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