Throwback
In 2013 I was lucky enough to get put on a new project at work. At the time I did something similar to what I did now, shopping for meat and testing it for pathogens including Salmonella, Staph Aureus, Campylobacter, and C. difficile. The new project was something completely different from what I had ever done before. We were to set up a Next Gen Sequencer, an Illumina MiSeq, extract DNA from Salmonella and E.coli, stream it to the "cloud" so the FDA can retrieve it and use the data to build a database of sequence data to help track and prevent food-borne outbreaks.
After setting up the instrument and getting some onsite training, we were off to the races sequencing and streaming. Things were going fine, for the most part but it was decided we needed more training...at Illumina's campus in San Diego. My first thought was this will be a nice trip since I'd never been to California. Then it clicked with me, my trip was about to get 100x better. San Diego is a Jiu-Jitsu hotbed...and I was going there. Should I go to Black House? Ribero's University of Jiu-Jitsu? Or Atos? Atos it was.
I won't get too much into the Illumina training or campus or San Diego. All three were really very nice. I learned a ton of techniques and strategies to use when I got back to my lab. The Illumina campus is great, holy shit was it great. New, clean, a bunch of amenities (basketball court, soccer field, amphitheater for music, gym, onsite Starbucks, gourmet cafeteria. And San Diego was like heaven, 74 degrees every day, sunny and a nice breeze, perfect.
I had called ahead to Atos and spoke to Carlos making sure I was able to drop in. Unfortunately Professor Galvao wasn't in that day, Metamoris 2 was that Saturday and he flew to Brasil that Monday after fighting in it. The academy was tucked into a corner in a little strip mall and if you didn't have a clue, you'd miss it. Professor Leo D'avila was left in charge and I changed into my Gi and bowed in. They did a pretty intense warm up but I knew the moves and was able to keep up with everyone. Then we went over the technique of the day, if I remember correctly it was a backtake from dlr. I had bit of trouble with it since i was still pretty new to Gi training. My partner was a female Brown Belt, Chelsea Bainbridge-Donner who was pretty patient with me. After drilling, we sparred and she proceeded to wipe the floor with me. It was an eye opener. Then I got paired up with a few Blue Belts who also smashed me.
Everyone was pretty cool, respectful but aggressive and had great Jiu-JItsu. Like I said before, it was an eye opener. I was pretty gassed and I consider myself to be in good shape for 33 (at the time). Going from a small club to a premier Academy which churns out world champions was pretty intense. It really motivated me to take my training more seriously.
One of the other students who was training that day was Cristiane "Cyborg" Justino. After class I went over to her and introduced myself and we spoke for a bit, she was very friendly and nice. Then I went over to Professor D'avila who was also pretty cool. We talked for a bit and he gave me some advice about Jiu-Jitsu before I grabbed an Atos T-shirt and left. I didn't ask anyone to take any pictures with me, as I didn't want to be a douche or bother anyone but I did take a few pics of the academy which I will put up in the images tab.
Next summer the tentative plan is to be able to get back to San Diego for a 7-10 days. Ideally this will translate to two days at Atos, and some beach time!