Alex Iglecia

Beth and I spent our first day meandering through Sugarhouse, Salt Lake City. We had one mission: find yoga. Actually, we had many missions. What is this place? Who lives here? Are those amazing mountains real? It seems that they are, and in one day, we found Centered City Yoga, Flow Yoga SLC, Boxing is for Girls, a kickboxing gym, Feldenkrais classes, and other local greats like Liberty Park, lots of hair salons and coffee shops, a Golds Gym, and it’s all near the 700 E - 900 E blocks. We’re in a fantastic place, thanks Jen!

Unbelievable that it’s our last day of the road trip. On our way to our new home in Salt Lake City, Beth and I are going to stop in Las Vegas to win the money we need to finance our enormously ambitious yoga, movement and living arts center. Let’s live in the possibility! Off we go!

Playing with kettlebells early in an Arizona morning while on anti-allergy medication ain’t no trip to the grand canyon! But that’s how I woke myself up. Now whether it was that, or the heat, or the meds, or simply my bodying working to pump itself with air, it was an exhausting day. Beth’s mother Lee drove us to Sedona from Mesa, stopping to see the mistakenly-named Montezuma’s Castle by the Sinagua people. Sedona is breathtaking, as anyone who has been there will say. Beth and I definitely intend to come back here for some deeper hiking.

We were really fortunate to stop and see the 7 Centers Yoga `School. This place was amazing. It seemed to us to be a renovated house in the somewhat-outskirts of Sedona’s actual city. They have been around for 10 years in Sedona, and five in that location. We were very happy to have been able to stop in.

We played with yoga asana and kettlebells this morning, finally! Yesterday was a 15+ hour drive from Jackson, Mississippi to Lubbock, Texas. We stopped in Arlington, Texas to see my first home. I lived there until I was eight years old and my father moved our family to Westlake, California and then Moorpark, California. Seeing my old home make my stomach turn just a bit, not in a bad way, but in a nervous sort of way. I’m not entirely sure why, but I became a bit churned up as we got closer. All I remember, really, was the the canal in the back yard. Yes, we just walked straight out there! The sidewalk where my brother would launch his bike (and body) into the canal was still there. The canal of course was still there. That’s about all I remembered from my childhood.

We tried visiting Michael Bussey’s gym, formerly knows as the 303 Gym, but couldn’t find it. We spent nearly an hour trying to find a place to get online to look him up, but failed miserably. By this time, we were both hungry and cranky. My hips were aching and I needed to eat. We left the area and lo and behold, a Schlotzsky’s showed up with free internet access. I discovered that Michael Bussey’s gym is now called The Gym, and was only a few miles from my old house. It’s a phenomenal place I would have liked to have seen, but that’s that. We were already an hour behind schedule on our longest driving day (800 miles) and were out of the area.

On a whim I looked up MMA gyms near Salt Lake City and found one very close by where we’ll be run by Jeremy Horn, a former RBWI student. This coincidence is very cool, as I met him nearly 16 years ago in an RBWI summer camp. I’m not interested in competing, but am looking for established well-rounded gyms with kettlebells, combat and martial arts, movement arts and more, and it looks like Salt Lake City is on the move.

We made it through the rains of Gustav in Alabama before arriving in Jackson/Flowood, Mississippi. Soon we’ll cut across Louisiana and Texas on our way to New Mexico. Yesterday we noted, not for the first time, how extremely difficult it is to get decent food while on the road. Just finding a grocery store is more than a challenge, and a Whole Foods? Not likely. Beth took some pictures to represent the smorgasborg of fast food and country cookin’ rest stops. Is this the American dream we’re invading…I mean fighting…abroad to protect? Who said that assisted suicide was illegal? It’s happening all over!

I’ve heard the phrase “and Bob’s Your Uncle” from a colleague years ago when I first moved to Boston from Cornell in Ithaca, NY, and have always loved it. Today I took a moment to look it up. According to the almighty Internet, one “theory has it that it derives from the slang phrase all is bob, meaning that everything is safe, pleasant or satisfactory.”

This morning I started the day with a long yoga practice, inspired by Glen Black, got the day off right. We’ll be in Talbot, TN for a few days before visiting my friends Mario and Mickey and their families in Jackson, MS. Along with partners, Mario runs the Courthouse Gymnastics, which is not only the place for gymnastics in Mississippi, but is one of two locations in the world where you can take part in a Bussey Combatives course. I hear they may soon offer Crossfit as well. As they say, bob’s your uncle!