travel -- details!

I really thought I would get this report out yesterday, but it simply was not to be. Summer is obviously wake-up time for everyone, myself included -- I have been SO much busier lately with email, session and video requests, and more travel planning, not to mention belated spring cleaning of my website. Thanks to everyone who's making this a lovely full season for me -- you're keeping me jumping!

Anyway, the trip. Since it was a quick session trip, I did spend a lot of time in and out (mostly in) hotels with not too much chance for sight-seeing. But a few things that I did see were the Chicago subways and the Milwaukee bars. These things may sound unexciting, but I am always comparing everything to "how it is in New York," so they were fascinating to me. The Chicago trains have working intercoms, and the above-ground tracks are very scenic and pleasant. But there are no Unlimited Ride Passes -- that makes no sense. And you can still smoke in Milwaukee bars. In fact, they sell cigarettes in the bars. I'd forgotten such things were ever (and still, obviously) done.

As for fun highlights, also in Milwaukee I got a chance to meet up with the Madtown Beatdown crew, a bunch of grapplers who've lately been bringing rough combat and martial arts paly to the Madison BDSM scene. I'd been corresponding with these folks online for a while -- it was awesome to meet them in person and hear about what they've been doing to build a recreational fighters' community out in their area.

And of course we celebrated the meet-up with a party -- matted out my hotel room for a late-night open mat. The featured event was a thong bikini anything-goes catfight match between myself and Zen, one of their fighters. We allowed submissions, slapping, hair-pulling, spanking, smothering, and even licking, and despite all that it was still a very fun, friendly, and sometimes hilarious match. Also, with Zen standing at just 5 feet, I got to fight someone smaller than I am! We did film the match, but the bikinis proved so flimsy that the final product turned out too scandalous to release. Great still photos came out of it though:



I have an entire new gallery dedicated to this fight up at my website, here: Fight with Zen Gallery

And the rest of the party was very good too!

On the way back home, I stopped in Cleveland. Cleveland was an old stomping ground of mine when I was in college; I pleased I got to revisit a favorite restaurant there -- a New Orleans Blues venue where they give you crayons to draw on the table clothes and provide you Mardi Gras beads. (New Orleans Blues in Chaicago? -- I know, I know.)

Here I also got to shoot another fun video that, I believe, WILL be released. I was working for the second time with Utopia Entertainment and much enjoyed demolishing the producer, Kip, in a scissors domination match. Again on the comparing everywhere to New York topic -- NYC would never spare space for such a filming studio as that, or if it did would charge for its use in bricks of gold.

So now I'm back home -- got back to the gym on Tuesday and back finally back to training last night. Whether I got too much rest over this trip or not enough, that was an unGODly gruelling class. Welcome back me!

I'm really going to have to get a good and disciplined groove going with my training immediately, since I'm going to have so many disruptions from MORE travel throughout the summer.

Should hopefully be posting my calendar for that (travel, not training) later today. Or tomorrow, if things go the way they did yesterday with this bog post.