** This thread discusses the Content article:
Houston Jam Write-up: aXp **
August 30, 2008
I arrived at Tranquility Park in downtown Houston a few minutes after ten o’clock in the morning. As I neared Houston Parkour’s popular training area, I found that Kevin, Danny, and Nathan had already arrived and were warming up. Not long after, Chris, Desmund, and Desmund’s younger cousin (a.k.a his cameraman) arrived. Soon everyone was up and moving and taking on the surrounding obstacles using techniques including various vaults, wall climbs, tic-tacs, cats, and bar swinging. Desmund created a photo opportunity by holding a hand stand as first Kevin jumped up and through this legs and later Danny flipped through them. Several of us also took some time to practice some kong to precisions.
After moving to a different area of the park, Chris and Mark found a good wall to practice jumping into cats, challenging both themselves and each other to increase their jumping distance. After Kevin posed the question, several of us began discussing and attempting to increase the distance and/or height of our level kongs. Sometime after noon, we decided to head to University of Houston to get something to eat, rest, and then continue training on campus. Unfortunately, Nathan and Danny both had places to go and had to call it a day.
After taking what seemed like a very long time to find an open restaurant (Subway), we ate, said goodbye to Chris who had to leave, and headed back out. We started off in the parking lot where Desmund kong vaulted Kevin’s car. This was followed shortly with Kevin vaulting his own car. We then made our way into campus stopping where we found interesting spots and obstacles. In one area on campus, we all practiced improving our kong to level precisions. After a couple hours, Mark and Kevin headed off leaving only Desmund and me, oh and of course Desmund’s cameraman… I mean cousin.
Desmund and I continued moving through campus finding areas that caught our interest. At some point, we took a bit of a break and watched some of the clips that Desmund is planning on making a sampler video with. We both then attempted a relatively long kong to cat but found that we couldn’t quite get it, but there’s always next time. We hit a few other spots and then Desmund tried to show me how to properly work up towards an aerial. I found out that I haven’t even gotten the cartwheel right yet.
We started to head back to our cars and ended up stopping at one last shoulder high wall. Desmund attempted to jump and kong vault the wall until he could easily do it. He was posing for a picture when a group of girls started to walk by so he had to hurry and vault it again. I did a couple wall flips and wall handstands and we headed out. We grabbed some smoothies with recovery fuel and then Desmund decided to finish off the day by vaulting his van. On his first attempt, he slammed his feet into his car door leaving a small dent (luckily he rolled down the window). On his next two attempts he successfully vaulted his van and got it on film, so you’ll see it soon enough I’m sure. I then got in my car and headed home at about 5:45. Overall, it was a good day.
Written by aXp
