The Long Night

It was another hot evening in the gym, and the fan didn't help much.  I was as surprised, however, that a good amount of people showed up for training, as I was that Alan beat me to the gym.  I was talking to Caroline, and Alan was at the other end of the hall at the gym entrance.  "I'm going to be inside changing my clothes," he said.  A few minutes later, others showed up, and we all walked down to the gym door.  I knocked on it, and Alan said, "No!" from inside.  A moment later, he opened it.  "Why you in a hurry to get beat?" he grinned.

Amy came in.  "I thought you moved to Canada!" I said.  "I did, but I'm still in town for little while, so I decided to come in," she answered.  The pictures of her wedding I saw on Facebook were very nice.

Not a lot of sparring went on, probably because the room was extremely warm.  In the above photo, Tony (in the dark shirt) faced Tyson.

I sparred with Ren for a couple of rounds.  He wasn't wearing headgear, and I was worried about hitting too hard.  "Hit me as hard as you want," he told me, but I didn't get many opportunities to to do so.  Ren ducked low to avoid most of my punches, and I couldn't back him easily into corners when I could get some shots in.

I learned later that the baby-faced Ren has two children, and is 29 years old.  Our sparring session might have gone a little further, but the heat got to me.

Ren then went a few rounds with Briggen, who signed up recently for the gym.

It was raining heavily at the end of the evening, so Alan and I had to wait a few moments before we could get to the car.  I asked him to drop me off at the 'L' station because I was going downtown to meet a friend whom I only knew from Facebook.  Alan was nice enough to drop me off at the 'L' station that was closest to his house in Lincoln Park.

I went to the Ritz-Carlton to see Diane, who came into town from PA for a few days.  She's originally from Texas, and you can hear the accent well.  We talked for hours.  She was very interested in how in the world could I take punches and give them back.  "I need to exercise, but I couldn't do that!" she said.  She cringed when I told her about the time I was knocked out by Ieisha.

It was very late when I got on the 'L' to go home.  No sooner than I sat down, the conductor announced over the PA system:  "Good morning, Hillari!"  I wondered who was driving the train all the way down to my stop.  When I got off, I saw the conductor was a guy who went to my high school.  We had a good laugh about it.