Beirut.

First and foremost the event I feel was a great success, and all of us performing and teaching I feel definitely got through to a lot of the Lebanese people and if nothing more helped them find out a little bit more about what Parkour is.

I had the unfortunate luck to have been directed to the wrong flight for France so ended up spending the night in the Houston Airport waiting for the next one and ended up having to miss the first performance, which actually took place at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. Once I landed in Lebanon you could immediately tell just how different the culture is to ours and just the ambience and place had a very different feel initially. After sifting through the whole visa business, taxiing to the hotel and getting my room I was finally able to get a hold of Edith Bitar, one of our hosts from the U.S. Embassy, to see what was happening with everyone else. They were all out for a night on the town and while invited there were some misunderstandings and I ended up just chilling at the Hotel. The next day saw us performing at Notre Dame College and after seeing everyone again, and meeting Adrian in the morning we were off to the College to our set. We took two cars there and I was lucky enough to be in the car with Will as well as M2 as he was snapping photos of pretty much everything on our way to the college. We had to stop at the embassy so Edith could get some things and this is when Mark's camera got us in a bit of trouble. Apparently taking photos of the Embassy and that kind of thing can be misconstrued as some sort of spying so we ended up being stopped by an incognito army officer and waiting for an embassy representative to come and sort out the situation. He ended up deleting all the photos he deemed incriminating and then after that little fiasco we got to the college, quite a bit after the rest of the group. It was my first time seeing the set and It was pretty similar to the K-Swiss tour set up with a couple different obstacles. Once we all got together we choreographed our show, warmed up and just generally got ready for a nice day of performing and teaching. This is where we hit our first little snag. The first performance was to start at 1pm, when the time came around we had a pretty huge turn out, tons of college and access students waiting for us to perform and our set wasn't even finished yet. Once we got started though things turned out pretty well I feel. Lots of Roll drilling, Cats, Traversing, Under bar and lache work was what we went over for the most part and though a lot of the students saw us warming up I feel they got a good show out of what we were able to come up with as far as the performance. We also got to meet a couple Lebanese Traceurs, one of which, Jad, actually performed with us near the end! After the performance we went to a pretty awesome mountainside eatery, enjoyed some Lebanese dishes as we watched the sunset and ended it with a trip the the Virgin Mary at the top of this mountain.


Our next day saw us heading south to Saida for a performance at this place known only as "Streetball court" It was basically a YMCA type facility complete with video games, a ball pit, trampolines, a rock wall, and a bunch of basketball courts.



The day started off well enough, as soon as we got to the facility we were relieved to see the set already up and ready for us to work out some of the kinks we had due to lack of time and we all started getting pretty comfortable with the set. The performances started off without a hitch and everything was going really well, performances were running smooth and most of the kids were interested enough to learn when it came around time for the workshop portion. The day was going great and then time came around for our last performance of the day. Everything started off fine and then we got to the portion of our performance were we all do a small solo run. As Adrian Went for his last movement for his solo, a drop to side summi, right as he landed the box under him collapsed under his weight. Luckily he was fine and we were able to finish the show without any more incident. At the end of this show we decided to head for the beach to cool off a bit and then spent a nice night in downtown Beirut for dinner where we just so happened to be eating at a restaurant that was being filmed at the time for the "Nightlife in Beirut" so that was kind of a fun end to the night.

Our final day saw us performing close by a place called Martyr's square, the bullet hole ridden statues stood as a reminder of things during the Lebanese Civil War.



After Checking the monument out and getting breakfast we proceeded to warm up, make sure our performance area was set up fine, complete with a newly constructed box and then just get ready for our last day. You could definitely tell that we had gotten pretty comfortable with our set and everyone pretty much, even through the soreness of all our previous performances, moved very well and gave plenty of good shows to what I think was our most hands on audience of the trip. We had a ton of people participating in the workshops from little children to middle aged men, it was definitely a great testament to the appeal of Parkour and it just helped make the last day that much more enjoyable. No real snags of note for the last day, other than it being the hottest one out of all our days in Beirut. After our performance we made a trip to northern Lebanon to a place called Byblos. Known for its ruins and history, Byblos had a really great feel to it, you could just sense all the history in the place and out of the whole trip was probably my personal favorite, though we only got to spend a couple hours there.




Despite the warnings against travel and the initial unease Lebanon turned out to be a beautiful place in all aspects, a ton of fun, and a great place not only to teach but to train Parkour. Most everyone we met was willing to learn and I think we all had a great time and hope for more!

Beirut.

Was an amazing experience, got back last night and I just have to say for a first time out of country experience this was a great one that I won't soon forget. Right now I have some things to attend to but when I have a chance I'll update with a write up of my experiences.

Peace!

Beirut Bound

Heading to Beirut Tomorrow, I'll be gone for a week teaching/performing. Really looking forward to it, as it will be not only a great experience but my first time out of the country.

Definitely going to do my best.

NYC Urbanathalon

The weekend of September 27th saw Billy, Brian, Sam, Leon and I heading to NYC to perform as a part of the festivities for those that had raced in the Urbanathalon



The day started kind of as we'd expected it, wet and really slippery. We got to Pier 17, where the performance was around 7:30 am and started rehearsing, making our lines and much to our disappointment slipping around a lot. It wasn't just that the obstacles we were set out to use where slippery but the fact that since the whole set was on the pier and wet wood equals natures slip n' slide, pretty much every one of us had slipped just walking around or running into or out of a movement, it was kind of ridiculous. We caught a lucky break when we found out they had a bunch of extra thin mats which we could actually get some good footing on whether wet or not. So with that we were able to all get a decent route set up and by the time 9 am hit around we had to stop rehearsing so that we could save it for the show.



First performance came around and it went off pretty well as far as I can tell for everyone else, despite the fact that we hardly had any area closed off for our paths and we spent a lot of it dodging the audience trying to still stick vaguely to all our paths. Another highlight of the first performance was me running for a speed vault, and ended up slipping into one of the barricades. Was more embarrassing than anything but it definitely helped me to remember not to go too fast or else.

Once the First performance was done it started to dry up a bit and we also were able to hit up a hardware store for some grip tape which definitely helped for us going up the ramp as it was essentially like ABS plastic. We spent the hour and a half sitting around flipping a bit and discussing things with the crew so we would have a better clearing for our paths.

By the time the Second Performance rolled around everything was noticeably drier and I feel the performance went a lot better, and also gave a great kind of morale boost for the next one as every one was getting more comfortable and everything was just getting more dry. We broke for lunch after the second performance at the nearby mall. Lots of ideas were thrown about for the third performance as we weren't going to be nearly as hindered by the weather but again we were foiled by nature as the sky opened up again and put another coat of rain on everything. By that time the crew decided that it'd be too dangerous for us to have another performance so we were let out early.

This left us ambling back to our hotel and me heading out an hour or two afterwards. It was a really fun trip, and though the weather hindered us a bit I feel we were still able to give everyone a taste of what we could do as we got a good amount of attention as well as people being interested in training Parkour/Freerunning a bit.

Definitely a great time in NYC as usual

Jereme

AMD RED Shoot: Behind the Scenes

Matthew Willis recently finished an edit up of our RED shoot with AMD. It's all footage from our camera behind the scenes so to speak, and I feel it really captures the feel of that day.

Blam