Super Powers - July 19 to 25, 2014

This week was a week of much adventure and fun, and I hope that you enjoy reading what I have to say about it. So here we go!

Saturday July 19, 2014

Parkour

On Saturday I went to my usual Parkour class at Breathe PK and was joined by a few of the people that I have known for a while. Here are the pictures of us looking goofy!!!

So from left to right it is me, Isabella and Spencer. Austin was there as well but he left before I could get him into the group picture.
I also have a picture of Brodie (the teacher) and me making goofy faces.

I am going to say this once and probably never say it again, hashtag let me take a selfie. (Sorry for the shake in the picture.)
Saturday was warm, but not too warm. I think the temperature in the gym was about 22°C (72°F), but that isn’t all that bad, still warm, but not bad.
We began the class by working on what are called wall splats. These are something that is used as both a safety measure and as a lead up to a cat leap. They are a safety measure in that if you miss your cat leap then you can do the wall splat to stop yourself from plowing into the wall face first. They are done in the same way as you see the cat leap done in the picture below, but instead of grabbing a ledge you plant the palms of your hands onto the wall and then you push off the wall like you are a frog bouncing off the wall.

Picture found here

After practicing wall splats we moved on to doing cat leap, they are done as I have explained above and as you see in the picture above. We did these for a little while and had some good fun with them. The grip tape that they have on the wall now scratched up the insides of my hands, but that will give me great calluses, which will make Parkour outside that much easier.
Next we worked on what are called bar to cats. Basically these are swinging on a bar, letting go of said bar, and then grabbing onto a wall. They aren't too hard when you are less than or equal to 2 meters (6.6 feet) away but when you are greater than 2 meters (6.6 feet) away it becomes hard to gain enough momentum to clear that large of a distance.
The next thing that we practiced was a series of movements that we slowly added more movements on to. We started this series of movements with a hip catch, these are a movement where you jump at a bar, grab the bar with your hand and then let your hips land on the bar while using your legs to slow down so that you don’t land on the bar to fast. After we had gotten that down we added in a cast, thing where you cast off the bar, to a precision, then we added a stride and we finally finished the series by adding in a vault. It was pretty awesome as it gave us the chance to work on not only a bunch of different movements, but it also gave us the chance to work on flow (making your moves flow together nicely).
That was my Parkour for the day, that next thing that I did was some something that I haven't done for a while, and that is do something "constructive".

Steampunk Construction

If you haven't guessed by the title the thing that I was "constructive" with was an item for the Steampunk cosplay costume that I have been working on for the past few months. This item was a homemade air tank that is going to connect to the Steampunk style pistol that I am going to be making soon. I had a friend come over to give me some help putting it together. We had a good time talking while we cut, drilled and glued the parts into the masterpiece of amateur craftsmanship that you see below. We also enjoyed the construction part as well.

We works on the tank on my back deck in the warm air and hot sun, so I got lots of vitamin D, and I have more hot air in me than ever before. Wait...

Super Powers!!!

The next thing I did was go and get my super power for the week at the Super Power Distribution center. Never hears of it? It is a very popular place right on the corner of (square root of -1) Street and Imaginary Avenue. (In math taking the square root of -1 produces an imaginary number. So I am saying the corner of Imaginary Street and Imaginary Avenue.) make this note a popup box. So, that’s a lie, what I actually did was go over to a friend named Raeanne's house for a games night. While there we played board games like Mancala, one version of it at least, Jenga, and Apples to Apples. After we had done these different games for a while we went to a playground that was nearby and played grounders. The game of grounders was awesome and I got the chance to break out some of my Parkour skills while we were playing.
Man, I really had a busy Saturday, and it went a little late, but it was super good though.

Sunday July 20, 2014

So on Sunday I went to church and I went to a presentation. The presentation was on sex inside and outside of marriage and what some of the important effects that you, your partner, and your possible children, will have to deal with. The presenter also talked about there is this one woman who thinks that we don’t need to feel guilty about anything because Gophers don’t feel guilty. I find it funny that this lady compared humans to a species that does not have sentience and is unable to reason, and then thought that it was a legitimate argument for why we should never feel guilty for things.
That was my Sunday.

Monday July 21, 2014

Monday begins the work week, and that means I need to wake up at 5:40 in the morning again. How many of you groaned when you heard the time that I wake up in the morning? After I finished work I went to a get together at the Parkland Community Hall (don’t ask me why they call it a hall, because I have no idea) to play Ultimate WHICH WAS TOTALLY AWESOME. We played for about an hour and a half, and had a great time with the super competitive friendly competition. It was pretty humid out for Calgary, but it wasn’t as humid, or nearly as hot, as it was in Brazil during the World Cup so I didn’t complain. I don’t really remember who won but, I think it was the team I was on, and we won because we had some awesome players on our team, I don’t remember their names, but they were really good! After we finished the game we all had ice cream sandwiches for our snack, you know, nothing like processed sugar after you have been running for an hour and a half… I had two… What?! They were really good!

Tuesday July 22, 2014

On Tuesday I went on a bike ride with a friend of mine named Tuan. We went on our bike ride through a park in Calgary called Fish Creek Park, and we started our ride at a little after 7 and rode for about an hour and a half.
We stopped twice along our bike ride to look around and talk. On first stop we went to the river and skipped some stones while we talked, and then the second time we stopped we walked along one of the bridges that goes across the Bow river that got partially taken out by the flood that Calgary had last year, here is a picture of the bridge.

I also saw a picnic table that had gotten ripped up but the flood laying upside down near the path, so I mounted it and got Tuan to take a picture, see below.

I had a good ride on Tuesday, and I had a good talk with Tuan, so I'm really glad that he in it me to go rising with him seeing that I am moving to Edmonton for school pretty soon.

Wednesday July 23, 2014

I went to work on Wednesday, that’s it. No I was the guy you saw on TV flying through the air, that wasn’t the super power that I picked up for the week.

Thursday July 24, 2014

On Thursday I was in a two hour conference meeting for ABB Inc., it was pretty good and I learned some good things about the business. I also went to see my sister at the end of the day, it was good to see her again.

Friday July 25, 2014

On Friday I had Szechuan for lunch, and it was really hot because one of the guys that we were with wanted to get the “medium” spice level. If you don’t know anything about Szechuan, know this, what they consider “mild” we here in Canada consider extra hot. I was fine personally because I eat spice frequently, but the medium spice level pushed me to my limits.
I also made this on Friday, with my Neodymium magnet balls. In the first picture you can see that I had three of them left over at the very end.

The End

So that was my week everyone, I had a good week, and did a number of great things, and I am happy that I had the ability to have such a great week.
Now for a quote.

Quote of the week

It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little. Do what you can.
      – Sydney Smith

You can find an artistic representation here on Zen Pencils.
Remember any little thing you do is still something, and that is what matters.
Be good people, and always learn new and interesting things. Bye!

– Nathan Aris

July 12 to 18, 2014 – A Tea Party in Wonderland

This week was a week of stress and relaxation, and a lot of hot air.

In this past week I went to a Steampunk Tea Party, did Parkour, went swimming, and had experienced general merriment.

Saturday July 12, 2014 – Steam Up in Fish Creek Park

On this day I went to a Meetup for the Calgary Steampunk Assemblage, which is the Calgary based club for those who enjoy what is called Steampunk. The Meetup was an Alice in Wonderland themed tea party, which was an awesome idea by the way. I went to the Meetup with a friend of mine named who has made a Steampunk themed Portal Gun, which is super awesome because it lights up and has gears that turn on the back of it and stuff. Because it’s awesome, here is a picture of him with his gun.

As you can see it is quite awesome, unless you don’t think it is awesome, which is okay I guess, just don’t tell me that.

So at this tea party we enjoyed much old time revelry, in the form of invigorating conversation with many other people, rousing music from a musician named Peter and a competitive game of Croquet (seen below). The temperature was a blazing 34°C (93°F) while we were there, and for those who were in their full attire it was quite hot indeed. I myself was not in a full costume, my costume, which I am wearing most of in the picture below, consisted of a pair of black dress shoes, beige pants, a white shirt, a brown leather vest, aviator goggles, and a beige paratrooper satchel. So not to much at all. 

I am the guy second from the left hidden mostly behind the guy with wings, sorry about that I wasn’t in charge of taking pictures. I am also not wearing my full costume at this point in time.

As I said before I was able to talk to many different people during my time at the Meetup, most of them people I have never met before, which is awesome.

I was able to spend some time talking to an older man named John and an early 30’s guy named Alex while the two of them, Ethan and I were setting up the “rabbit hole” over the entrance bridge to where we were having the party. During the party I had a few conversations with a girl named Kris who was dressed up as a Steampunk cowboy, which was pretty awesome, it looked like it was a little bit hot though. While playing croquet I was able to talk to all the different people that were playing the game, also "I lost the game".

My first game of croquet was a great and interesting experience. It was good, because I was able to play a good game of croquet where I didn't win but, I didn't do all that bad either. Because everyone had a different color of ball in this game we took to giving each other nicknames based on the color of the ball they were playing with. I was playing with a black ball so I was Batman, and all the other people were named Sinestro, Hal Jordan, Mystique, and Robin. You should be able to figure out who is who in the picture below.

The reason that they decided to call me Batman was because of how I kept hiding in the shadows whenever it wasn’t my turn, and since they were calling me Batman, I had to talk like Batman, and since I kept hiding in the shadows they would beckon me by calling out “Batman! Batman! Batman, it’s your turn!” or something similar to that.

After playing my first game of croquet I went back into the shade of the overhang that we were having the event at to cool down, because I was HOT! I drank some of the delicious punch that they had made out of club soda and Saskatoon berry concentrate (drinking this stuff was also part of the reason why the people I was playing croquet with started calling me saying it was my turn all the time), and ate some of the great snacks made by Christie, the event organizer, and mingled with people some more.

After this went on for a while, until about 5:45pm if I remember correctly, a large group of us began making our way to the Bow river so that we could cool down for a little while.

On the way to the river we came across a woman walking her dog, I talked with her briefly and then continued on while some of the other people I was with continued speaking with her. After I had gotten about 20 meters (65.6 feet) away I heard some yelling from behind me saying "STOP HIM" or "CATCH HIM" I turned around and saw the dog running towards me, and as he ran past I managed to turn around and catch the leash that the dog was on. It was quite surprising to me that I was able to catch the dogs leash in the time that I had to catch it and it just reaffirmed to me that being healthy and doing an activity that pushes you to develop is really wonderful thing.

So after we reached the river, we began our glorious frolicking (I say that in the manlyist way possible) in the water, and by frolicking I mean we took off our shoes, got into the water and sighed a sigh of relief at the coolness running over our legs and feet. We took some pictures, skipped some stones, and had a good time before returning to the group area to end the get-together. Before I left I talked to a couple more people, and then got into my hot vehicle and drove away mightily into the sunset.

Actually I drove onto the road, and went home for the day, no majestic sunset for me this time, maybe another day.

Sunday July 13, 2014

On Sunday I went to Edmonton because I needed to go and look at a couple different apartements, because I was trying to find a place to live while I am attending school at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, AB. I looked at two different places this time, I went up to see one place last week, but that didn’t end up working out so I had to go back. So after bearing another three hour drive I arrived in Edmonton with my parents, and we went ot the first place that I had set up to view. It was a nice apartement but I didn’t want to just say ‘yes’ straight out, before I had viewed the second unit that was available. The second unit I looked at was better in some ways, and worse in others, it had a balcony, but it was more expensive and as a student I need to think about money, and the first unit was the one that I took. When I move I will share a picture or two of my apartement.

So it was a successful day, long though because of how much we had to drive for six hours, but successful.

Monday July 14, 2014

On Monday I went to an get together where we played kick ball. It started at 7 at night and we played until around 8 at night I think. The team I was on ended up winning, but we all had a really good time and that is what is important.

Some memorable moments from the night were whenever the ball was kicked and went one guy named Ben I would shout something at him and he would miss the ball. This happened three times and I don’t know if it is because I have the ability to control Ben’s mind or what, but I like to think that that was the reason, because it makes me smile.

Tuesday July 15, 2014

On Tuesday I went to a Parkour class at BreathePK, and worked on improving my skills in the heat of the oven. Imagine bacon inside of that oven and it becomes a wonderful visual.

We began this day by working on a few wall runs and then doing some climb ups. We practiced climb ups a little bit differently than I have done them before, for starters we were pretty much on the ground and we were allowed to use our feet when doing these, but when the idea is to teach the technique, it doesn’t really matter how it’s done as long as it’s effective. The next thing that we worked on in that class was back falls. Back falls are not really something that you do outside unless you get into a situation where you are falling and you can’t roll because they are nothing more than a safety measure intended to stop you from breaking your spine, neck or head, and I don’t know about all of you but I don’t really want to break any of those things.

After practicing those we moved onto practicing tic tacs which are basically a movement that you use to get really high, but in the opposite direction which you are moving in. This video demonstrates what they are and how to do them in case you are confused by my terrible definition.

That was my Tuesday class, it was great to learn some new things, and experience it alongside other people. I also had to get Cassandra to tell me what it is that we had done in that class right after we had finished it because I had experienced a serious lapse in memory, which totally sucked.

Wednesday July 16, 2014

On this day I went to a night class where we studied religion and then went to a lake in a community called Sundance where I did some swimming.

The religion class was good and much was learned on the subject we were studying. Don’t ask for the name of the subject though, I don’t remember the name of it, only what I learned.

The lake was awesome and it was also still warm by the time that I got there at 8:45 at night which was awesome because if you know anything about Calgary you would know that our lakes and rivers are usually quite cold.

While there I was asked to demonstrate a back flip and a side flip into the water, because that is what people think it means you do when you do parkour, oh well. I did them because they are very fun to do and I enjoy showing off the skills that I have spent time developing.

Overall it was a great day.

Thursday July 17, 2014

I went to visit my sister on Thursday, and we had a good time hanging out and spending time together.

Not really all that much to say for this day I guess.

Friday July 18, 2014

On Friday I went to a get together at a friends house whose name is Mary, Mary had a little lamb… Yeah, I went there, watcha gonna do about it.

So we began the night by playing a few games before we settled in for the movie that we were watching that night. We started the games by playing a game where we had to shoot some rubber ducky's off of the top of a barbecue using water guns, then we played a game where we got to launch some water balloons using towels, next was a game of making the longest string made out of twizzlers, and finally a game of radio except you used chopsticks and fuzzy peaches, think about that for a while. We all had a great time and at the end of all the games we settled in to watch National Treasure. During one point of this movie I said to everyone “Plot twist, the ship is haunted by Harpies!”. Unfortunately everyone interpreted what I had said as “Plot twist, the ship is haunted by Herpes!”. So, yea, that became the joke of that portion of the movie until the ship got blow up at which point the joke was “The herpes got burned with fire.” This misinterpreted comment made the night that much better, and memorable.

The End

Well that was my week, I think that it was a productive and busy week which is great, I will now leave you with a quote.

Quote of the Week

If you can dream it, you can do it.
      – Walt Disney

This is very true, and I would like to add to it that if you never dream of anything, or make a goal to get something or make something of yourself, you will never get anywhere or make anything of yourself.

That is all, peace out homies. (Yea, I said that, watcha gonna do about it!?)

– Nathan Aris

July 5 to 11, 2014 - Kayaking Adventure

Saturday was a day full of many fun things, I started the day with doing some Parkour, had the chance to do some Kayaking in the middle of it, and end the day off with watching a movie and hanging out with a friend.

Saturday Parkour

As I said I started the day out with some Parkour at BreathePK in the morning class which starts at 11:30. WE had five people in this class including me, there was the new guy Harrison, Austin, and two other guys whose names escape me at this time.

We began our class with playing a game of follow-the-leader in order to get our bodies warmed up, and I have to say, with the temperature in the gym being a little on the warmer side, aka above 25°C (77°F), we could have just sat in the gym and warmed up our muscles.

After we had our muscles warmed up we began our Parkour training. The teacher, Bobby, started us out by teaching, or re-teaching in some cases, us vaults by means of progressing steps. The first vault that we did was the Crane Vault, since this was nearly a week ago I don’t remember all of the steps exactly but they went something like walk up to the box, and put your one foot on the top of the box and bring your other foot into the position that you have it in for the crane for the first step, and then do the full crane for the second step. So it was a short progression, and it was over pretty quick.

The next thing that we did was work on our Kong vaults. He started out by getting us to get into a pushup position and jump our legs forward to beside our hand so that we could get the movement of bringing your legs forwards down. After we did this about five times Bobby moved us to doing the same movement but adding with bringing our feet past our hands and making a scooping action with our hands when we pulled our feet forward, just like you do in an actual Kong vault. The final thing that we did for this progression was move onto doing the actual Kong vault over boxes and ‘stack em’s’.

The next vault we worked on was our Dash vaults, this was a vault that was also taught in only a few steps. The first step was something like ‘jump up sit on the box and plant your hands on the box beside your butt making sure your hands are facing forwards’ and then do the full vault by jumping up into the air and pulling your legs into your chest and as you go over the obstacle sticking your legs out planting your hands on the obstacle facing forwards making a scooping action with them as you go over the obstacle, landing on the other side of the obstacle and finishing the vault.

The final vault that we worked on was called the Lazy vault. This is a vault that you use when you are running parallel to an obstacle that you want to get over, this picture provides an example of a situation where you might use it, and how you use it.

Practicing these different vaults was what we spent the training part of the class doing. It was great to be able to practice these different vaults and be able to relearn them by means of progressing steps as it allowed me the chance to try and fine tune all of the different parts of these different vaults.

We finished of the class by playing a game of capture the flag. This was a game where we were all so good at it that no one could win. There were a few points in this game that are worth mentioning, so I will mention them. At one point of the game I went to go make a run for the opposite teams flag and ended up having a friendly pile up with one of the guys from the opposite team, we laughed about it, and both went back to our starting areas. Another good moment was when I got one of the cubes we were using as flags and ran to get to the safe zone and got tagged by one of the guys from the other team, tripped and the did a barrel roll on the floor. Everyone laughed about that one, because it was quite funny to see me do a barrel roll on the floor.

Kayaking Adventure

After I went to Parkour, I went to a friend’s house to have lunch before we went kayaking. She made her sister, her sister’s boyfriend, and I a salad with ham on it, and these bean lasagna roll things for lunch. It was quite good, and we all had a good time talking and playing an African math based board game.

After lunch Raeanne and I went to the Glenmore Reservoir for kayaking. It was a beautiful sunny day out, which was great because I found out that I suck at kayaking.

We started out by going to a portion of the reservoir where a bunch of seaweed was poking through the surface of the water. On the way there I fell out of my boat into the water for the first time, Raeanne had a good laugh at my expense, and the people on the shore also enjoyed the show, but I managed to get back into my boat and we were off again. I didn’t manage to reach the area where the seaweed was sticking up before I fell into the water again, except this time it was shallow enough for me to just stand up, so I walked to a really shallow part of the water so that I could dump the water out of my kayak. Since Raeanne was still dry I decided that she needed to get wet as well, so as she approached I tipped her boat over, and she got really wet. After I had helped her up and we had both emptied the water out of our kayaks, we started going in the opposite direction to the place where the steamboat that Heritage Park uses is stored during the months when they are closed. It was pretty cool to see, walk on and climb on.

Here is a picture of me on the boat lifting structure.

I am actually quite scared at this point because of my fear of heights, but it was all good in the end.

After we spent some time on this thing, we went back to the dock, and turned our boats in.

After this we went back to my house and ate dinner with my family and then watched a movie, and made things with my Neodymium magnet balls, and then called it a day at around 10:00pm.

The End

All in all, it was a very good day, and I slept the sleep of the dead that night, minus the being dead part, which was great.

Quote of the Week

“No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.”
      – Regina Brett

Sometimes life sucks, but the worst things you can do give up and start feeling sorry for yourself, because all that does is make life worse. It chases the ones who care about you away, and it leaves you all alone, I know this from firsthand experience. Don’t worry about how hard things are because it will always get better sometime in the future.

That is all I have for now so be good, be happy, and move forwards.

– Nathan Aris

Parkour for Brazil - June 28 to July 4, 2014

In this past week I have learned a few new things and was able to enjoy a large amount of time doing many great things. Some of the things that happened are Canada Day on July 1, Parkour class on Saturday, and finding out that Cassandra from Parkour is doing her own Parkour 365, you can find it here, just like another friend of mine named Rob has done (find his Blog here)

Let us begin!

Saturday June 28, 2014 - DIVE, DIVE, DIVE!

On Saturday I went to the Breathe PK gym for the Level 1-3 class, which happened at the normal time of 11:30 to 12:30. It wasn’t pushed back this time because there wasn’t an event happening that conflicted with the class like last week where Varkour day was happening. The class had five people in it, one of whom I did not know. Austin, a young Asian boy joined us again after taking an extended break because he was suffering from pain in his knee. Luckily the worry that both Brodie, the teacher, and I had over whether or not he was really hurt was dismissed when he told us that his doctor had diagnosed the pain as just being normal teenager stuff. There was only one girl in the class this time, Isabel, because Isabel’s sister was off on vacation.

For this class we broke off into two groups, Austin and I who are level three, and the three other people who are level one. Austin and I worked on our dive rolls, which are the same thing as a forwards roll except you dive first, and the other people worked on dropping off of a box, landing and then rolling to dissipate the impact. This is a very important skill to have while when doing Parkour.

Dive rolls are one of those things that I really need to work on because I am not very good at rolling over my shoulder properly when I dive, and that can be a big problem if I went to do a dive roll on anything harder than a padded floor.

As always happens when practicing something that I am not good at minor mistakes were corrected, and the quality with which I performed the movement increased. I am still not the master of dive rolls, but any improvement is good improvement, and I will be happy with that, after all, as the Chinese Proverb says:

“Be not afraid of growing slowly, be only afraid of standing still.”

Digital pictures found here, here, and here.

Austin made some good improvements on his dive rolls, so we were proud of him for that, and the people working on the other skills made some good improvements as well, so it was a good start to the class.

The next thing that Austin and I did was work on Vaults to Precisions, while the other group worked on a different skill. The two of us started out with doing Kong’s to Precisions, Austin struggled with them a little bit because the obstacle was pretty tall compared to him, but we put an extra block in front of the obstacle to give him the extra height he needed. After doing Kong’s to Precisions for a while we moved on to using Side Vaults, and Dash vaults. I also attempted doing one Reverse vault, but that ended up being a lot harder than I thought it would be, so I will be practicing that one a lot more before doing it outside.

After we had done this for a while Brodie, the teacher, taught us something new, a reverse safety! It is basically the same thing as a Safety vault except you go over the box backwards, which is AWESOME! I got to practice this move a few times, and it is still a work in progress, but it is a move that I am going to be sure is in my repertoire.

After class had finished I pulled out my homemade granola bars, and shared them with my class mates. If you are interested in the recipe you can find the recipe I began with here.

Overall I feel that it was a very good day, I came away from the day tired, I was able to refine some of my moves, and I even learned a new move.

Monday June 30, 2014 – Parkour for Brazil

On Monday I was informed that there was a family that needed some help moving out of their house, so another guy named Bryce and I went over to their house to help them load up the U-haul truck with all of their furniture and other things. The day was hot, but we got as much into that truck as we could, despite there being a severe language barrier when conversing with the grandfather, who was in charge of the loading of the truck, because he spoke Portuguese, and very little English. The grandmother made us all a lunch of rice, beans, broccoli, eggs, and noodles to say thank you for helping, and we had a good time talking with the rest of the family while doing the move.

Part way through the day while I was talking to the youngest son and the boyfriend of the daughter of the family that we were helping move it came up that I did Parkour. After these two guys found out that I do Parkour they immediately began asking if I could do some demonstrations for them. The son asked if I could climb the side wall of the U-haul truck, and when I said that I couldn’t because there wasn’t a proper edge that I could grab to pull myself up, he and the boyfriend asked if I could demonstrate something else. So I ended up showing them how to do a Kong vault over a low wall and how to do a proper roll.

I really enjoyed showing these two young men how to do some basic Parkour because Parkour is my favorite hobby and I love sharing what I can do with people.

Art is not my strong point, I am much better at things like Physics and Chemistry, but Parkour is the art of movement, and if it is the only way of expressing myself in an artistic form then I will darn well do it!

Tuesday July 1, 2014 – Canada Day

July 1st was Canada Day, which means it’s time to hang out with friends and go do stuff. On this Canada Day I went to a swimming pool with some friends and then we all went back to my place and played Zombies!!! 11 and Twister on a homemade “board” until 10:00 at night, which was awesome. Before you start thinking “But that is so early!” I had to wake up at 5:40am the next day so that I could get to work the next day.

So the pool that we went to has a large wave pool and also has a dive tank, and we spent most of our time in the wave pool, but we went up to the dive tank at one point and while there I began thinking “I need to do a side flip into this pool, so I did just that! I did a quick practice of the walk up for the flip so that I could be sure I was familiar with the ground I was on. When I did this the lifeguard came up to me and asked me if I knew what I was doing, which I do, but it was good that she was checking to make sure that people didn’t hurt themselves. I got a round of applause from my friends after I surfaced, which made me feel good.

Once at my house we played a good game of Zombies!!! 11, ate a dinner of pizza, and then I got to experience the joy of being part of a human pretzel while playing twister. (I actually really enjoy playing twister, because I am good at it, so I make it extra difficult for myself)

Wednesday July 2, 2014 – The Day after Canada Day

On Wednesday I went to open gym at Breathe PK because I wanted to practice some of my skills. When I got there I saw someone I hadn’t seen in a while. Her name is Haley, and I met her friend named Alex if I remember correctly, Cassandra also joined us at Breathe PK so we had a grand old time doing some Parkour.

I worked on my lache’s to start with, I am working towards clearing a 2.4 meter (8 foot) lache, which is really far. I am slowly getting there, but I need to increase my upper body strength so that I can get the distance, and angle of my body, needed when I jump by giving an extra pull with my arms.

After I spent a good amount of time working on my lache's I moved on to working on my kong's, dashes and reverses. I was able to make some good progress on getting my legs up while doing my dash vaults, as that is something that I have always struggled with I see this as a great improvement.

The final thing that I did was work on my precision jumps, and did that for about 20 minutes until I was too burnt out to continue doing anything.

The final thing that I did was work on my precision jumps, and did that for about 20 minutes until I was too burnt out to continue doing anything.

It was a great day because I pushed myself to the point of not even being able to stay standing long enough to constitute a proper landing after I did a 2.4 meter (8 foot) precision jump.

The End

That is all I have for you this week, I hope you enjoyed, if you have a question or anything feel free to leave me a comment, or send me an email, or a social media message.

Quote of the week.

“No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.”

      – Regina Brett

This one is pretty self-explanatory, also I am late with the post so no time to get philosophical about it, maybe at a later time I will.

Later everyone,

– Nathan Aris