November 20th, 2007

I was in New York last week, and I had a pretty good time while I was there. I flew into NYC on Wednesday, and that night there was a little cocktail reception at the New York Athletic Club to help raise money for the wrestling program. It was a nice event, and I got to talk to a few people whom I hadn´t seen for awhile. The guest of honor was Mike Novogratz. He was a wrestler at Princeton, and he has done extremely well on Wall Street as well as with the company that he is president of now. It was interesting to listen to him as he spoke about how everyone there was connected through wrestling and that we could all relate to each other in one way or another. Another interesting thing that he said was something that he was quoting from someone else, but I don’t recall who it was that he was quoting. To paraphrase what he said it went something like this, “There are three types of people in this world. There are those who are afraid of success. There are those who are afraid of failure. And finally, there are people who aren’t afraid.” That comment really hit me, and I thought a lot about different times when I may have been afraid of something. I think that the times that I have excelled most in my life have been when I have faced challenges with no fear and have just acted instead of overthinking things. Anyway it was one of those little eureka moments.
Thursday morning I got a little workout in with my good friend and training partner, Brad Vering, a world silver medalist from this year. Anyway we had a dual meet on Thursday night so we kept our workout pretty light in the morning. We hit a little run on the treadmill at the hotel, and then we needed a place where we could wrestle. We had to do a little bit of searching, but we eventually came across an empty meeting hall in the hotel, and we started to get some drilling and a little bit of pummeling and wrestling in right there in the meeting hall. While we were working out in that room I was thinking, “What other sport can you find where its athletes would be practicing in a meeting hall without any equipment for their sport.” It was a good experience. I guess it is one of those stories that you can tell your kids later when you are older. The old, “When I was younger we didn’t even have wrestling mats and we wrestled anywhere we went. Shoot we also had to walk to school everyday in the snow and it was uphill both ways.” Anyway the workout served its purpose and we were ready for the meet that we had that night with Romania. We both won our matches and our team won the dual. It was a great event and everyone that worked hard to put the meet together did a great job. I was very impressed. The high school gym where we wrestled was filled with spectators, and all the athletes had some time to meet and greet with the fans afterwards. I wish we had duals like that all of the time in Colorado when we get foreign teams to come into town to train with us. It would be a great way to get more matches in.
After the night of the dual meet it was time to start getting ready for the tournament. I didn’t have to cut too much weight for the tournament so I mostly relaxed and got off my weight in the steam room. I felt pretty good going into the tournament and I ended up wrestling well enough to win the tournament. There was a good turn out for the competition. There were a couple of foreign teams that showed up, and I ended up getting in three matches myself. I did have a bye the first round so it made for a long day of waiting for matches. It was nice after things got rolling though.
I like going to New York, but everytime I do by the end of the trip I am ready to leave. I like all of the things that the city has to offer such as the big shopping centers and nice restaurants. I suppose the part that I am not fond of is that everything is so expensive in the city. It is a nice place to visit though. The tournament used to be held closer to Christmas, and at that time it was really nice to visit the city because all of the Christmas decorations were up and there were a lot of people there for that time of year. I am always amazed at all of the people and everything that is always happening down in times square. There is just so much going on that it seems like if you blink that you are going to miss something. I went with my wife to New York after we got married for our honeymoon. She loved it so much that she was ready to move there. We saw a show on Broadway and did a lot of sightseeing. It was a great time. However, I think that I will just keep it as a place to visit instead of making it a home.
Moving on to this week, I am now in Finland. We arrived yesterday afternoon after a couple of flights. It is actually four o’clock in the morning and I am up because I am not yet adjusted to the time change. The time difference is nine hours ahead of Colorado so my internal clock is a little bit off. Today is the biggest struggle. If I can make it through the day without taking a nap I should be on track for adjusting fairly quickly. I tell you though it is quite the struggle. I have a lot of respect for the people in the armed forces who have to go through sleep deprivation training. That would be difficult. The funny thing is that for some reason I usually adjust faster when I am going overseas instead of when I am going home. My wife hates it because for the week after I get home I am waking her up in the very early hours of the morning like three or four everyday. Then in the afternoons she has to deal with me when I am grouchy because of being tired. I am sure that it is very frustrating for her. Luckily for me she loves me quite a bit. It is cold here in Finland. Next week when I go to Sweden I will be very close to the North Pole. There is not much daylight here at this time of year. I saw the sun for a little bit yesterday which was very nice. Honestly last year when I was on this trip I only remember seeing the sun once. Most of time the sky was overcast. The weather so far has been nice. Hopefully it will stay that way.
Well that is about it for now. I will try to keep everyone posted on what is happening over here. Keep checking back in to get the updates. Take care.