Tyson Cecka

Well I made it safely back in Seattle in time to hop on a train back home to Vancouver, WA. Just had a relaxing Christmas at home and looking forward to kicking it back and catching up on things. I hope everyone gets to enjoy something similiar, happy holidays guys!

Cold. Raining. Warmup on the roof, quadrupedie through water, pushups in the wet. Second warmup in car lot, Yamakasi jumps, confusing directions, more jumps, slightly less confusing directions, much harder jumps. Catleaps, precisions on wet brick, sliding in the mud with Forrest. Underbars, forwards, backwards, sideways, circles, reverse sideways circles, twisting reverse sideways circles. Follow, run leap vault jump roll climb jump roll vault repeat repeat repeat, do it from memory. Lunch, persimmons! More warmups, bounce, bounce more, more bounce, bounce in a circle, jump and bounce. Run vault vault, play tag, introspection, share love, balance! Two foot jumps, rolling, more jumps, twisting, jumps and precision rolling, more twisting, scary cat balance, low vaults, twisting, backwards vaults, more twisting, crawling! Quadrupedie long distance, feel the rhythm, ignore the cold, watch reflection in hard polished stone, farther! Tricky cat, vault vault vault vault vault wallpasse, repeat, confusing tag game, partner vaults, traversal holding hands, wallpass holding hands, human ladders, crazy games with Yann! Stretching, noodles, sleep.

Indoors, warm, waiting to start. Outdoors, cold, 25min jog, forwards, sideways, backwards. First-ish warmup, mexican wave Yamakasi style, impossible crouching bounces, more bouncing, partner bouncing, run in place until you die, more impossible crouching bouncing. Second-ish warmup, quadrupedie, pushups, quadrupedie, pushups, quadrupedie, pushups, harder pushups, harder pushups, partner quadrupedie jumps, pushups, a blur of crazy ab work. First station, jumping, catleap, vaulting, finding icepacks for Nick’s ankle, ouch. Scaffolding, swing jump underbar twist precision repeat remix repeat remix repeat remix repeat remix. Big vaults, hard precisions, big jumps, tie them all together, faster faster, go go, again again, harder vaults, harder jumps. Outside, cold, balance on wobbly things, follow the leader balance drills, squat turn pistol squat turn turn pistol stand squat remix repeat, wallpasse, drop, cooperative wallpasse fail fail fail fail fail success! Free time, play, scaffolding!!! Stretch, more stretching, answer emails, write blog post, sleep.

France Tuesday? Worth last minute expensive train ticket?

So I ended up at a hostel above a pub in Waterloo waiting for the other 3 guys I know who are coming from the US for Rendezvous (2 from Washington!), people just didn’t have enough space or time to host it seems. Oh well, this is actually an excellent hostel/pub.

Today I went climbing with Kiell and to an outdoor beginner class with Stephane and Thomas. Both were quite hard but not killers, they actually helped me get rid of the last of the painful soreness that made me dread tube stairs so much. The climbing was at a sweet place in Mile End set up mainly for bouldering featuring a room entirely covered in holds - properly called the monkey house The outdoor class started at 7pm and was very very cold… 15 minutes straight of quadrupedie to start the warmup just about froze my hands off!

Training tomorrow starts early tomorrow so I’m going to grab some sleep. Things are definitely looking up and Rendezvous is going to be fantastic!

Again the latest is in my Twitter but here’s a summary for you all:

Landed in London, explored around Waterloo, found a cool spot, twisted my ankle :/ Boo. Took a day to rest with Dan and conditioned Saturday with some PK Gen guys, Thomas proceeded to destroy my legs. Although it hurt to crouch and walk down stairs Sunday found me in Waterloo and Vauxhall again for the Off the Wall jam for some lighter training and meeting a bunch of cool people.

Today finds me with no idea of where I’m staying the next few days and an itch to go explore the great training areas I know are nearby. Too bad it still hurts to move Got lots of photos but no time to upload atm.

If you are in the UK and got some floor space for me or are up for some training, let me know! Cheers.

I’m leaving tomorrow for probably the biggest Parkour trip I’ve been on yet (or at least the biggest to a single location) and I just know I’m going to get some amazing training in. The problem is the crazyness from SF followed me here and my plans are all up in the air again.

So who’s in the UK and wants to train / can give me some space to crash?

Dan Talking

Dan was very patient answering questions and helping people with their training.

From: Tyson Cecka

Comment on this image via Flickr

Man this trip has been weird so far, I’m loving it! If you haven’t been keeping up with my Twitter (looking to get that more integrated into the site), here’s the rundown:

The Berkeley campus is fantastic for Parkour, access ramps everywhere! In fact the whole San Francisco Bay Area is incredibly ADA compliant I got some great photos at Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz for my new art series.

Unicycle basketball looks incredibly hard to do, and it’s also very hard to take photos of…especially at night.

I made a quick visit to the parkour witch doctor, and then immediately undid all of his work at a gym made of trampolines!

We got free reign of climbing stuff at Youtube Live which was a lot of fun and I met a bunch of random ‘celebrities’ who were uh…interesting. MC Hammer’s after party was almost as fun as Taurus was with all the crazy people there.

Then Dan Edwardes brought the wonderfully difficult PK Gen warmup style to the session today at some old military barracks. I was doing pretty well until he layed down a new wall routine that destroyed me, the folks back home will appreciate it Did a bit of exploration, took more photos of railing porn, turned a possibly horrible bail into no problem, and found some great lines before training was cut short to get lost on the buses for Dan to get to the airport.

Randomly checked out the excellent hip-hop dancefest, got some inspiration from the Human Creature group, and got back to Brian’s to write this post. San Jose next, than Monterey. Pictures…later.

So I got into San Francisco last night and crashed at NoSole’s place. Today we went to UC Santa Cruz for SFparkour’s monthly jam and it was amazing. The campus is like a giant REI combined with freeway park and handicap ramps Led a fun warmup for the guys, took some great pictures, and trained until I couldn’t jump no more.

This trip is rather off the cuff, I’m bouncing around between a few traceur’s couches and am getting a bunch of exploring done while people work at those things called jobs. Send me a twitter message or email if you are in the area and want to train!

A DAY OF FEW SPOKEN WORDS HD from KASPARWORKS on Vimeo.

Rather excellent video from my friends in Tokyo by Kaspar Astrup Schröder. Makes me want to go back! See http://pktk.jp for more. Thanks Brian!

If you missed my wonderfully short Twitter updates while I was overseas, it was rather hot, took a hell of a long time to get there, was 4 days straight of hard performances and workshops, and was one of the coolest experiences of my life. The natives were very nice, the food is excellent, and the culture/history is incredible.

We didn’t have any issues while there except maybe for Mark taking too many photos of the army guys with the big guns… But really we felt rather safe after the first day of craziness passed, and we’re definitely hoping to go back. Even met a nice local traceur who joined us in the show!

I’m on a crazy sleep schedule right because of the ten hour lag and built up quite the number of unread emails while over there but I’ll try to get the photos processed and uploaded as soon as I can, there’s a lot of media for this one with all of us combined…

Beautiful Land/Beirut, Lebanon

Beirut, Lebanon

From: Sorgul

View image on Flickr (35 comments)

If you missed the announcement on the PNWPA blog or APK, I’m heading to Beirut, Lebanon with the Tribe next week on behalf of the US Embassy to teach kids parkour!

That’s going to be absolutely amazing but I thought I’d also let everyone know I’m also planning trips to San Jose to visit the parkour witch doctor and friends as well as the big trip to London for Rendezvous 3! San Jose will probably be mid to late November, and London will be Dec 3rd to the 22nd. If you’re around let me know and we’ll train!

Follow my trips in Dopplr! Apparently I have the same average velocity as a duck right now…