend was the most enlightening. It wasn't the Renzo Gracie Academy, even though that did give me a lot of new ideas which my students will see implemented in the next couple of weeks. It wasn't the No Gi matches even though there were a lot of exciting ones, especially the Evolve students. I would have to say the priceless moment would be the time I got to spend with Leo Dalla. We have known each other for about 11 years but have never really gotten to hang out for more than a few hours at a time. This weekend was different. Dalla has been in the sport since he was a kid and is one of the legends of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, so listening to his stories about all the heroes of our sport was cool. He is also a school owner with a lot of good ideas on how to run his program. But the most knowledge I gained from him was when he was talking about his kids. Dalla has 3 kids, with his daughter being born one month prior to my son. He talked about all the trials and tribulations of fatherhood and how he balanced all of it. It was neat to hear his reasons for what he does and it really helped me look at things differently. Even though I spent $600 and didn't get to compete it was well worth it, it was a priceless weekend.