Balance of Power Shifted (11 page)

We had been working out as a group for about 6-months and I had
not hit on her since I knew she had a steady. I heard recently through the grapevine that the relationship was over.  The other reason that Bill asked, was that her best friend Emily sometimes came to hang out and enjoy the sparring and camaraderie afterwards.  Emily had no interest in doing any form of MMA.  Bill had briefly met her when he was around a few months ago and had commented on how nice he thought she was.  “Bill,” I said, “Jenny will be here but I don’t know about Emily,” then I laughed at him telling him he was transparent as hell.

Bill just shrugged off my comments
, grabbed a pad of paper off the counter, and dove right into whatever he wanted to talk to me about.  “You know those old-fashioned quilts that you see around that mostly older folks tend to favor.”  “Yeah,” I said with a skeptical look since I did not see where this was going.  “Picture this,” he said.  “What if those squares in the quilt were not made of cloth material, but some kind of strong pliable transparent plastic or vinyl and each square was sealed with the same amount of fluid in it.” “Yeah,” I said again, with a vague picture forming in my head.  “What would happen if each square was electrically wired together in serial or parallel” he continued.  “Damn,” I said as I caught onto the gist of what he was getting at. “We would now have a power source that could be configured to meet almost any power demand,” I excitedly commented.  “You got it” Bill said, “I think we can build this with a little ingenuity and get us our first prototype”.  “We should design and build it to power this building,” I added.  “I was thinking the same thing,” Bill said, as he slid a pad of paper over to me.  While we had been talking, he had drawn up a simplistic diagram that showed a quilt like compartmentalized panel, a DC to AC power converter and a building circuit breaker panel.

For the next couple of hours we argued about how to construct our flexible panel. 
We traded ideas back and forth and spent most of another hour or two on the Internet to see if off-the-shelf parts are available to help us with the design.  We ended up ordering two 55 square yard rolls of 40-mil vinyl.  One roll was in blue and the other roll was transparent or mostly transparent.  We got this material from a pool company that makes vinyl pool liners.  The individual pouches that equated to the square on a quilt were a little harder to pick out and we decided just to go with 8-ounce polypropylene bags that had a double zip lock seal.  We found 20-mil bags that we thought could support the insertion of wires and not break down when applying a sealant. 

Our plan was to insert wires into the bottom of the 8
-ounce bags, then wire for our negative polarity connections.  We would make the connection watertight by using a special adhesive to bond it all together and then wire the top of the bag for the positive flow.  We would then hang the bag vertically and fill the 8-ounce bags with the electric generating fluid.  We would cover the top with a clear vinyl panel and seal the edges with the heat-sealing tool we had purchased.  The only output of the mat would be a bundle of wires for connection to a power panel of sorts.

To help shape the DC output
, convert to alternating current and store the power, we purchased a couple of uninterruptable power supplies or UPS as most people called them.  The application for these is to supply battery power and a clean power signal to sensitive gear such as a computer.  1000-watt power inverters converted Direct Current or DC into alternating current where AC power was needed.  Lastly, we purchased 1000 feet spools of red and black solid conductor wire and a wide array of wire connectors.  We paid a premium for shipping and hoped everything would be in by the end of next week.  Bill had been fooling around with Microsoft Visio graphics as we were designing our power panel.  He showed me a very professional initial schematic based on our discussion.  Using a function called layers in Visio, he was able to show the whole construction process in sequence just be enabling a layer at a time to be shown on the screen.  He printed a couple of copies so that we could refine it and hand draw on it as ideas came.

“
Hey fish boy,” I said getting Bill’s attention.  “I have to run out and pick up some wine and beer before everyone gets here, but before I go I think it is time to come up with some kind a name for our organism.  While we’re at it, pick a company name since we are getting real close to making this adventure serious.  I looked online, and you probably know this better than I do, but it is a pain in the ass to name something in Latin the way scientists and universities do.  The taxonomy that those brainiacs have come up with numbed my brain.  Why don’t we call it whatever we want and let someone else figure it out once we go public?”  Bill laughed and said he had come to the same conclusion since his professor and he had actually been trading emails about the same topic regarding the specimen he had sent back east.  “Let’s come up with names tomorrow,” Bill suggested.

Bill helped me set up the rinky-dink wanna be ring posts and ropes.  I was
not set up to do anything more substantial with stanchions and used large red construction cones to hold up my makeshift ring ropes.  Even though the ropes would give in with very little force, they did provide a boundary for an actual ring or cage size.  I had water near the ring and a larger cooler of beer and white wine for afterwards.  A couple of tables around the mats sported an assortment of salty snacks.  Bill agreed to video tape the sparring part of the evening.  Traditionally everyone spent a half hour warming up on the mats, treadmill or using the assortment of punching bags and those dummies with half a body for kicking.  In actual sparring, we rarely did anything at full power and there was always one person nominated to make sure nobody got hurt.  There were times, however when the participants agreed to go at it as if it was a real match.  A little blood and minor injuries were a regular occurrence and unavoidable.

Jenny and Emily were the first to arrive just after
six and both gave us quick kisses on our cheeks as they carried in supplies.  They brought a spectacular salad to complement the pizza that had fresh strawberries mixed in, as well as their own bottle of Chardonnay.  Emily was dressed casually in workout clothes you typically see in upscale health clubs and Jenny was dressed in her fighting clothes, which were typical of the Muay Thai fighters.  The shorts were very high and showed the entire length of her legs, which by the way were pretty damn nice.  It always amazed me how those legs and knees could be so painful when she used them on you.  She had a matching green and yellow body-hugging top that showed off the rest of her attributes as well as a lightweight hoody. The only thing she was missing was the traditional Muay Thai headpiece called a Mongkol.

A couple of minutes later Jeremy
, showed up with his wife Mary and sauntering in behind them were Miguel and Ty.  Miguel was about 2 inches taller than Ty, but Ty was the heavier of the two and mostly muscle.  Jeremy told everyone to expect the pizzas at 7:30.  Miguel and Ty said hello to everyone, and having been here a few times, walked right over to the workout area.  They were both nice guys and tremendous athletes that worked for Jeremy’s company. What they did for him, I was not sure, but they spent much of their time in the field.  Both were from Jeremy’s old Cyber Security Army unit and had joined him shortly after Jeremy formed the company.  Mary came over, gave me a hug, and said thanks for having us.  She was a very attractive woman maybe about five feet 6 or so with long blonde hair and blue eyes.  Mary was fit and appeared capable of handling herself on the mats, but was never a participant.  I think she came because she liked to watch her husband get all-macho.  While she was standing there, I called Bill over to introduce them since she had not been here the last time Bill had camped out.  “Nice to meet you” she said and headed over to hook up with the other women.

While waiting for
one or two others to show up, Jeremy came up to Bill and me and said, “Missed you at work this week.”  He then quickly slipped in “so how is your secret project working out,” he said with a smile.  He was very observant and proceeded to point out our new additions in our make shift lab.  Lucky Bill and I had put away a lot of stuff or Jeremy would have had many other questions.  “Well” I said, and hesitated for the right words, “our project has been very promising so far, but we will be down to the wire next week to see if we have a viable option.”  He laughed at that and said, “I wish you both luck, however I won’t be too disappointed if it doesn’t work out since I really don’t want to lose you.”  At that point, Donny, who I assumed was our last guest, interrupted us. 

I had met Donny and Jenny at a local boxing
club, which also trained people for MMA.  Unfortunately, the owner lost his lease and had to shut down, which is how we ended up at my place.  I knew Donny and Jen from the gym, and we happened to be hanging at the gym door one night trying to figure out why we couldn’t get into the club when one of the employees came out and told us what happened.  Donny was a 6 foot 1 skinny dude with gangly arms and legs.  He looked like as if strong wind could blow him over.  His appearance was also very misleading.  He was lightening quick, and an accomplished boxer.  When he smelled blood, he went quickly in for the kill.  I saw many of his opponents freeze since they never expected someone who looked like him to be so quick and lethal.

Donny was a gregarious
person and when he walked into a room, everyone knew he was there.  Within seconds, he is yelling “hi” to everyone and everyone is yelling “hi” back.  With fist bumps all around, we were all set to get the evening going.  Everyone participating had signed a legal waiver that I had drawn up and house rules required that they wear headgear, mouthpieces, open gloves and a protective cup for the men at all times on the mat.  I had extra gear if anyone forgot something, and had a good assortment of pads when working with a partner.  The actual sparring session pairings work themselves out.  Somehow or other people paired up and worked out an order for going on the mats as well as who would be the safety judge. 

Jeremy and
Ty were already on the mat practicing takedowns, submission holds, and it looked like Jen and Don were going to alternate with bags and practice kicks.  I know that Donny really wanted to improve is kicking game to augment his punching prowess and Jen was just the person to teach him.  This left Miguel who looked like he was just finishing up on a heavy bag.  With one final kick and punch combination, he turned around and saw that I was waiting for him.  Miguel was about my height but outweighed my by 20 pounds with a good complement of muscle.  We knew each other’s style and had the classic speed versus power matches.  I wanted to wrestle him and practice takedowns since he was a bigger person and he knew he wanted to wrestle me, since his ground game was where he needed the most work.  It did not hurt that I had taken second in the state wrestling finals back in high school.

It is difficult to practice take downs since the guy you are sparring with knows it is coming and can defend it easily so what we do is try and defend at half
speed.   We each did that for five minutes and it is amazing how much energy is expended trying to leverage position.  The big difference in MMA versus high school wrestling is the body slams.  If your body does not hit the mat at the same time as your opponent in high school, you can get points taken away or disqualified.  In MMA, you can slam the other fighter so hard you can knock him or her out. We then moved in the half guard position and tried to get to full guard or into side guard and back and forth.  This is where Miguel needed some work.  He did not seem to know how to use his legs from the bottom to block my moves and did not know how to leverage them when he had a superior position.  I showed him a few pointers and he did much better, but his legs were not as flexible as mine were and could not get everything.

By that
time, everyone had a good sweat going and it looked like Jen and Don were going to take it from practice to sparring and were the first pair to get up.  From a pure power and size perspective the men had too much of an advantage over women when sparring.  It was an unwritten rule that women can go at it full speed, while the men pulled back on everything and did not take the fight to the ground.  Jeremy was the referee or what we called the safety person to help make sure no one really got hurt and had all the required gear on.  With a “let’s rumble” from Jeremy ripping off part of Buffer’s shtick, Don and Jen started circling each other. 

Jen and Don
both traded many kicks with Jen nailing Don about 2 to 1, which was impressive for Jen since Donny was almost as quick as she was.  Suddenly Donny faked a flying knee and dipped down for a take down.  This caught Jenny by surprise and Don easily picked her up and dumped her on her back.  I yelled to Jen that she was fighting like a girl and to get back up.  Don did not follow his advantage and signaled for Jen to get back up.  Jen came in for a Muay Thai clinch, but Don was by far the much stronger person out there and easily separated himself from Jen and at the same time delivered a solid but only half speed elbow to the side of Jen’s headgear rocking her and making her step back.  Don quickly closed and landed a couple of three quarter speed punch combinations and finished up with a front leg kick.  Jen countered with a vicious kick to Don’s right thigh, followed that up with a three-punch combination, and immediately backed out.  At this point Jeremy stepped in and said “time” which ended the match.  We only sparred one three minute round per match and time was up.  Don and Jen huffing and puffing a little gave each other a quick hug and sat down for a well-deserved rest.