East Coast Mini Road-trip - UVA at Charlottesville, VA

After my time in DC came to a close I hopped on a train to Charlottesville, Virginia to visit some close friends from Davidson and also to check out the parkour scene I’d heard rumors about.  I had initially started looking for a parkour scene at the University of Virginia my senior year at Davidson when I was applying to graduate school there and had seen evidence of a UVA PK internet presence but heard of much more than that to confirm its actual existence.

UVA, like most major university campuses in the USA apparently, is a great place to train and seems ripe for further exploration.  I managed to meet up with the school approved parkour group during my visit to train with them a few times and while the group is young, the members were very welcoming and showed me around their campus.  After a brief hiatus the past year or two, the group has been resurrected by John and Momin, who seem to have both the organizational skills and the motivation to pull something like this off.  I’m looking forward to a return visit to the campus to see what they develop.

For more information on the UVA Parkour Assoc. check out their UVA website or Facebook page.

One of the many campus elements that were perfect for training.

The reason why American universities are often great for parkour, lots of railings, ramps, and open space.

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.