A different Games going on in London

After just watching Great Britain take epic gold medals in the women's heptathlon, the men's 10,000m and the men's long jump I thought it appropriate to highlight some of the other elite athletes that are training in London right now.

Thinking differently

I saw this video and couldn't help re-posting it.  It shows Tim "Livewire" Shieff, a very well-known and respected name in parkour/freerunning, who is particularly known for his creativity and amazing upper body strength, performing an action that thousands of people do on a daily basis.  The only difference is that he has found a way to do it a little bit differently, in true "parkour style".



Looking forward to seeing further episodes in the series.

Back to London for the LEAP Parkour Park Opening

After a few months back in the USA, my arrival back in London felt oddly similar to coming home, and it felt good to be back within the PkGen community.  Unfortunately my flight was delayed so I missed the official opening of the LEAP Parkour Park at the Westminster Sports Academy, arriving in the city a few hours after everyone had already left.  I've attached a brief clip below that includes some footage from the event.

While there was a lot of debate at the beginning of the year in the London parkour community as to the usefulness of the park with a fair amount of resistance to the concept of “paying to train” in a city with so many great public training areas, the park seems to be becoming more and more popular.  Part of it is probably because of the presence of a number of skilled traceurs at the park, especially since many of the PkGen instructors and advanced students are often at the Westminster Academy on a regular basis anyway for classes and training (the park has also seen frequent visits by the awesome "Supa XXL Sunday Training" group).  Also, despite what some veteran traceurs may claim, the park offers a convenience factor that is tough to beat, with a large variety of very challenging obstacles (both mentally and physically) located within a small training area.  Instead of having big jumps and different training surfaces spread over the entire city or neighborhood, they are all located in a compact area and are interconnected, which allows for additional creativity.  While the park is by no means a substitute for training in the greater urban environment, it is a good place to work on specific physical techniques and mental obstacles.

Early fall in London

After what seemed like far too little time in Paris I returned to London, where the rest of my trip seemed to pass in a blur of teaching and training.  I had numerous opportunities to build on my instructing experience, and since the London community is so well established and welcoming, pretty much any time I was in the mood for training there was at least one person, usually more, that were willing to join me.

I spent the first few weeks of my stay bouncing around from one person’s floor, couch, or guest bed to another, and found that although I didn’t have much privacy or space to call my own, I didn’t miss it much nor find it to be much of a sacrifice.

During the first few weeks in London I met a young filmmaker who was putting together a documentary on parkour and asked to interview me for the project.  After the interview she came with me to one of my favorite training spots to get some more footage of me interacting with the urban environment.  Below are some of the still shots from the day. 

All photos courtesy of Nadia Hammond.

Watson: Year 2 – the return to London and Rendezvous 2011

So after a few weeks at home I returned to London for two months.  While this was done under the general premise of continuing my research into parkour, I also wanted to attend some key events, get a lot more instructing experience with Parkour Generations, and to learn more about how a “parkour company” is run and organized.  I returned to London on the day before Rendezvous and arrived in the city just in time to catch the tail end of the instructor’s meeting at Elephant and Castle.

Photo courtesy of Jun Sato.

Group conditioning with the other instructors.  Photo courtesy of Jun Sato.

Taking over a local restaurant for dinner (and lots of press-ups).

While it was great to see a lot of familiar faces from my travels, it was also slightly disconcerting to see many of them standing side by side and interacting with each other.  This feeling was compounded the next day with the official start of Rendezvous VI, which featured a very diverse group of participants, among them people that I had last seen in Australia, Brazil, Denmark, France, or Italy.  While it took me a little while to get used to, I left the event with the distinct feeling of being part of the “community fabric” of the sport, which was a pretty cool feeling, especially when looking back to Rendezvous a year ago when I knew almost as many of the French guys as I did anyone else at the event.  It was also really good to see how far my “generation” (no pun intended) has progressed over the past year.  While I’m sure that the steady improvement is pretty standard in the sport, I do get the feeling that the group of people that I started training with in London has made a particularly concerted effort to get better and “make something” of their parkour.

In my initial plan to come back to London for Rendezvous, one of the reasons for this had been that the event was also supposed to coincide with the opening of the L.E.A.P. parkour park and training facility at the Westminster Sports Academy.  However, due to a combination of problems with the builders and municipal bureaucracy, this was not to be.

Checking out the park.  Photo courtesy of Ludo. 

So nice, yet so unfinished...  Photo courtesy of Ludo.

To be re-visited.  Photo courtesy of Ludo.

Despite the absence of the “headliner”, the event was still a big success and included nearly 200 traceurs from around the world. During the two-day event participants were given the opportunity to partake in a number of different workshops that were led by a variety of specialists from around the world.  Some were parkour training specific such as strength training and body-weight training with Chris Keighley and Blane, while others dealt with issues such as proper stretching routines, nutrition, and even some presentations by Julie Angel and Andy “Kiel” Day, the renowned film-making and photography duo that are probably some of the most knowledgeable people about the history and development of parkour today.

A stretching session led by Awsa.  Photo by Philippe Gaya.

The rest of Rendezvous was filled with two long days of the hard training that has come to be synonymous with the event, which was only exasperated by the presence of Williams Belle.  While it was later confirmed that he did everything at the event with two broken shins bones, he still managed to move around with a grace and fluidity that was inspiring to witness and which left pretty much everyone, including a lot of the more experienced guys, struggling awkwardly to master the new movements.  This was the first time that I managed to successfully cross paths with Williams in my travels and I was glad to finally be able to meet and train with him.

For me, this year was an interesting contrast with my participation in last year's event, mostly because I was wearing a white "Instructor" shirt this year.  While the absence of Chau and Laurent, who seem to have an innate ability to make people do quantities of exercises that they would not normally perform voluntarily, was definitely felt, the mantles of "hard-ass" were quickly taken up by some of the Parkour Generations instructors who seem to have perfected the art of self-inflicted physical misery as well.  Needless to say, I’m sure that that there were a lot of people that woke up very sore the following Monday and Tuesday.  All in all it was another great event and was a testament to the ever-increasing popularity of parkour around Europe.

Trust falls.  Photo by Philippe Gaya. 

Forrest leading the stretching at the end of the second day.  Photo by Philippe Gaya.

Brian getting some extra exercise.  Photo by Oliver Thorpe.

Training in the skate park next door.  Photo by Oliver Thorpe. 

Photo by Jun Sato.

The instructors of RDV 6.  Photo by Jun Sato.

Final Week in London

The last week of my Watson trip was spent in London trying to tie up many of the loose ends to the project, including a number of interviews with people that I hadn’t managed to get in front of the camera yet.  It was also good to have a sense of coming full circle and to get a chance to “break” (successfully complete) a number of jumps and challenges that had seemed impossible to me when I left in October but had mysteriously shrunk or become less intimidating over the course of 8 months.

I also used this time to finalize my plans for the coming year.  I decided at the last minute that I would not be attending the University of Virginia to pursue the masters degree in Marketing and Management that I had deferred admission to in order to go on the Watson.  While a large part of this decision was due to the cost-benefit analysis between the steep tuition costs and what I wanted to do afterwards, another part of it was because I felt that I have been given an extraordinary opportunity with the Watson and couldn’t let that go to waste by “selling my soul” to the corporate world.  This decision was an especially difficult one for me given the strength of some emotional ties at play, and while I will never know what would have happened if I’d chosen otherwise, I’m pretty sure that I made the right choice.

London Flyby in April

After the quick stop in Saõ Paulo to check out Jean’s gym, I headed to the airport for the long flight back to London.  My first act upon arriving at the airport in London was to go to the M&S just outside of baggage claim and buy a flapjack (for those of you who aren’t British- a flapjack is not a pancake, it’s a sort of cereal bar), a chocolate milk, and a yogurt with granola.  I guess I can say that I was glad to be back in London, although I after 24 hours with açai I definitely felt myself going through withdrawal.  After a brief Tube ride (it felt really good to be in an efficient, clean, and well-organized public transport network again) I arrived at the first of many lodgings for my brief stay in London.  After a not-so-quick nap and a normal meal I felt recovered enough from the jet lag to head to the normal Parkour Generations Thursday night training at Moberley.

It felt great to be back in a Parkour Generations class again, and while it wasn’t quite as painful as I remembered, it was a nice dose of conditioning after the past few months of relatively little conditioning.  Getting to reconnect with all of the people that I had left behind in November was great too and as always, the atmosphere in the class was really good.  After the past few months of traveling and instructing, I had a new appreciation for the instructors of PkGen, who no longer seemed quite so superhuman as when I left, but whose really understand the nuances of teaching parkour.  It was a nice shock to see so many women in the classes, and while I am still not quite able to understand why PKGen classes have so many more women in them than classes in other countries, I can certainly appreciate the diversity.  For those of you that have never had the good fortune to attend a PkGen class, or who are curious about them in general, check out the video that Bruno Peixoto made from this winter:

Since I still hadn’t completed my ADAPT supervised instructor hours, I spent a lot of my time in London assisting at PkGen classes in an effort to get as many hours logged as possible before heading out again.  The classes were a lot of fun and it was good to be able to finally really apply a lot of the instructing experience that I’ve been picking up since taking the course last November.

Friday morning I was woken up by the sound of trumpets and cheers.  After briefly wondering why the queen would be visiting Wembley Central on a Friday morning I realized that all of the pomp and circumstance was for the royal wedding, which was in full swing by then.  While I had decided not to attend the wedding due to the huge crowds and the fact that watching two people I didn’t know get marry wasn’t exactly my idea of a great time, I did watch the affair from the comfort of my friend’s couch as I ate a leisurely breakfast.  After watching the nuptials for a while, I soon got bored and decided to head down to Vauxhall for a spot of training before class.  The mini-training session went well and it felt good to be back in a place full of good memories (and also some painful ones).  Going back to do the jump that took a bite out of my shin (see August 2010 post) felt really good as well, especially as I realized that the ease with which I did it now was partly due to the fact that my jump in actually starting to improve (slowly, but nonetheless).  I also got a chance to talk with the ever-elusive Thomas Couetdic, who was passing through briefly. 

On Saturday morning James and I met up with a few friends to roadtrip over to Rugby to check out a “parkour park” that we had heard rumors about.  While we were all pretty apprehensive from the descriptions that we had been given and the grainy photos that we had seen, I have to admit that I was pretty happy with what we found.  While it wasn’t a huge spot, and didn’t have a ton of stuff to work with, the scaffolding on the edge of the park was pretty intricate and big enough to keep me occupied for a while.  While we were training, we were joined by a group of neighborhood kids that often trained in the park, who, after a few small challenges and some warming up, initiated an epic game of tag that left everyone pretty tuckered out. 

Despite the fact that my visit did not fall on the last Sunday of the month, fate and Easter the weekend before conspired to my advantage and Sunday turned out to be the date for May’s “Off the Wall” event.  This jam is organized each month by Parkour Generations and is designed to bring the traceurs and freerunners of the London area together in a very open jam session.  While the location changes each month, it usually overlaps with the Sunday Morning Wake-up class, which worked great for my scheduling and meant that I could essentially spend the whole day training.  The class and the jam were a lot of fun, and gave me a chance to catch up with people that I hadn’t seen in a while.

Thanks to Brian for the "official" Off the Wall pic (Photographer: Brian Appiah Obeng).

Monday morning I headed over to Forrest’s house for some training and to pick up the new shoes that I had ordered from home (despite the fact that I had to ship them overseas, it was still cheaper for me to buy shoes in the US than in the UK).  Of course spending any amount of time with Forrest usually ensures that your muscles will regret it the next day, so I made sure to take plenty of notes for future conditioning sessions on my own. 

The rest of Monday and Tuesday I tried to take advantage of my quick stopover in London to train as much as possible with people and to “absorb” as much as I could from the instructors of Parkour Generations before heading out on the next portion of my trip.  While it was great to be training so much, by the time Wednesday rolled around and I headed to the airport for the next round of adventures I was more than ready for a day off and some time spent just sitting and relaxing in the (very comfortable) lounges at Heathrow airport as I waited for my flight to Milan.

While sitting there, I had some time to reflect on why it felt so good to be back in London, and also what I still missed most about Brazil (I was still undergoing açai withdrawal):

Things I miss about Brazil:

-Açai

-Training with all the great traceurs and traceuses that I met there

-Pay-by the kilo buffets

-Making “fruit juice” by taking a large chunk of fruit and popping it in the blender

-The beautiful weather

-The beautiful women (don’t get me wrong, London has plenty too, but Brazil….)

-The fact that bikinis in Brazil don’t include bottoms, more like thongs

-A super-strong sun that reminds you not to forget your sunscreen when you walk out the door

-The variety of fruits that I never knew even existed (pinas, 8 types of bananas, amazing mangos….)

-Midday meal (rice, beans, farofa (a floury powder you put on everything)

-Inviting grandmothers/mothers

-Eggcheeseburger – sounds weird, but a fried egg on top of a cheeseburger is genius (and really good)

-Training in shorts (not having to fit in with the “sweatpants parkour” culture of Europe)

-Bug-zapper racquets

-Açai

Why it’s so good to be back in London

-Parkour Generations atmosphere and people (positive, productive, open)

-Good prepared food and salads in supermarkets

-Decent chocolate milk

-Efficient and clean public transportation network

-Efficency in general

-Flapjacks

-More equal gender representation in classes
-Tesco
-DECATHLON!!!!

PS - Big shoutouts to Leon, James, Annty, and Forrest for welcoming in a vagabond Yank

The last few weeks in London

The two weeks in London saw my schedule return to near-Davidson levels of activity.  While I enjoyed each of the events in their own fashion, I definitely got the feeling that things got a bit rushed at the end and I missed the open schedule that I had enjoyed for much of my time in London (this also explains my near radio-silence over the past few weeks and the large pile of emails sitting in my inbox that I need to respond to.)  The first event of the last few weeks was the final Survival of the Fittest race in Edinburgh…

Rendezvous 5

So I realize that I’m writing about this post a month after the event took place but it has taken me a while to totally digest the action-packed few days that were “Rendezvous 5”. This event, which took place on August 14th and 15th and was hosted by Parkour Generations in the Southbank region of London (near Waterloo Station in London), was a sort of international gathering of traceurs, similar to the ADD Experience that I went to in France this past June (see first blog post). The weekend included 2 full days of training sessions, workshops, group discussions, and general networking with traceurs from around the world, but with a special focus on those from throughout the UK. While the activities and training was great, the thing that made the event so special was the atmosphere that pervaded the event.

The logo of Rendezvous 5, designed by Andy Pearson.

After having endured several weeks of veterans hyping the event, I was both curious, and I’ll admit it, a bit apprehensive about the event. After the ADD Experience in France, I figured that I had been to the best parkour event possible and couldn’t see what the Brits could do to equal it. In retrospective, I think that this might have been due to the fact that I hadn’t quite come to understand the depth of the Parkour Generations organization yet, and also because I was (am still am) fiercely loyal to the group of people that “introduced” me to parkour.

The event started early Saturday morning with a group warm-up session on the roof of one of the big theaters in the Southbank district. The group size was impressive in and of itself, with more than 150 people showing up to the first day’s events. The participants ranged from veterans who had started practicing 7+ years ago after the first videos and documentaries came out, to people that had heard about the event from friends and had decided to try it out for the first time (needless to say, they were pretty sore after the first day). As usual, the diversity of nationalities was also impressive, with lots of people flying in for the event from all over Europe, with strong representation from Italy and France. The event also featured special guest instructors from abroad, with Laurent Piemontesi (the Yamakasi founder who I trained with last summer and who had a profound effect on my interest in the philosophy of the sport) coming in from Italy where he is establishing a parkour academy; Sebastian Foucan (James Bond: Casino Royale); Chau Belle-Dinh, Serika Kingman, and a few other members of the Yamakasi/Majestic Force/ADD Academy team; and a number of Parkour Generations “ambassadors” who seemed to reconvene from all corners of the world for this event.

Yamakasi founder Laurent (left) and co-Director of Parkour Generations, Forrest (right). Two people who have had a huge influence on my training and development in parkour.


The instructors- it would be hard to find a more talented or open group of people.

After a grueling warm-up led by Châu and the Majestic Force guys, the participants were divided into groups based on skill levels and sent to different locations around the Southbank area. We spent the rest of the day rotating among the different instructors in our small groups, with each “station” working on a different skill set, usually with a heavy influence from the particular instructor’s personal style. After 8 hours of training, many people headed back home to recover in time for the next day, while the “hardbodies” (or masochists) met up again after dinner for a “night-training” session. Slightly different from a typical training session, practicing at night in an abandoned housing project definitely gave me a new perspective on movement and a lot of the things that one doesn’t think about in broad daylight. The entire 2-hour session was conducted in compete silence, from the mimed warm-up to the “follow the leader” challenge that took us through the 3-acre estate. I’m convinced that if we had attempted this in an inhabited housing development someone would have called the police, but the fact that the windows boarded up, there were no barking dogs or murmur of voices, and even the traffic seemed muted by the dark and abandoned towers around us. This environment amplified every sound and made us painfully aware of the scrape of trainers on a misjudged step, the thump of landings not made on the balls of feet, the clap of palms that missed their marks, the scuffle of leaves underfoot, or the muttered curses that escape when the overhang jumps out from nowhere to attack one’s head. Since moving efficiently and smoothly ideally involves very little noise, this night exercise was a great way to make one aware of corrections that needed to be made.

Stephane Vigroux, one of the instructors for the night training session. Photo courtesy of Andy Day Photography.

Sunday morning saw another early start (it felt especially early for those who had just gone to bed after getting back from the night session) and full day of training with the different instructors and trying to absorb as much of their knowledge and the general atmosphere as possible.

The first official picture of me actually doing some of the stuff I’m writing about.

One of the most striking things about this weekend for me was the spirit of community that seemed to pervade all the events. While the atmosphere had subtle differences from the one that I encountered in France, (one might chalk that up to one being French and the other British), the spirit of cooperation, unity, and pursuit of the common goal of personal development and general fitness were the same. These events really seem to be the glue that binds a lot of these organizations together. The friendships and mutual respect that are forged by two days of blood and sweat seem to create a “community” aspect to parkour that I think stems from the inclusive and progressive philosophy of the sport. An example of this is the accommodations set up for the event, with all of the “imported” instructors being hosted by Parkour Generations team members, and many of the foreign participants staying with friends that they had made at previous events.

The warmup at RDV5 (Photo courtesy of Parkour Generations)

Maybe it is the stark contrast with the individualistic aspect of the sport that makes this sense of community so striking, but it gives me a lot of hope for the development of the sport, and the desire for it to outlast the labels of “fad” or “fashion”. Much the same way that the sport of Frisbee can only be played as long as the “spirit of the game” is respected, parkour seems to depend on this as well. Not only do traceurs have to keep the reputation of the entire sport in mind when they practice, since one incident with an unhappy resident or damaged private property can result in a city-wide ban on the sport or an unfavorable view in the eyes of authorities, but also because so much of the development of the sport seems to depend on the sharing of knowledge and experiences- moves, techniques, conditioning exercises, practice spots…

Perhaps one of the best ways to capture the attitude of this weekend is with the phrase that became the mantra of the weekend, “We start together, we finish together”. Originally taken from the Yamakasi expression “On commence ensemble, on finit ensemble”, it not only describes the general practice of waiting for everyone to finish the set/route/rep before continuing as a group, but also of a state of awareness for the safety and well-being of the others that one is training with.

Rendezvous 5: I’m in the top left, sporting a bright orange shirt and the usual tousled mane.

For more pictures of the event (there are a lot of great ones) check out Andy Day's shots from the night session HERE or pics from the Parkour Generations site HERE.

London - 1 month in

I realize that my blogging since my arrival in London has been mediocre at bestbut now that I have finally settled down for a while I’m trying to get back into gear.

One of the reasons for my lack of blogging was that I was trying to manage bouncing around between hostels while trying to find a more permanent place of residence that fit within the narrow confines of my budget. Over the first 3 weeks I got the full spectrum of hostel experiences, with my first hostel being one of the best hostels that I’ve ever stayed in. It had a great atmosphere, a good mix of nationalities, interesting people, a place to store some food in the kitchen, basic cooking equipment, clean showers, bed units with curtains… so despite my being crammed into one room along with 19 other people I had an enjoyable experience. Unfortunately my budget could only handle food or lodging at that hostel’s price so as usual my stomach handled the decision making.


My first hostel: the Smart Hyde Park Inn, definitely recommended.

My second hostel allowed for a much more reasonable diet, but that was probably the only thing that improved. It was primarily a “long-stay” hostel, meaning that people would stay for weeks, months, or years at a time (one gentleman in my room had been staying there for 9 years). Besides the lack of toilet paper or soap, and the worn-out look of everything from receptionist to the bed sheets, it was the atmosphere of depression and a soul-sucking lack of hope that forced me to go elsewhere in an effort to preserve my sanity. Everyone seemed to have resigned to this lifestyle and it just seemed like one of those places where dreams and aspirations go to die. After only 48 hours in this hostel I frantically stepped up the search efforts for someplace different.

True to form, my new living arrangement was arranged at the very last minute but has turned out to be pretty sweet if I have to say so myself. It’s located near Wembley stadium in Zone 4, which is only about 45 minutes from the center of London. My landlord is an elderly British gentleman who travels regularly between London, New York and LA but I don’t know much more about him since I moved in on the 18th, and he’s been traveling since the 19th. The house has a beautiful view of North London from the roof as well as a huge garden (with lots of fruit trees) in the back. The garden has become my sort of study/exercise area, and is complete with a fish pond and peacocks. The deal is that in return for a very low rent I spend 2 hours/day feeding the menagerie of fish and birds inside and outside the house, as well as watering the small jungle that is steadily taking up the interior, and the basic maintenance of the garden. This works out well for me because in addition to having my own room and a shelf in the fridge I finally have some sort of “work” that keeps me outside and mucking around in the dirt.

The one drawback to this living arrangement is a distinct lack of human interaction. I’m living with another boarder/gardener, but it’s definitely not the same as the diversity offered by a hostel. I really enjoyed meeting and getting to know the people there, from the crazy Mexicans, to the Texan that managed to convince me (the Bostonian) that maybe the Lone Star Republic isn’t as bad as we make it out to be up north (or at least Austin isn’t), to the small hordes of Italian teenagers that led me to invest in better earplugs, and to the constant flow of Frenchmen that I managed to fool into thinking I was French until about 60 seconds into a conversation. This has sent me into a search for new activities to occupy my time and also to fulfill my quota of human interaction for the day.

So how about the parkour? Since that is what I’m here for in the first place. The parkour has been going great, and Parkour Generations has turned out to be just as well-managed and established as I had hoped. There are classes offered every day of the week but Saturday, so since my arrival I’ve been to about all but 4 of the sessions. I’ve also progressed from the beginner/intermediate level to one of the more advanced ones, and I’m starting to feel a noticeable improvement in my movements and confidence.

The class schedule offered by Parkour Generations. More details on the classes can be found here.

There are two basic types of class offered by Parkour Generations, indoor classes and outdoor classes. Both seem to have their own groups of followers, and many only attend one or the other (I’m one of a few crazy people that go to both). Indoor classes include lots of conditioning and we spend a lot of time getting comfortable with different movements. Imagine if you moved a bunch of padded obstacles and mats into your usual aerobics classes- lots of stuff to jump over and tumble on, intermixed with sets of squats, push-ups (called press-ups here), ab exercises, and all manner of painful modifications to the normal exercises. Many of the regulars treat it as a fun exercise class, and since all the equipment is fairly soft and forgiving, it makes learning new movements easier. Outdoor classes are a different story. Usually for the more adventurous or hardened athlete, the location of these classes changes between various “hotspots” around the city. These classes focus on the real “meat” of the sport, with lots of jumping, climbing, conditioning, and working on the fluidity of one’s movements. Some spots are gentler than others, and there are one or two locations that will pretty much guaranteed you a few scrapes by the end of the class (or more if you don’t pay attention- see photo below)

The result (minus most of the blood) of not enough days off, not enough sleep the night before, and not paying attention- hopefully I learned my lesson.

All classes are taught by members of the Parkour Generations team, and many of them also teach classes during the day to the various schools that have parkour PE classes offered. Although I haven’t been able to check out any of these classes yet since I’m focused on my own training at the moment, the adult classes have afforded me a great way to network with other traceurs and people involved in the sport. I haven’t taken any photos of practice yet since I’m always participating, but hopefully I’ll have some soon.

So, London…

I’ve decided that London is now my new favorite European city. It has all the beautiful women and culture of Paris, except minus the frosty glares. The people are also much friendlier (perhaps due to the heat wave and lack of “British weather” that started upon my arrival), and the city feels like one big melting pot. Unlike Paris and many other large cities that are ethnically diverse, London does a good job of mixing the cultures (at least on the surface). Traveling the Tube is a global experience, since English is often the minority language and it took me 5 days after I arrived to encounter a stereotypical “Englishman”. There is also a very dedicated parkour community here and in the surrounding region, as evidenced by the “Off-the-Wall” events held the last Sunday of every month. These all-day parkour “jams” (noun: a gathering of traceurs that get together to practice) were started by Parkour Generations three years ago, and they include people coming from all over Britain. I was able to participate at the June and July events and both were a lot of fun in addition to letting me meet a bunch of new people. It also gave me a chance to see the extent to which parkour is becoming a mainstream sport here.

One of the most interesting aspects of training in London has been the fact that people don’t really treat us as a circus act and start ooo-ing and ahhh-ing with each jump. Maybe it’s the English character, or the respect that Parkour Generations has within the community, or the fact that people are used to seeing traceurs jumping around on stuff, or maybe people just have better things to do here, but I haven’t seen the crowds that this sort of activity would generate back in the States. Sure, we have the neighborhood kids that will stop a football (real football- not American football) game to watch some big jumps, but to a large extent people react in the same way that they would to a group of people playing pickup basketball or kicking a football around. We also haven’t encountered much of the animosity that I was expecting. In the past 5 weeks I have only encountered one disagreeable property owner that asked us to leave (we were on public property, but left anyway), and the police here don’t seem to bat an eyelash when they pass us training. Maybe I’ve just gotten lucky, but I suspect that there is something different here, and it’s something that I’d like to duplicate back in the States if possible.

Some other random observations that I’ve made while I’m here:

- Cultured?: Scratch the ads for Coke and Pringles in the subway, I’ve been astonished by the number of ads promoting book releases and museum exhibits here. If it wasn’t for all the beer ads I’d say that they were more cultured….
-The lack of trash cans: apparently due to fears about them being used as bomb receptacles, but surprisingly London seems as clean as Paris, and certainly much cleaner than Boston or NYC.
-Museums: Museums are free here, which is great, so instead of slogging it out in the National Gallery to justify the ticket price, it’s great to go to an exhibit or two before escaping to the sunshine.
- English: Supposedly we speak the same language but there have been a number of times when I feel like the person on the other side of the counter is speaking vastly different. The jury is still out on whether the English women like the neutral American accent…
-The pound (£): the exchange rate sucks and is getting steadily worse- enough said.


-Londoners: they seem to be a pretty cultured lot, or at least like visitors to think so, with lots of billboards for book releases and museum exhibits in the Tube stations, and a prominence of bookstores throughout the city.
-French: I think that most of France comes to London at some point during the summer, since I seem to hear French as much as I hear English here (which isn’t helped by the fact that it took me 5 days before I met any actual “Englishmen”.
- The weather: My month in London has coincided with lots of sun and a drought, a phenomenon that I’m assured will not continue, but I think that it’s rained about 5 times my whole stay.

“Typical” London weather so far…

Arrival in London

I arrived in London earlier today so I have now officially started my Watson year. At the moment I’m in the midst of getting settled at the hostel where I’ll be for the next two weeks. From my limited wanderings it looks like I’m about a 1 minute walk from Hyde Park in one direction, a minute from the Bayswater Tube station in a different direction, and about 30 seconds from a number of supermarkets/eateries (most important of course).

The past week in Paris/Evry went by in a blur of activity that was anything short of inspirational and it was definitely worth the lack of sleep and less-than-stellar nutrition. I took a lot of pictures throughout the week so expect to see a much longer and more detailed article in the next few days. At this point the jet lag/lack of good sleep is starting to catch up to me and I’m too concerned with getting something to eat and a decent night’s sleep to write much more than this.

Also, my new telephone number for the next few months will be: (+44) 07 587 267 530. Incoming phone calls and text messages are free for me and much appreciated.

More to come soon…