Sh*ts And Giggles In Boston

November 3rd saw us trotting off to Boston.

Andy had been asked to be a resident instructor for a week his friend Gershon’s academy - Krav Maga Yashir Boston. And given our devil may care, life-embracing ethos, it seemed rude to decline a freebie trip to the East Coast.

So, it was up at 5am, and off the airport. 5am is very early. It doesn’t feel nice at all. Well, to me. For Andy it seemed an ideal time to work on his Jiu Jitsu strategy.

One very long plane ride later (despite an exhorbitant level of education, I still find it hard to believe it takes as long to get across America as over to it from the UK) we arrived in Bean Town (*I have no idea if this is a real nickname, but Wikipedia seems to think it is).

Gershon had very kindly booked us into the Wyndham Chelsea, which had exceptionally efficient heating and a chair which made Andy look like a ‘Thunderbirds’ puppet.

Obviously my Boston report is tardy in the extreme, so in the spirit of blogdom, I’ll sum up the highlights and get back up to speed.

First up, the weather. The reason that hotel heating was so efficient was because Boston is as cold as the Devil’s sauna is hot (*presumably, I’ve not been round there lately). There were face-slicing winds, spitty rain and snow all over the shop.

Given we only packed California clothes when we left from the UK, this meant we had to wear them all at once and then execute an emergency shopping mission.

Thank you, Forever 21, for three exceptionally cheap jumpers, two pairs of socks, a hat and some full-length trousers (that crop look just doesn’t cut it under 10 degrees centigrade) and thank you H&M for a scarf that several people subsequently described as “fun” (I’m not entirely sure what scarf “fun” entails, but two of them followed up by saying it was “too much fun” for them personally).

Despite my recent transition into a woman of regular exercise, the sudden drop in temperature rather put paid to my training.

I have always been the type that starts to layer on blankets once the thermostat drops below 25 degrees, and Gershon’s brand new Krav studio is being built in a giant warehouse.

Spectacular and functional yes. Weeds out the men from the boys, very definitely.

Sadly I proved myself to be one of the smallest, weediest boys on this occasion and after two days of training, I holed myself up in the hotel and made wimpering noises whenever going outside was mentioned.

I did however manage to sample the joys of power slapping, power kicking and some knife defence in those first two days.

Once again I apologise to the tiny woman who put up with me whapping her repeatedly in the forehead during the warmup fighting games – until told otherwise I did believe it was a legitimate target.

If you can put aside my obvious prowess in the photos, you will see how I am sporting leggings, gi pants and three hoodies, whilst everyone else is in a t-shirt.

Kind of kills the deadly assassin image a bit.

Whilst I was berating the cold, Andy had a battle of his own to deal with. Halfway through our Monday afternoon shopping trip, he started sporting this face.

Whether it was a bug, food poisoning or the switch from semi-fresh Cali fare to sin-laden fast food (put it this way, this was our breakfast selection) his stomach had gone into overdrive, and despite powering through the first few days, by day three he was bedbound, and I was on nurse duty.

Which roughly translated as buying some Pedialyte, stroking his fevered brow and ignoring the unholy sounds from the bathroom.

Still, within 24 hours of taking to his sickbed, the Big Monkey was back upright and ready to teach again, though I did lend him some of my leggings to wear under his gi (he’s not particularly fat-coated at the best of times, and three days of starvation had stripped any last bits of insulation).

After an eventful (well, that bit’s more true for Andy, given my hotel-dwelling habits) week, we were up at 4am and off to the airport.

Intriguingly, this photo of us on three hours rest has garnered several ‘likes’ on facebook, suggesting that I might look better without my beauty sleep.

About fourteen hours and one interior-designed mini-tornado later, we arrived back in Cali.

We spent the weekend eating (god bless fish tacos), sleeping and thawing out, and headed back to Atos on Monday.