Feb 12-17, 2011 Sat-Thurs
Not that my past days were insignificant but my visit to Haifa this past Thursday beats them all. That day I visited Ido Portal in his training studio, Hacasa, located at his parent's lower floor at a beautiful road overlooking the Mediterranean. I obviously went there to train with him. Halim gave me a ride to Modi'in train station around 5:40pm, after work. The ride would be almost 2 hours. The train ride was quite pleasant, no problems. The riders were mostly young IDF soldiers. One of them, sitting across from me was listening to music on his ipod. I could hear the song: "Dust in the Wind" by Kansas. "Don't hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky..." said the song. The scene was painfully poetic as the soldier looked lost in thoughts, his hand supporting his jaw. Oh well.
I thought I planned everything but apparently I neglected to consider not to trust the public transportation system. The train was late and that's why I missed my bus. It was the last one of the day, and there were no other alternative buses to take me anywhere closer to Hacasa in time. So I did what I had to do, took a cab. Thankfully I came across a really nice driver, a Christian Palestinian who loves Haifa and have a daughter doing her PhD in some kind of engineering. I got to Ido's place 15 minutes earlier but this place is a residential area, meaning there's no where to hang out, so I walked down the stairs to get to the garden where I could see the entrance to Hacasa. I recognized the Hacasa sign. Made me happy. Behind the door was the studio I know from several videos. The door was a thick, frosted glass, so I could merely see the silhouettes of bodies moving behind it. I knocked on the door. A thick man's voice from inside responded. "Maze!" It was Ido. Didn't know how to respond or what to do, but I guessed it was something like "We're busy, go away, come 15 mins later." So I backed off. Then he yelled again, "Maze!" This time I interpreted it as, "I said come on in!" So I grabbed the door handle and pushed it down. Ido yelled, more intensely than before, as soon as I pushed it down, "MAZE!!!"(By the way, I'm not sure if this is the right pronunciation.) Jeez! That's when I said, "I don't know what maze means!" Ido opened the door chuckling. It became the story of the night. It was Ido and Odelia only. Odelia is his assistant, a very good athlete indeed.
I liked Ido very much, and Odelia. They're both very kind, playful and fun to train with for sure. It was a very small group of 5 people, including me. The group included Ido's mom whom I called the super-mom, super-mom's friend (Ido convinced him to stay and train with us), and two other people who regularly train with them there. Lovely group indeed. Ido's mom was very impressive, you should have seen her doing chin-ups. And she thought I have a very nice and athletic body :)
It was quite a challenging session for about 2 and a half hours. Not that the exercises were hard but the number of repetitions and sets were actually very demanding. I did everything, didn't listen to the soreness I had already started feeling towards the end. No pain, though. That encouraged me. Shoulder injury is indeed healing. I don't want to give details of the session here but it was completely based on upper body strength and conditioning, lots of weight lifting, I did dead-lift for the first time and did good.
Odelia was my 'coach" and she was very helpful. Maybe it's because I've trained with a coach for the first time (actually I consider Sean as my coach as well but this was someone I just met and who's probably getting paid for that) but the level of discipline and care was very good. I was already taking notes on both the session and my own performance but Ido and Odelia specifically reminded me to do so anyway, each person was provided with a stopwatch and you are expected to use it, and Ido, even though he was not coaching me specifically, made sure that I know he is watching me as well with his supportive words indicating his eyes are indeed following me as well. It's definitely worth the trip. When we're done, it was already after 10:20pm so there was no way I was going to make it to the hostel on time to get the key to the room I booked. (No, I haven't paid for it. Instead I gave that money to the cab ride.) Ido was so kind to offer me the bedroom in Hacasa. He brought clean sheets, a towel so that I can take a shower, and a bar of soap. I even got the permission to go through his books. He's leaving to Europe next week so I won't be seeing him in Israel again, this time, but hopefully we will meet again in the States.
After a quick shower (because I stank, I had to), I checked out some of Ido's books on training, took some notes; but my arms were not quite functioning and I definitely needed some rest. Woke up as early as 7:30, cleaned up after myself and wrote a thank you note to Ido, then left. It's going to be shabat today, so I don't want to disturb the family upstairs, and plus I HAD TO FIND THE WATER! Meaning the sea. I walked around the Karmel neighborhood, it's a high point in the city, overlooking the sea and the lower city. Gorgeous scenery. Gorgeous city. The cleanest I've seen in Israel so far. People are nicer too. Less rudeness, I like. I know it now though. There is NO way I can ever live somewhere (a city) longer than a couple of months without seeing the ocean or the sea or even just a lake. No way. After walking for some hours, my body just gave in to the soreness that already took over my whole muscle system the night before. I had to sit down, eat, and enjoy the sun. Did I mention it was as warm and sunny as it naturally is in the summer on this part of the world? So I took couple of random buses first, just to see where they're going to take me and get off if I feel like it. [You can use the same ticket for a while :)] Then I went to the train station next to the beach, got my ticket, walked to the beach, found a great cafe right by the sea, had terrible coffee but great great omelet with an amazing salad, while reading my book and enjoying the sun on my back. Well, after that I had 3 hours until my train back to Modi'in so I grabbed a chair, dipped my bare feet in the sea, and took a nice cozy nap under the sun. There were people like me sunbathing, in their swim suits though (I wish I had mine too, next time -which will be in the first week of March- I'll definitely swim!), or having some drinks or snacks on the sand, enjoying the sound of the waves. Just marvelous. Haifa is a combination of two cities I love: Istanbul and Miami. I would indeed one day have a house here.
Train ride was good, read my book, watched the planted fields along the way, so many banana trees. I couldn't reach anyone to pick me up from the train station but I thought, well, there was a bus going to the city center. Then maybe someone can pick me up from there. It didn't work out the way I thought it would be. Paid another 50 shekels to a Georgian-Jewish taxi driver. On the way, I called Howard again, and finally got a hold of him. He met me at the Latrun junction and took me back to the village. Success!
Total exhaustion, wonderful trip. Haifa is by far my favorite in this country. I'll go back there to train with Odelia again.
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