Home in the USA, and then off again to North Carolina

Since I’d spent almost a year and a half traveling around studying parkour in countries all around the world but had never really explored the sport’s development in my own country I decided to remedy this upon my return to the USA.  Less than a week after my return to the US in October I headed south on an American “East-Coast mini-tour”.

The first stop was to Charleston , South Carolina to reunite with my old teammates from the Davidson Track and Cross-Country teams and to attend the Southern Conference Cross-Country Championships to cheer on our new generation, who narrowly missed the conference championship.   After looking in vain for a parkour scene in the city I headed north to Charlotte, North Carolina to meet up with the guys from Charlotte Parkour.

I had visited the Charlotte parkour guys during the summer and was happy to see that some of the guys that I first met in 2008 at a 1-day “workshop” that they hosted for Davidson students were still training and going strong.  I was also pleasantly surprised to find that the UNC Charlotte campus is a great place to train and the American university habit of building large, grandiose buildings with lots of handicap access ramps and “useless” architectural elements makes for great training areas.

North Carolina itself seems to have a pretty well-established parkour scene, with regular jams and meetings across the state.  Their site has been active for a few years now and is a good resource for both people looking to get into the sport as well as more experienced practionners looking for people to train with. For more info, check out http://www.ncparkour.com/