I spent a considerable number of years learning Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu at the Pupukea Recreation Center, a large bungalow on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii just before reaching Waimea Bay.
I remember training there every week and hearing the thunder of the Hawaiian winter surf crash behind us while I began to grasp the subtleties of Jiu-Jitsu. After training in class I would often walk outside and just look at the ocean.
When I first began learning Jiu-Jitsu at Pupukea I had to ride the bus from BYU Hawaii for almost 40 min. just to get there, then after training I would wait an hour to take the 40 min. bus ride back. Soon after working as a Janitor for several months cleaning toilets at school I was able to buy a car for five hundred dollars to drive up to Pupkea to train. By the time I finished my undergraduate degree I had a nice truck that I would make the 20-30 min trip in each day to get to training.
It was a special time of complete discovery, creativity and new learning. December 15th 2009 received photos from Hawaii and the Pupukea Recreation Center is no more. It makes me sad to think I will never have the opportunity to train there again or re-live the days past. It's the story of life, it moves on, time passes and the only thing that is certain is that things will change. People will come and go and do whatever but I'm still doing Jiu-Jitsu all these years later and loving it just as much as ever.
Good Luck and Good Training;
The End of An Era by Sam Kressin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.northcountybjj.com.
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