Houston Open Judo Tournament

Occurred this past weekend.

I'd been in training for scorekeeping, so I was scheduled to help. I was also scheduled to move mats from Pasadena up to Conroe so that the players would have something kind of soft to fall onto.

I managed to get out of work early Friday by working later on Tuesday. I got to my dojo around noon and waited for the guy whose trailer I'd be using to show up. I think it showed up around 1. Hooked up the trailer and took off to Pasadena. Sensei Raymond and Oliver ran some errands on the way to Pasadena, so I got there early and waited for folks to arrive so we could get into the dojo and start loading.

Loading didn't take too long and then it was time to hit the road with a well-weighted truck and trailer. My truck didn't particularly like the extra weight, but it managed to pull it. If I got the speed up to 60 mph, the whole combination got a little unsteady. Travelling at 55mph was good though. The amount of room I needed for braking was a little scary though. Fools would cut in front of me and start braking. There were a couple of close calls on the way up. Oliver rode up with me. He was mostly just baggage. :) He caught up on some sleep.

The directions I'd written down for the convention center were a little sketchy, so we had fun driving around Conroe, eventually finding the spot. We dropped off the trailer. Oliver then joined Sensei for the drive to College Station to pick up more mats for use in the tournament.

I went over to the hotel and stated helping with registration. Kim joined me shortly thereafter. We were up until around 11 working registration. We set our wake-up call for 4:30 am so we could help set up mats and set up registration at the convention center.

After that, the tournament began. I chose the less exciting of the two mats to work. I worked the juniors and masters. The seniors had a lot more cheering and near-injuries.

My mat did have one guy pass out from a choke hold, one near pass out and one who had too bloody of a nose to continue.

I think the matches wrapped up around 5pm. My truck was loaded and on the road by 6. I made to Champion Judo around 7pm. We unloaded most of the mats there and then went to Buck's (Sensei for Champion Judo) to unload the rest. Made it to Clear Lake Aikido to drop off the trailer around 8 and then back home by 8:30.

In bed by 9. Up Sunday morning at 9, back to bed at noon. Up again at 3 and then back to bed at 7.

I think I may be caught up on sleep for this weekend and the previous weekend at WFC.