Women's Jam Day 2

I woke up cold, but knew I wouldn't stay that way for long.  Walked to whole foods for breakfast; breakfast burritos are a bad idea but fruit, pasta, and hashbrowns are good.

Caitlin led a warmup, followed by breakout sessions led by some of the other women teaching parkour.  I chose the one on falling safely with Brandee from Seattle.  She is a beast and says she only tries things that seem risky because she knows she will be able to bail safely.  It was good practice on some stuff I already knew and informative about some new techniques.

Locals/people with cars drove groups to the University of Colorado, getting lunch on the way.  Some of the people in my group got huge meals but I would be sick eating that much right before jumping around in the heat, so I got a small salad with chicken and some really good cilantro dressing.

At UC, we played a version of name tag where the "it" person tried to tag people out, but that person could shout another's name and avoid being tagged, and that person whose name was called was the new "it".  People tagged out met up a little way off to start their own game, and tagged out people went back to the original group.  Everyone had name tags on, and it was a fun getting to know you game.

A very nice police officer told us that parkour is not allowed on campus, but we didn't look destructive, so we could keep on "practicing fitness" and nobody would bother us.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that after warming up with smaller jumps, I still have my maximum precision distance.  I also was able to cat-balance all the way down a 23-of-my-feet rail.  There were a lot of smaller things I did, just messing around, but those are the highlights of UC training for me.  

It was nice to see new people and little girls and older moms training, actually training and enjoying themselves, along with the hardcore traceuses and hobbyists.  One traceuse had a shirt I want that said, "Parkour:  disciplined not dangerous."

After that we went to a park and hiked up a mountain.  It was a short hike but it was very vertical.  There was a rock formation at the top that everyone climbed up to various levels and we took a group picture there.  It was my goal to make it all the way to the top, but when I started getting dizzy, I decided scaling rock faces was maybe not the best decision.  It was 98 degrees out and I was at a higher elevation than I had probably ever been and I had been doing parkour all day, so, I don't regret making the safe decision.  The view from where I got was pretty cool.

After hiking back down, I went with Stephanie and her daughter Laura and this other girl Kat to get supper.  There is this restaurant chain here called Noodles & Company that serves noodle dishes from all over the world.  It was pretty darn good.

Then it was back to the gym for challenges and open practice.  I was so tired, though, I only did a few of the challenges and spent maybe 20 minutes of the two hours actually moving.  I spent the rest of the time resting, reading, and writing...and also securing my comfortable couch position.  There were a lot fewer people staying at the gym tonight, but there was still a long bathroom wait and they still kept the lights on too damn long.  I am already sore, prior to sleeping, which is not a good sign.  No amount of stretching or foam rolling is going to save me from my fate; tomorrow is going to suck.

Travel and warmup day for 2016 North American Women's Parkour Jam

This day started early and ended late.  I left the house at 4:00 in the morning for a white-knuckled drive to the airport in the rain and dark and surrounded by Mac trucks which didn't always stay in their lane.  I park, managing to catch the shuttle just as it is leaving.  The airport is way more crowded than the last time I took a flight this early, to the point where I would have missed it had I waited in the normal checkin line and not asked an attendant where to go for my particular flight.  She set up a special express lane for me and other passengers on that flight.  After that, security went by relatively quickly and I had some time before boarding.  I enjoyed a window seat, when I wasn't napping, and it was a relatively easy experience.

I had what was supposed to be an hour and a half layover extended to nearly three hours, but I managed to find a working outlet to charge my phone while reading my book, and all was well.

Again I had a window seat, but this time, the strangers sitting next to me were and old Indian couple who did not speak English and clearly hadn't flown much either.  They tried asking me various things, like the time and if the water and snacks were free, which I eventually worked out.  They had trouble communicating with the flight attendants as well and wound up just getting whatever I was getting because they could point and parrot the words.  At one point shortly after some pilot announcement, the guy tried talking to me again, and the only word I could get from him was the number 33.  He repeated the sentence with it in it a couple times then just the number.  "I get you, 33.  But 33 what?"  It really made absolutely no sense.  I felt bad because I wanted to help them, but I really, really could not figure out what they were saying.

Anyway, after we landed, it was off to baggage claim, where I spied the following signage:

This is the first time I have ever seen such a thing.  I didn't realize Colorado got tornados that frequently.  My friend Jamie happened to be free and in the area, so she picked me up from the airport.  There were multiple pickup areas and they were poorly labeled, so we spent way too long trying to find one another before a very helpful policeman helped us out.  From there, we drove to Boulder and got food at this burger bar.  I wish I had taken a picture of the bathroom doors.  They were so confusing.  The men's room door said women and the women's room door said men.  The words were painted on there, inside the arm of a person which they were describing, but the arm was pointed at the other door.  So, yeah, I went in the wrong room to wash my hands before our food arrived and didn't even realize it until a dude walked in.  There weren't regular urinals to clue me in, either.  There was this long basin tucked into an alcove behind the regular stalls that was easy to miss.  Very strange.  Anyway, I had a cheeseburger with avocado and fries with a Mr.Pibb, and I ate all of it.  I was hungry after all that traveling.  Then we drove around downtown Boulder for a while, and found this indie clothing store that had some pretty cool stuff in it; if I were still in my hippie-clothing phase I would have wanted almost everything in there.  As it was, I walked away with a new outfit for a very reasonable price that I can wear to work.  Jamie had plans for the late afternoon, so she dropped me off at the gym.  I still had a few hours to kill so I located a bookstore to sit and read in (the library was not within walking distance) while I waited for the gym to open.  During this time, I almost finished my plane book, drank a smoothie, and played phone tag with Bobby.

The gym's open jam starts; I get to train with people I hadn't seen in a year or more:  Brandee, Jackie, Caitlin, Nikki, and a bunch of others from the early days.  I also meet new people: Natalie (Jackie's girlfriend who clearly makes her happy because I have never seen Jackie smile so much), Aiko (we practice the warped wall together for a while, neither getting to the top, but having more fun sliding down when we fail, Tiffany (who became my couch buddy when the gym went into sleep mode), and too many others to name.

I trained a bunch but don't do anything too crazy, because I have two more full days of this to look forward to and I don't want to waste all my energy right away.  When I get too tired, I take a kind of nap on the couch in the waiting area, then go to train some more and fail immediately on an easy jump I had made before.  I ice my shins and call it a day; I consider this a warning shot from my body, telling me that I am too tired to continue training.  So I nap on the couch with my ice pack in between chatting with Tiffany.

The jam eventually ends and people start trying to find places to sleep.  Tiffany and I have already secured the corner couch and share pillow space.  There is a lot of waiting for the bathroom, during which time I reorganize backpacks to get ready for tomorrow, write notes about today to expand upon later, and wonder if they will ever turn off the damn light.  Eventually they do and I fall asleep.