I made it home from Baku, and even though I didn’t do as well as I wanted to, I am glad to say that I am part of a world championship team. Everybody wrestled their hearts out at the championships, and certain individuals pulled through when it mattered most. Brad Vering, a fellow former Husker, had a great tournament, and Dremiel Byers showed great leadership as he pulled through with a bronze medal on the final day of competition to help put us over the top to win. Harry Lester also did a great job again winning his second senior world medal.

It was definitely exciting and tense as the competition came down to the very last match of the night for greco roman wrestling. The Russian and Cuban heavyweights were wrestling for the gold in their weight class, and it was a rematch from last years final. We were actually in a similar situation last year as a team, if the cuban won we would have ended up second, but the russian won and we ended up third. This year we needed the cuban to win for our team to win the championship. Last year it was clear to see that the russians bought off the cuban in the finals. I know some of you reading this might be surprised to find out that some matches at the world level are paid for. It is a sad but true reality of the sport. Not everyone is for sale, but there are certain countries who are. We were all nervous as the final bout was underway because we were unsure whether or not the cuban would throw the match again. As the match unfolded it seemed like the cuban meant business, but it wasn’t until the final seconds and the cuban had won that we let ourselves celebrate. It was such an exciting time. Everybody on our team was cheering and hugging each other. It was such a great moment for everyone that was a part of that team. There have been so many people that have worked so hard and so long to make this happen for the US team. In fact, in years past the US was kind of seen like the whipping boy of international greco roman wrestling. We have always had good athletes, but there was a lack of opportunities to compete and train with international competitors. I am very grateful for all of the giants who came before us of whom we stand on their shoulders.

Winning the team world championship also helped to take the edge off not winning an individual medal this year. I have put in so much hard work this last year in preparation for this tournament that losing was so painful. I know that dissapointment is a part of life, but still dealing with it is never enjoyable. I was totally crushed. I felt so ready. I felt like I had prepared so well, however, I came up short. It still hurts, but I am looking forward to redeeming myself throughout the year and striking gold at the olympic games next summer. I learned some valuable lessons from this tournament, and I am ready and willing to go back to the drawing board and work to make sure this doesn’t happen to me again.

I want to thank everybody who has helped me to get where I am at. Also I want to thank everyone that is helping me to live my dream right now. Thank you so much for your support and confidence. I hope everyone is happy and well.

Today is the day before weigh ins and for the most part has been uneventful. I have been hanging out around the hotel relaxing and waiting for tomorrow and the next day to come. I am glad that I finally got some internet access today. Some of the guys that are here on the trip brought their computers from NMU so I am using one of them now to write this post. The hotel has wireless internet, but when everybody tries to get on the network at the same time things slow down a lot. I am getting ready to head over to the sauna in about a half an hour. My weight is pretty good. Right now I am sitting around three kilos over. I feel good, and I will feel even better tomorrow after weigh ins.

Yesterday was a good day. I had a light workout in the morning and relaxed in the hotel for awhile. Later in the afternoon I went walking around downtown with a couple of the guys to pass some time. We didn’t really see anything new. It was more crowded with it being the weekend. I bought a pair of sunglasses for five bucks. One of the things that I like about these trips is that people that are selling things are willing to wheel and deal a little bit on the price. It is pretty funny to see some of the strategies that work to get the price that you want. You ask how much and they tell you. Then you tell them the price that you want. It goes back and forth for awhile, but they try to sell it to you for more than you want to pay for it. Usually if you act like you aren’t interested anymore and start to walk away from the deal they will usually give you the price that you want. I only wanted to spend five bucks on glasses and that is what I paid. I was happy with that.

On our way back to the hotel from downtown we found a steakhouse that Willie Madison had seen earlier in the week and wanted to eat there. We went there for dinner, and it was very good and reasonably priced as well. Willie was getting a little upset because the waitresses kept staring at him while we were eating. In a lot of these eastern european countries there aren’t many black people. I am sure that it gets uncomfortable after awhile because everyone always stops and stares at them. Willie finally got up and asked this waitress to dance with him in the middle of the restaurant. He got her pretty good because her face turned beet red and she went into the back of the restaurant. It was pretty funny.

I guess I should go get ready for that sauna now. I hope that everyone is doing well. Take care.

Yesterday I saw one of the greatest bus driving performances that I think that I have seen. In the afternoon, the team was going to the Radisson Hotel to use the sauna and workout facilities there. Traffic was really bad, and I think that the driver was unfamiliar with the area. In order to get to the hotel we had to take some small one way streets as well as some small alleys. There were several turns that I thought would end up with the bus smashing the cars that were parked along the street. There was one turn that the bus couldn’t make it on its own. Some of the guys got out of the bus and moved one of the cars that was in the way. They actually moved it really easily. I thought that it would have taken a lot more effort for them to move the. I was very impressed.

Some of the trips here have taken so long because of the traffic. The other day, apparently one of the driver’s friends needed a ride so he gave him one. It ended up costing us another hour on a hot bus with a bunch of smelly sweaty guys. It made for a good story though after we got back to the hotel.

Today has been pretty relaxed. We had a work out this morning at the competition site. Everything is starting to get a little more crowded now that the other teams and delegations are starting to show up. The mats were pretty busy this morning, and I can only imagine that more and more people will continue to show up. We managed to claim one of the mats this morning and our team got in a good work out. Everyone at this point is on a needs based practice schedule. Every athlete pretty much decides what we he wants to do and does it for that practice. As the tournament gets closer everybody is mostly just focusing on getting their weight down and feeling well. There are a few more days until we weigh in so the excitement is starting to build up a little more and more everyday.

Tonight we are headed back to the place where we went to sauna the other day with the massage. I didn’t really get a massage, it was more like a scrub with a brillo pad, but I am hoping that this time I do get a nice massage because everybody else got one last time. I guess that I will just have to wait and see. It was a nice place so I am looking forward to going there.

Well that is it for today. I will write a little more in a day or two. Take care.

We have been in Baku a couple of days now, and so far it has been a pretty good one. It is pretty hot here during the day, but fortunately for us we have some great air conditioning in our hotel rooms. We were out in the heat today as we traveled through the downtown area. Brad Vering, Coach Fraser, Coach Antonelli, and myself all spent some time looking at the shops and stores downtown. We ate at one of the local restaurants, and I was pretty impressed with the food. I had some great lamb kebap and a nice crepe and icecream desert.

The reason we were walking around downtown today is because we have the day off from training. At this point in time we are really just resting a lot to get ready for the tournament. The last couple of days we wrestled a match in the morning and then hit the sauna in the afternoon. One of the days we went to a sauna that had dry saunas, turkish saunas, and steam rooms. It was a really nice facility, and I felt good when I was finished. I thought that I was going to get a massage, but it ended up being this guy scrubbing me down with some kind of rough rag. The whole time that he did it I was thinking, “It will be okay because I will get a nice relaxing massage soon.” That time never came and I ended up itching the rest of the night. At least I know now never to do that again. Yesterday we went to a sauna at the Radisson hotel here in town. It was a very nice facility as well, and I am glad that we went. They had treadmills, weights, a swimming pool, and a sauna. I got a little run in and a couple sets with some dumbells. After that, I relaxed in the sauna and the pool.

I know that sometimes these posts are a little sporadic, but I forget to write about things from time to time. For example, I forgot to write about our little trip to the beach today after lunch downtown.  We hired a taxi to drive us down to the beach. We didn’t get in the water or anything like that. Jay said that Baku’s port in the caspian sea is the most ecologically damaged one in the world. The scary part about that is that the water actually looked pretty clean and clear. As we drove to the beach we passed numerous oil wells. There were pumps all over the place right next to the sea that were just pumping away. There are also huge oil tankers here as well as bunch of other cargo ships. It was really interesting to see that so up close and personal. The traffic was a lot better today on our trip than it was yesterday. Yesterday we must have spent at least four hours on a bus and in a van just to get to and from practice. It was a real nightmare. The coaches are looking into ways to make things more convenient for us though when it is time to weigh in and wrestle. The facilities aren’t even that far away, but the traffic is horrendous. It is the maybe the worst traffic that I have seen in the world. One way streets somehow turned into two way streets, and drivers don’t even recognize the white lines on the road as being any type of guideline. During rush hour it is absolute craziness. We saw several people and police officers get out of their vehicles to scream at each other about their poor driving. It was unreal. I wish that I would have had a video camera with me at the time to get a glimpse of it to share with everyone.

I am feeling great right now. I have been sleeping through the night very well for the last two nights, and I feel like I am getting well adjusted to the time zone here. I still find myself getting a little tired and cranky in the afternoons, but I am getting better and better about that everyday. The time here has been going by pretty fast. I am looking forward to when we weigh in on Monday and finally get to wrestle on Tuesday. The freestyle team got here the other night so they are here with us in the same hotel. I haven’t seen any other teams get here yet other than Moldova’s freestyle team. I am sure that these next couple of days though that things will start to get a little crazy around here with the other teams showing up. That is usually the way things go.

I hope everyone back home is doing well and having a good time doing whatever you are doing. Take care.

The trip to Azerbaijan was a long one. The team left Thursday afternoon, and we arrived on Saturday early in the morning. We flew from Denver to Chicago, and from Chicago to London. When we got to London we had a nine hour layover that we took advantage of by going out into the city to see some sights.

London is a great city. There are a lot of historical architecture there and also a lot of tradition. This visit to London was my first one. I have passed through the airport many times, but this was the first time that I made it out into the city. We started off our journey in the city by trying to find Matt Lindland and Dan Henderson. Dan was going to be fighting in the UFC, and Matt was there to corner him. We went to their hotel, but they weren’t there. After that we went and saw the London Bridge, Tower Bridge, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and Buckingham palace. After all of that walking around, by the time we got back to the airport I was exhausted. I had no trouble sleeping on the next five hour flight to Baku, Azerbaijan.

We got into Azerbaijan around 7 or 8 o’clock in the morning. Baku is a pretty interesting city. There are a lot of countries from the former Soviet Union that are pretty run down. They are progressing, but slowly. Here in Baku there seems to be a lot of new construction so there is a mix of old Soviet buildings and some new and impressive structures. The hotel where we are staying at is a mix of the two. There are some floors that are very nice with marble tile and beautiful chandeliers, and there are other floors that look like the seventies would like to call them back. Our team is staying on the thirteenth floor, and our floor is one that looks like it is out of the seventies. The carpet is old and worn, and rooms looked like they were finished with just enough effort to get the job done. They were going for functionality here and not aesthetics.

I am used to staying in places like this so it is no let down to me. I am just happy that the food is pretty good here. Their breakfast is typical of other european fare including bread cold cuts, and some vegetables. They also have plenty of juices and cereals here too. Lunch and Dinner are usually rice with some type of stewed meat and vegetables. The dishes seem pretty nutritious, and they are also appetizing. I am very happy about that. I think that I have come to judge a lot of these trips on whether or not the food is good. It is funny how something like that can influence my view of a trip so much.

My sleeping schedule is still off a little bit. I woke up this morning at 4 a.m. I have been trying to stay strong during the day, but I have been napping the last two days. I have been so exhausted, but I know that in a couple of more days I will feel great. We still have another week before we weigh in and wrestle so there is still time to prepare for the competition. I think that after tonight I should be on track as far as sleeping. The big challenge is to just hold out during the day and not to nap.

Today is Tuesday and I leave on Thursday so I am starting to get everything together for the trip. It is a very exciting time of year right now because this upcoming trip is for the world championships held in Baku, Azerbaijan. I am so excited to wrestle in this tournament and compete again. I don’t remember when I have anticipated a wrestling tournament so much. I think that it is going to be a lot of fun.

We just finished training camp last Friday. They really put us through the ringer on that one. We were wrestling live twice a day everyday for the most part. They gave us some good rest days, but the training was definitely intense. I am glad that it is over now, but I think it was just what we needed to put some finishing touches on our conditioning and readiness. The whole team looks good right now. We are all looking to have a huge year this year.

Yesterday as you know was labor day. I think it is funny that nobody works on labor day. You would think that by it’s name everyone would work extra hard that day. I suppose that is one of life’s little ironies. Sarah and I went to a church barbeque yesterday and had a great time. We took two of our dogs, Newton and Mozart. They behaved pretty well at the start, but as the day wore on they started to bark at some other dogs incessantly.  Sarah took them home, and she made it back in time for the water fight that took place. She didn’t really participate much, but my friend Justin Ulrich and I had a great time. We nailed quite a few kids with some waterballoons. I got drenched myself though so I don’t know if I ended up winning or not. Either way it was a great time.

Please be patient as I get some more things together for the site. I know that I said that I would post some pictures and video on the blog, and I will. It might have to wait until I get back from Azerbaijan. Take care everyone.