Early Arrival

Zach Just showed up last night for the Jam. He's from Maryland/NYC area and definitely a lot of fun, hopefully he'll be able to get some good footage and definitely have a good time. Soon in a couple days a ton of people will be at this house...it will definitely be an interesting experience.

7-21-08

Nice little work out today, tried to be pretty full body, my knee was kinda feeling weird though. Did a lot of balance stuff and got a nice rip today!

Yesterday's Reimer's Ranch Experience

Went Climbing yesterday in Austin and it was amazing as usual. We started at around 10:30am and didn't stop climbing till around 7pm. Did a lot of routes, from not climbing as often as usual though my lead confidence was lacking a bit, other than that I was climbing pretty well, just tired from yesterday's training. Everything was awesome and it helped remind me about how much I loved to climb, definitely need to get back into doing it regularly.

Marshall High= Epic

Was turned on to a new training place by one of the guys that trains in town and I'm happy to say its pretty damn amazing and pretty close by to me :)

It's a high school with a multitude of rails, lots of gaps it seems (albeit roof ones) and the best thing about it is the Military obstacle course it has on campus! Tons of fun was had with it, had a great warm up, today was mostly a leg day as I'll be climbing tomorrow but this thing has everything, kind of sad I didn't find it before but I'll definitely be checking this place out more often. So funny how even after four years you can find an amazing new place where you live, makes sense I suppose though. Training consisted of a lot of everything in the beginning but ended with a nice little plyo workout, some balancing ala generations and a bit of safety vault drills. Nice run and a cooldown, the grass nearby is so amazing its like running on clouds haha. My endurance is pretty much back up running wise, was in a slump during the winter because I was neglecting it a bit but I think I'm almost to where my last peak was. Also good news about my knee, it just happened to be that my Hamstring was just intensely knotted up and seemed to be kind of pulling on the tendon and it was somehow affecting my knee, I made sure to stretch it thoroughly and work it out a bit and I think I'll be good as new in a couple days as this was the first time since it had happened that I felt comfortable with it, not hesitant or anything. Funny how something like that, which only started bothering me a couple days ago, was able to put so much fear and mistrust in my body haha. Oh well, c'est la vie

Till next time guys!

P.S.- Expect footage of that awesome area soon!

Seattle Mornings

I was going to write about the chicago jam but not much eventful happened there for me other than it being a lot of fun so I'll just say it was fun and I enjoyed myself a lot.

And here is my time in Seattle

The flight was relatively nondescript till I actually got into Seattle where I had the best seat in the house for what was essentially Seattle being encompassed in fireworks. It was one of the most amazing things I'd seen in recent memory and was a great entrance into Seattle, definitely one that will stick with me. After landing I had to wait about an hour for my luggage as well as being ninja'd by Jesse and Tyson and then we went to Tyson's apartment, got a bit of food and then slept.


I kind of wake up and see Jesse walking around ask him what time it was and as per usual he lies to me and says its noon. So me thinking I slept in a ton instantly wakes me up, I shower and find out its only like just hitting 9 am. No worries though, as this happens to be just in time for a farmer's market that's nearby Tyson's place. We head there wander around a bunch, get some real milk, which was pretty damn amazing, and some awesome bread and cheese. After that and a ton of mulling about after we got back we head to gasworks for training. Was a huge turn out at this one and the training place was pretty damn awesome looking. Sadly most of it was cordoned off due to the July fourth festivities. It was still a ton of fun though and I worked a bit on my diving to rails (for cat pass) but still didn't complete the specific challenge that was put before me :/ It was a pretty laid back training day but definitely fun so thats good. Afterwards a bunch of us went for Thai food and we spent the rest of the night pretty much playing the animal game and throwing balls at eachother's....balls haha. ( I know very mature)

The Morning had us heading to Bellingham to train with Rafe a bit and see the awesome natural training grounds he has. After we all arrived me soon made our way to Whatcom Falls. This place was one of the most amazing places I'd seen and definitely a fun training ground. We Warmed up and trained in the Natural Method way led by Rafe and it was pretty fun, lots of combat and running oriented things, and after the warm up we did a lot of running and lifting, was a ton of fun near the end of it we were lifting up the end of this log which was pretty damn intense, after I did my set of deadlifts and then ran I came back and actually lifted it over my head, it was heavy as hell haha. After the work out we headed to one of the falls areas where we ended the day with some nice cliff jumping (and flipping) into water. We were all starving after this and soon after we were finished we headed to a pretty awesome italian restaurant and then all went to Rafe's for some much needed rest.

This day saw us making the trek to another natural area where we did a bunch of climbing and jumping on, over, and around rocks for the most part. We also met Dane, one of Rafe's training partners, who led us through the area after Rafe had to leave for work. This day was pretty damn fun and a lot more informal than yesterday. The area, as per usual in Washington, was absolutely beautiful and provided lots of fun terrain to mess about on. Other than Jesse banging the hell out of his leg on a rock it was a good one, and after the natural areaMatt and I did a bit more cliff jumping with Dane then we I headed to the gym Rafe Coach's at for a bit of Gym fun. Afterwards some of us headed back to Tyson's right after and a couple of us had one last meal with Rafe before we headed back to Seattle. Was definitely a great experience and I enjoyed myself Thouroughly and definitely would like to make it back sometime

The Next couple days were a blur filled with swimming in a lake, amazing gelato, Thai Food and a bit of UW/Downtown scouting for Tyson's next RED shoot. The last full day I spent there we had a pretty good training at UW did some scary things for the first time, namely an underbar to a tree that was intimidating to me, A Lache from my hands to my shins about 15 feet up, something Tyson affectionately calls the "crotch buster" and we got a taste of Tyson's little Gauntlet at UW. All in all my last day was definitely a great one and my trip as a whole was pretty awesome too.

Seattle was basically full of great training,awesome food, good friends and a lot of awesome experiences.

Definitely looking forward to another trip ;)

Ann Arbor, Michigan 25-27 of June

Ann Arbor

We show up to detroit around midnight, and once Travis finds us we head to this nearby park in search of some mythical "No Parkour" Sign. After a good deal of searching we come up empty handed and pile back into Travis' car for the 45 minute drive to Ann Arbor. I slept through most of it and after being escorted to a tent I promptly fall asleep for the rest of the night. Most of the day was kind of unproductive, Travis did make Breakfast which was very nice of him and some time in the day we head out for training. There was a lot of rain that day as well as a lot of potential opportunities to go to the Lake, it never happened sadly. We did however check out one of Travis' nearby training spots which is definitely a great area, after a nice warm up we mostly just messed around, I ended up working diving kongs to a bar as well as Lacher's from a cast. Was pretty fun but it was cut kind of short so that we could make this meeting for the Michigan Parkour club. There was a bit of training beforehand, lots of fluidity work, a bit of running precision stuff, and Travis' going for a huge vault to precision multiple times, culminating in a pretty nice bail. The meeting went as well as it could have gone I'd have to say, and once it finished we headed to meet up with some people for more training. It was raining an intense amount, so we were confined to a parking garage, namely we stayed to one specific area. It was definitely great, worked TONS of fluidity stuff, definitely a fun little session, where I definitely feel I came a way a bit more comfortable with myself and my movement. After we had pizza and slept soon after.

The next day held a more public training session, again in the rain for the most part but the spirit wasn't there so much that day, everyone seemed to be feeling kinda lazy, so it was cut short. Later in the day however, in the night to be more exact Travis took me to some more of his local training grounds. It was definitely one of my favorite trainings so far in my travels, worked a lot of stuff and definitely came away more understanding of each other I'd say. I'd definitely love to check some of the spots he showed me in the day though, as it definitely held tons of possibilities.

That next day we left after a decent breakfast for Chicago.

Columbus, Ohio 23-25th of June

Columbus

After an amazing 14 hour bus ride (that I mostly slept through) following PKNY Zac and I arrive in columbus. We got picked up by Nick, Kaisen, and Craig shortly after arriving and we made our way to Joe's house, the one so many became familiar with during Ohio Generations. It was a lot nicer than my last stay there, actual furniture and things as opposed to just a mass of memory foam and bodies. There was a lot of short talk and catching up exchanged, I took a much needed shower and before our evening training session we made sure to eat at Tommy's a nearby italian restaurant I frequented a couple times during my last stay. The training session was pretty good a nice warm up with ten minutes of QM and then we continued on to check the spots out of the campus, which was an extra treat considering I hadn't been allowed to check it out last time. There were a lot of things there, a couple things I'm kinda proud of was bounding straight into a kong and thinking of a different way to to a headfirst underbar among other things. Was a pretty laid back session that ended at the Blacksheep, a skate shop with a lot of dense obstacles. The last thing I was working was a route Jesse, Tyson and I had made during Ohio, was working it again, with nick in an effort to get it as fast as possible, time, and video footage will tell how good of a job we both did I suppose.

The second day was Zac, Nick and I at the ground zero for Ohio Generations, working mostly precision work before Zac and I had to catch our bus for Ann Arbor. After a nice short training session we say goodbye to nick and little do we know end up waiting an extra 3 hours for our bus. Last experience in Ohio was a pretty crazy contact juggler Zac and I randomly met right before our bus trip, was definitely cool to see.

My PKNY Experience

Sunday, June 15th

My flight started with a sleepless night, was really looking forward to this trip as it was my next big one after Parkour Generations so that combined with a 630am flight basically means no sleep. For the first time my flights to NYC were actually all on time with no delays or anything which kind of seemed to bode well for the rest of the trip. Once I landed Jesse and his friend Mel picked me up(thanks guys!) and we decided to go to this park that was having an art gallery/store thing set up and while Mel shopped for some things Jesse and I did a bit of training around these pretty amazing trees they had. They were tangled masses of branches and offered many different possibilities for a nice wide range of movement. We did a bunch of route repetition drills on a couple of them and then spent the rest of our time at that park discussing roll technique as well as a couple other general things. We stopped for a bit of thai food after that and then continued on to Jesse's house so I could get settled in. I wasn't expecting Jesse's house to be as big as it was so that was a pleasant surprise. He also had a nice backyard with some obstacles he built himself. Currently though, due to a recent storm his yard was riddled with tons of broken tree limbs so one of our tasks for tomorrow was to clear that up so his yard would be useable when everyone else showed up. With that I pretty much picked my spot in Jesse's awesome attic room and hit the hay.

Monday, June 16th

I slept in a bit and when I woke up Jesse was already at work cleaning up the house and doing random chores around the house. I started with helping him clean his room and then after that we went to tackle his backyard. The tools we had at our disposal were a hatchet, a nice curved saw and a crazy titanium branch clipper. The better part of the day we spent cutting, sorting, and cleaning up all the branches, and once finished we began mowing the yard. At this time it started looking like it was going to rain, and with an electric mower it apparently isn't a good idea to continue mowing when it starts raining, go figure. So we abandoned that endeavor for the moment and went to go pick up Janine, who had helped lead a females only workshop in DC a weekend earlier. We caught up with her and had most of the usual Parkour chit chat since I'd heard a lot about her from Tyson. Shortly after that we also had a nice mile or so jog to go pick up Zach as he came back from the pittsburgh PKFR jam they had down there. We get back to Jesse's and basically hang out till Tyson showed up around 2am or something.

Tuesday, June 17th

Tyson was originally supposed to show up earlier but his flight got delayed a ridiculous amount and he didn't show up till after midnight. Shortly after he arrived we went to go "eat" which turned into a nice training session for a couple hours till we arrived at the diner we were going to eat at which had probably the worst food I've eaten :/ oh well, good training at least, even though it kind of sucked having no pay off really for the work. With that we headed back past a stream and through some wooded,muddy crazyness to Jesse's and went to sleep.

This day we went training with Ann in Jersey City. We spent most of our Time in Journal Square where I owned myself trying circles. Other things we did were a bit of precision route training, and Tyson and I worked this kong over a railing which was pretty intimidating, Tyson also got a pretty intense Kong to Cat over the rail. After lunch and a snack we spent a lot of time wandering around the city, stopping at various things like two parallel railings thinking of as many things as we could there, best thing of note before we headed back was this long traverse across like half of the buliding. With that we took Ann to her train then headed back home to jesse's and went to sleep.

Wednesday and Thursday, June 18-19th (basically stuff that I am not sure about as far as which day happened hahaha)

To help pay for the bus trips with Zach that I'll be taking from New Jersey I spent most of the day Moving stuff with Jesse, which took up most of my energy as well but was definitely pretty fun. I also did have a pretty damn good sub that was like a foot and a half long. Also met Frosti for the first time, who we later seemed to switch for Levi. Also while we were waiting for him Tyson, Janine, Zach and I had a huge bout of Pin Balancing, juggling madness in the station which was pretty fun as well.

Somewhere within this time frame there was a nice training session at brooklyn Banks with a lot of playing around, and lots of dive rolls.


Friday, June 20th

This day started earlier than most with everyone at Jesse's and we headed to the same awesome tree park where we did lots of circuit training and huge amount of balance stuff, it was definitely a ton of fun. We spent the rest of our time Shopping for the Barbecue. Once it got started and people started showing up a good amount of fun was had with lots of vault to precisions, flips, swinging around and food consumption. It was definitely a good day to remember.

Saturday, June 21st

We all amassed in front of Jesse's house, and after taking the train we split up into two groups, one of which was going to central park, the other to Roosevelt Island. I was with the Central park group where we had a nice group warm up with lots of balancing and qm then we went and did an awesome traverse before we had to leave for Chinatown to meet up with the rest of the group. After a short lunch we hung around chinatown for a couple hours, I didn't have as much fun as last time due to the massive amounts of people so there wasn't much room for things to do. Tyson and I did get some nice route repetition Stuff done before we got kicked out, which is apparently a crazy thing to happen in chinatown. After that we broke for Ice Cream and headed back to jesse's.

Shortly after that we headed on for a nice nightly conditioning session, the warm up was a really good bit of follow the leader through a school, balancing on railroad tracks, in many different facets, forward and backward, walking and QM. After a long time we got to this baseball field where we proceeded to QM across it, then shortly after start doing a ton of conditioning drills along the length of this interesting Mass of rails.

Sunday, June 22nd

While we were doing that a group went to buy some water and when they came back four of us. Charlie, Tyson, Miles and I had four different stations, one dealing with quadrupedal, one with running form, one with partner exercises and the last one dealing with climb ups, top outs and all things in that kind of vein. the training session as a whole had a great feel and everyone was trying really hard, it was definitely the highlight of my time on the east coast for me and the feel of everybody working hard was just great. After the Session we ate had a nice balance session again and all slept pretty well I have to say.

The morning came, there was a decent amount of light training, tyson and I worked a nice little route on these concrete borders, and there was a ton of scaffolding work. This was an interesting day I wouldn't say somber as that's too strong a word but it had an interesting feel to it, like everything was good but it was coming to an end so I guess that is what was accountable for it. After the training, we ate a bit and said our goodbyes to ann, who was making her trip to france soon after. I also had to head back to pack for the bus trip with Zach. The last little experience I had before leaving Jersey was a ridiculous bus incident where there was almost a fight between one of the attendants and some girl.

I suppose thats Jersey for you haha.