California cruising, outlet shopping, Art of Jiu-Jitsu and San Diego Safari Zoo

Welcome to yet another blog post from California, and let me just start out with saying that, if your looking for Jiu-Jitsu updates you might as well just close down, because this blog post will not contain any Jiu-Jitsu besides a small visit to Art of Jiu-Jitsu that is Rafael & Guilerhme Mendes new academy, they are also known as the Mendes Bros.

Instead of Jiu-Jitsu updates I will try to describe our trip from San Jose down the west coast of California where we stopped by Pasmo Beach, Santa Barbara, Costa Mesa and The Mendes Bros and San Diego Safarai Zoo before we landed at our hotel in Mission Valey, San Diego, California.

Now to start out, let me try to describe San Jose a little bit as it's basically a city in a huge valley surrounded by big mountains on each side and looking at these mountains I always had this inner voice saying "Man, I really want to go check out these huge mountains", so I was really looking forward to our trip down to San Diego, as I knew we would this mountain chain surrounding the city.

Before we really got close to the mountains we decided to stop by Gilroy Premium Outlets which is a huge shopping mall with all the premium clothing brands you can imagine, like Calvin Klein, The North Face, Adidas, Nike, Rebok, Espirit, Volcom, Quicksilver, Echo United, Hugo Boss, Timberland, Puma and the list just goes on. And its basically just all these brands selling last years models for absolutely no money at all! I think I got 4 pair of Calvin Klein jeans for 800 DKK and to give an idea I looked up the prices on the internet to check the difference compared to Denmark, and I must have saved well over 2000 kr. just on the pants alone, which is just nuts! So me and Sabine just went on a crazy shopping spree.. well, I did atleast :-)  I somehow shopped so much that my credit card got closed and had to "borrow" from Sabine and sit up to like 01.00-02.00 am sunday night to do a skype call to the bank so I could get my card opened again :-) Good thing I had Sabine with me or I would have been stuck in the middle of nowhere at some point as I couldnt get money for petrol/gas for the car or money to put food in my stomach.

Mountains in California

Pasmo Beach

So after our shopping spree we finally hit the road towards the mountain chain and the west coast of California and I have to say the landscape is just f***** amazing, sorry for my language, but god damn, there is mountains everywhere and new ones popping out in the horizon as soon as you pass one its just to good to be true. And it's not like we drove for a few hours, we must have been on the road for 12-15 hours total excluding our stops a long the way, as we did stop by highway motels on the way to get some sleep, but everywhere we looked while driving there would be mountains. I even have a small video that I made that you can see below, as I think it explains what I'm trying to say pretty good. There's also some pictures from Pasmo Beach and Santa Barbara. Awesome beaches and one day I have goal/dream of buying an apartment or house in a beautiful place like this, close to some good Jiu-Jitsu academies and perhaps offer it as a Jiu-Jitsu/beach rental experience. Nothing wrong with having dreams and goals :-)

On our way to Santa Barbara Beach

Santa Barbara Beach

Me at Pasmo Beach

Sabine next to palm trees at Santa Barbara Beach

Here's a video of me and Sabine driving through the California landscape (5 minutes long)

Now our last stop on the way to San Diego was, by accident or coincidence, in Costa Mesa which is the same city that the Mendes Bros has their academy, so I was pretty persistent saying I really want to drive by and see their new Art of Jiu-Jitsu Academy although we would basically just be checking out a building from the outside. 

A quick side note, before we went to bed in Costa Mesa we did get to visit In-N-Out Burger which Joseph from the academy in Copenhagen had recommended us to check out and it was actually really good. Now I understand why he says its funny how all the crappy burger joints made it to Denmark. In-N-Out burger was surprisingly good :-)

Rafael Mendes and I in front of their wall of medals

Okay, so we wake up in the morning going to check out the Mendes Bros academy, which was just 10 minutes from the motel, and when we get there, to my big surprise, there is Rafael Mendes walking around inside talking to some guys and when he finishes he invites us inside, super awesome, he's a really cool guy, and he gives me a 5 minutes tour of his gym and more than that, his brother Gui Mendes shows up also, both dressed in their sponsored Storm Kimonos, and their are nice enough to take a picture with me. I know, complete fanboy, but I couldnt really care less. It was a super awesome experience meeting two world champions especially when the expectations was to basically just peek through the windows :-)

Rafael Mendes, myself and Guilerhme Mendes

The Mendes Bros wall of medals

After leaving the Art of Jiu-Jitsu academy we plugged in San Diego Safari Zoo in the GPS and started yet another cool drive down the coast, only stopping by Dana Point (see picture below, so awesome) and then arrived at the Safari Zoo around noon on Sunday. The zoo is, as the name indicates, a Safari zoo, so it's a huge area and not like your typical zoo experience, as they really build natural hapitats for the animals so you had to go on small buses to get a chance to really see the Animals. It 'was a cool experience and a great way to end a very nice weekend cruising down the west coast :-)

At Sunday around 20.00 we arrived at our hotel in Mission Valley San Diego and to our surprise our hotel room actually have a nice kitchen so we've been able to make good salads and and store decent food in the refrigerator which is pretty awesome.

My next blog post will definitely contain more Jiu-Jitsu as we've been training two time every day at Gracie Humaita under Regis Lebre, Joao “Johnny” Faria and Zak Maxwell, with the exception of yesterday Thursday where we spent the day at Seaworld, but other than that tt's been some really good training sessions and I really can't wait to get down to Las Vegas to test myself in the black belt division where I signed up in the -76 kg lightweight master division.

To everyone back home and whoever is reading my blog, take care, eat healthy and train some Jiu-Jitsu PORRA! :-)

Michael