The Gravel Pit – July 26 to August 1, 2014

Intro… Hello everyone! So I am actually starting to write this article early in the week so that I can hope to meet the deadline of a Friday release that I had previously established for myself.

So this week I had a good time, and enjoyed my time doing the many different things that I did. So onto what I did this week.

Saturday July 26, 2014

Parkour

So I started out my Saturday by going to my normal 11:30 Parkour class at BreathePK. When I got there I found out that Sylvia, someone whom I had practiced with at No Limits AFC. It was good to be able to catch up with her after a long time of having minimal contact. It was quite a big class this time as well, I think that there were about 14 people there which was AWESOME! Of the people there I only knew seven of them, but that isn’t too bad considering that three of the people there were new. I did get the chance to talk to one of the new people and found out his name, and a bit of his life story.

Brodie, the teacher of this class, started us off with a basic jumping jack warm up because of the large number of people that we had in the class, and then moved us on to a good series of stretches. After we had finished those we were ready to begin training.

Training was a little bit different this time than it has been in previous times as Brodie was trying something new with the class. This new thing was instead of splitting everyone up by their level, he provided a skill from each of the first three levels for everyone to practice and then let us choose what we wanted to practice, and then give us some more skills to work on later in the class let us choose again, and then repeat the process once more. Overall I think that it worked really well, and the rest of the class thought it was really good. (See this link if you don't know what the leveling system at BreathePK is.)

Throughout the day I worked on a good number of skills that I need to gain more experience in because I am just not that good at some of them. The skills that I worked on were my cranes, box jumps, wall runs, dive rolls, kongs, and hurdle jumps. Box jumps are nothing more than practicing jumping onto a box. What’s that? It sounds really lame?! Well, it is something you do to get better at jumping onto things and getting better at dashes, so they are so not lame. A hurdle jump is a basically a double step that you can use in numerous applications such as wall runs and some of the vaults we do.

While our class was going on there was also a break dancing class going on, so it was quite interesting to see some of them doing some of the things that they can do because many of them are very good.

A funny moment from the class was when I threw my shoe to Brodie and he pretended it was a football and he ran "the whole nine yards" through the gym with it. It was quite awesome, and provided a good memory.

Game Time

Later on in the day I went to a friend’s house to hang out and play games, which is an awesome thing to do in your free time!!! That is if you have free time, I don’t like not having free time.

So the first thing that we did that night was play a game called Pandemic, and own the game, which was awesome because apparently it can be hard to win this game, but we totally won, so TAKE THAT PANDEMIC!!!

The next thing that we did was play Nintendoland, which was a great game. We all took turns playing as the character who used the WiiU and had a blast playing until 10:00 at night.

So that was my Saturday, pretty awesome huh? I even got a picture of the people that I know from Parkour.

Sunday July 27, 2014

On Sunday I went to church as I usually do, and I hosted a dinner for people with a friend as I usually don’t do. My friend ended up doing most of the cooking and so we ended up having homemade pizza and Tex Mex salad, which were both superb. We had a group of 6 people show up so it was a great time full of riveting conversation, and funny stories.

That was my Sunday, now onto Monday.

Monday July 28, 2014

So on the last Monday of the month of July I had the chance and downright pleasure of playing twister. Outside. With slime used for the colored circles. It was both gross and awesome! We played two games of twister, had an awesome time and got slime all over us, because we kept pushing each other into the slime, and the organizer dumped the remaining slime onto us while we were playing. It was great disgusting fun that required a shower once I got home, but I had a blast.

Tuesday was a hot day, a very hot day, the temperature peaked in Calgary at about 32°C (90°F), and I don’t care where you are from, but that’s hot. My last day of employment is quickly approaching, and Tuesday was my third last day before the contract that I have with ABB Inc. is done. It is interesting having the feelings that I do about leaving the company after 14 months of employment in order to go to school. I am excited because I am able to take a break and then start up school again, but I am also nervous because I am starting school again and I want to do well. I am also completely moving away from home for the first time ever, which also makes me nervous. I know that it will be okay, and that I will do well at school as long as I work hard, but it still makes me nervous.

Middle of the day meal

Okay, I am done reflecting, on to what I did on Tuesday.

On Tuesday I went to lunch with a co-worker at a place called Rocky’s Burgers, it is a small standalone restaurant that is located at the Crossroads Farmers Market in Calgary and it is a place that makes AWESOME burgers. This co-worker of mine is from China, and, according to what she told me, the only reference to western food that they have in China is KFC, McDonalds, and one other restaurant that serves terrible examples of what kind of food we eat in the west, so having a burger from Rocky’s Burgers provided a great stand point for just how good Western food can be. The meat was moist, the bun was soft, the fries were fresh and all the food was hot off the grill, so it was a delicious meal.

After work Adventures

Once I finished work it was time for some Parkour, because it was Tuesday, and Tuesday is Parkour day. This day of Parkour was a little different than my usual Tuesday Parkour, because this time I went downtown for a Jam, a Jam is what a get together where you do Parkour is called. We started in a place called Century Gardens (see this link for the Google Maps location) and worked on some jumps and rolls before we went to two other places near the Telus Science Center.

The first place that we went to after Century Gardens is a place that we nicknamed “Josh’s favorite spot aka The Gravel Pit” because there are two gravel pits (see this link for the place in Google Maps). It was a great place for practicing things like Dive Kongs, and Kong where you “dive-jump” to get to the obstacle, other vaults, flips, and jumps. We spent about an hour there I think, so it was a good place to stop.

The second place that we went to was called the Lego blocks. Now unfortunately the area isn’t shown yet in Google Maps because it is still pretty new, but I will try to get a picture to show all of you, but you can still view the area at this link because it will show you where it is. This place was good for practicing strides, precisions, plyos, and bar-to-pre’s. Not quite as good as The Gravel Pit, but still a good area.

It was a hot Tuesday, but it was a good Tuesday, and I had an awesome time in downtown Calgary.

Wednesday July 30, 2014

Wednesday was another hot day, this heat seems to be a thing that isn’t going away and hopefully winter, or at least fall, returns soon. I only ended up doing a few things on Wednesday because that was just the way the day played out.

The first thing that I did was go to my second last day of work and have a bunch of people ask me what I am going to be doing in the month before I go to school, and telling me congratulations to me for getting into school. I also didn’t have any work to do, but that is what happens when you are this close to being done at your job.

For lunch a group of the people that I know from work and I went out for lunch to a Brazilian Barbeque or Churrasco place called Gaucho here in Calgary. We had a great time and had a wonderful lunch of Rump Steak, Garlic Top Sirloin, Pork Loin, Sausage, Chicken Wings, and Parmigiano Beef, and no, I didn’t remember all of those off the top of my head, I pulled the list off of their menu.

The next things that I did that day was go to a religion class that I usually have on Wednesday nights and learned about some stuff there that was on the subject of following up on things. This is something that applies to many different things, in religion, all working fields, family, school, etc so it was good to learn about the subject a little bit so that I can try to improve in that area.

Thursday July 31, 2014

Today was my last day of work at ABB and now I have a month to do stuff so that I will be ready for my move to Edmonton in the last week of August. Either that or I can do stuff like go to Drumheller, and Jasper, WOOOOOOOO!!!

My last day of work began really early as I wanted to go and ride the bike at work one last time. It was a good ride of the bike, and I was awake for the whole day because of it. For lunch I went out for lunch with my boss, father, and one other coworker. We went to a restaurant named Los Mariachis for a Mexican lunch, and had a very good lunch there. I have been to this place a few times and have enjoyed it each time. I really like the dish called El Cuatro and I would highly encourage trying this place out some time.

After work I went to MEC to do some awesome shopping, by awesome shopping I mean that I bought a pair of pants and an exercise shirt.

On to the final day of this post, the illustrious Friday.

Friday August 1, 2014

Today I didn’t do all that much but I did do some good things, and got some stuff done.

The first thing that I did sleep in, Hooray!

The second thing that I did was go for a sweet bike ride through Fish Creek Park down to the substation that is in between the two communities Douglasdale and Diamond Cove. It was pretty good, and I took some pictures of stuff like rocks. You can see the pictures on my Facebook page.

The third thing that I did was go to the Calgary Alberta Temple and spend about two hours there. Had a good time, and the inside has AC so it wasn’t hot, which was great.

The fourth thing that I did was get a little bit more shopping done. I went and bought some water balloons, and also some sweat pants for when winter rolls around.

After that I went home and finished writing my blog post for this week.

The End

Well, that was my week, let me know what you though. Let me know what you thought about my writing, let me know what you did this week. I love to read comments and I look forward to hearing from you.

Now for a quote!

Quote of the Week

Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way.
      – Alan Watts

That is all, stay sweet everyone.

– Nathan Aris

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

A 23 Degree Dragon, and a Pit of Foam - June 21 to 27, 2014

In this past week a few interesting things have happened. Varkour day happened in Calgary, the goal for number of supporters for a Bylaw change petition was met, and I went to Parkour.

Varkour Day

Varkour Day, which occurred on June 21 this year, is a day dedicated to the women and girls of Parkour, some of whom are crazy with what they can do. Three of my female friends from Parkour are May, Sylvia and Cassandra. These three ladies show just how different the walks of life that people come from can be and yet still love Parkour. May is an older than thirty Economist, Sylvia is a 20 something dancer, and Cassandra plays hockey, and all of them love Parkour.

From what I hear there were a lot of women that came to this all day event, and got to experience Parkour indoors and outdoors, and have the fun of being around other women. You can find a video of the event on the BreathePK YouTube channel or right here.

Calgary Slacklining Petition

There was a petition started on June 18, 2014 to get an amendment made to Calgary Bylaw 23M2002, which basically says “No attaching things to trees”.

Now, for the sport of slacklining, which is basically tightrope walking except you are on a 1 inch nylon band and pretty close to the ground, this law stops people from attaching their temporary lines to the trees even when they put padding in between the tree and the nylon band. One of the members of the Calgary community stared a petition online (found here) to get this Bylaw changed to allow slacklining. I personally find this situation somewhat amusing because Calgary is, as far as I know, the only city that has a law like this.

As I said at the beginning the goal for number of supporters was met and exceeded this week, but more support is always welcome, so if you want to support this petition, go to this petition on change.org and pledge your support.

June 21, 2014

In order to accommodate Varkour Day at the BreathePK gym, all of the normal classes were pushed back to the afternoon, which was fine, because it gave me a chance to get some chores done at home before class so that I wouldn't have to worry about them after class.

When I got to the gym at about 12:45 I was a little surprised to see the number of people there that I did. Don't get me wrong, is a good thing that there were so many people there, and I was glad to see that many people there, but I was still surprised. Turns out there were that many people there because there was a birthday party going on and a Piano teacher had brought all of his students to the gym.

I joined in my level 1-3 class in the gym, which was probably at the toasty temperature of 23°C (73°F), which is a little warm. The class consisted of three guys, including me, and two girls. It was a little weird because I was the oldest one there by eight years, I'm 23, but overall age doesn't matter in Parkour because we are all there to do the something that we enjoy.

We began the class with the usual warm-up and stretch and then we started the training portion of the class. For this class we began with practicing our forwards and backwards rolls, I personally need to work on my back rolls because they are not as good as they should be.

23 Degrees is Really Hot and Climbing a Dragons Tooth Can Be Hard

After we practiced rolls for about 20 minutes we began working on our vaults and did that for most of the remaining time in class. We set up two lanes for vaulting, the first one only having a single box to get over and the second having three vaults in a row. The challenge that we were given was to do three step/safety vaults in a row, switching which side we went over the next obstacle (eg. left-right-left or right-left-right) without stopping. This gave us a great opportunity to practice our flow, or the ability to string multiple moves together really well, and practice using the side of our body that we aren't used to using. After we had done about five sets of these the teacher, known as Tall Rob, added a 1.8 meter (6 foot) wall run using the tallest dragons tooth shaped box that we have. When I saw him putting it there I was just going over the last of the three boxes, but I stopped halfway through with a slight sense of frustration and exasperation, but I still went and did it! On my six set of these I approached the wall run and, suffering from exhaustion of both heat and fatigue (aka I was hot and tired), I approached the wall run, stopped, had “Screw this, I’m hot and tired, and I’m not climbing this thing this time” go through my head and went back to the lineup for the obstacles. I think that we only did this about two or three more times before we moved on to the next part of the class.

The Foam Pit of Upside Down and I am Afraid of Falling

The next part of the class was took place at the foam pit, which I would like to mention is currently Calgary’s largest foam pit, so it’s pretty awesome. I should probably mention something so that there is a bit of context for this next part. There are three things that I am afraid of in this world, the first is being a failure, the second is bugs that are bigger than my hand (if I was around them often enough, it would stop scaring me, so this one is conquerable) and the third is heights, which is full of delicious irony considering I spent three years of my life rock climbing.

So we went up to the foam pit and we began what was something very difficult for me, we needed to stand at the edge of the pit, bend over so that our head was facing our feet, and fall over backwards into the pit. I did this okay the first time, when we were only half a meter (1.64 feet) above the foam, but then Tall Rob took us up to a higher place to do the same thing! So now we were about 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) above the foam, and for me this was a big deal! So after some coaxing I fell backwards into the pit… Sort of… According to the people watching I kind of fell forward a little bit and then did a hand spring, which wasn’t what we were trying to do, but I still fell backwards into the pit, which I feel is an accomplishment.

After all this we finished the class with our customary cool down of stretching, and we ended the class. I walked away from that class having released a lot of fluid comprised of water, minerals, lactate and urea (aka sweat) from my face, so all in all it was a good day of Parkour.

Quote of the week

That is what happened this week so as always I will leave you with a great quote.

“Be strong and of a good courage”

      – Joshua 1:6

Digital version here for download and here for viewing.

There are two questions that come to my mind when I read this, one is “What is courage?” and the other is “What is strength?” If you ask Hollywood to answer either of these questions, you would probably get the wrong answer. I would like to try and answer these questions, and provide a more correct answer.

I’ll start with “What is courage?”

Nelson Mandela said:

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

A picture of this quote can be found here

From this, and many other sayings like it, I learned that even the courageous are fearful, they just move beyond that fear and don’t let it rule them. You also don’t have to do anything miraculous or enormous for it to be courageous, it can be something as simple as walking across the street for the first time by yourself when you are a child. I believe that every time I put a rope on to go rock climbing, or when I fell over backwards into the foam pit, I am being courageous, because I am scared of what I am doing, but I do it anyway.

So, when have you shown courage?

The next question is “What is Strength?”

There are two different forms of strength that I would like to try and answer this question with. The first in outer strength, and the second is inner strength.

Outer strength, the strength that you find in someone’s physical stature, while important, there are a lot of things that you can’t do unless you are physically strong, is not as important as the inner strength.

Inner strength, the strength that is found in not reacting to someone when they doing nothing more than trying to get a reaction out of you, and the strength to keep fighting for something even when it is hard, is way more important because of how little of it is found in our society these days.

So, when have you been strong?

That is all I have for now, as always if you have any questions for me, you can contact me via the contact form on the right side of the page, you can leave a comment and I will respond to it when I am able, and, yea.

Good Bye,

– Nathan