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The Midwest Jam was once again one of the highlights of the year for the American Parkour / Freerunning scene! First order of biz is to send a HUGE thanks to the Cousins family for once again hosting this event and allowing us to descend on their home for the weekend! Ando's dad is quite the grillmaster as well. Thanks to Ando and Cloud for setting everything up. The jam on Saturday was great ...
There were more than 40 people, making this the largest event the Midwest has seen to date. We started at UIC where everyone gathered and exchanged greetings, then quickly got down to business with a quick warm up Primal Fitness style with rounds of 10X squats, "pop ups" (each leg), elevated pushups, dips, and box jumps. After that we hit the main quad at UIC pretty hard until every available object was used up. Twice. We moved on to where Hak did a sweet kong to precision across a stairway and Skynative and a few others did some sick Freerunning and tricking over some low concrete walls. Beginners were busy with Monkey vaults and working on the cat-to-cat over the stairway, but not over the stairway - luckliy there is a concrete lip that goes the whole way, so you can practice the move in complete safety at ground level. Alex from Spain (who is a great guy btw) whacked his knees pretty hard in a failed kong to precision. Too bad, as he has mad skills and was fun to hang out with. He did tough it out through the rest f the day though. Next up was "the Statue" - an indestructible concrete structure that's a blast to play on. Once again Levi, Leon, Hak, Cody and Fred did some crazy stuff off it, while others wall ran it or just saw how many people we could fit in a small space.
Downtown to Whacker (err-wit) was the next destination. the Vietnam memorial area has a lot of diverse terrain and good concrete. Highlights included Haks "Wallrun to Taco", Leon hitting a huge wallrun (15 feet?), Levi and Travis doing some massive kong to precision to whatevers. Yours truly was happy to pull off a cat leap that I wasn't able to get last year. Progress! We cleared the stairs and got some nice tricking pics before moving on. The riverside area was next up and the action was still abundant. Mitch pulled off a nice catleap over a stairset, Hak did an unfortunate one-handed monkey vault, Moses, Ando, Travis, Blake (how did I get this far without mentioning Blake?) did a huge standing cat. Leon really upped it though when he did a tic-tac "in the round" to a grab across 3 walls - sick! Meanwhile the beginners were hitting up wallruns galore. Further down the river activities were stifled as one of he best spots had freshly planted flowers. Bummer. We made due and played on the fence which Moses went over like it didn't exist, Freestyle Fox conquered it, and Levi caught a bit of the action. Mostly I avoided the area as it stank of bum-poop. Since there were no huge kong to be had most people played in the trees. Travis (the beast) and a few other guys did some amazing dynos.
Next up, break-dancing. Teliko from Wisconsin had the floor and was only joined by Moses. Definitely for the best as we're not a break-dancing crowd! More trees, underbars, climbing, swinging, simian activities ensued until we hit the Scaffolding. Personally I hit the scaffolding a little to hard and have a nice bruise to shoe for it, but alas I picked myself up and got through on the (reluctant) second try. Alex really rocked it here, as he'd been taking it easy on account of his knees, he has serious climbing / swinging / fingertip ability and swung from the scaffolding to an I beam to an I beam to the scaffolding. I think Blake was the only one to follow this feat successfully. We 9well, three of us) finished up with 25 pull-ups before moving on to the fountain.
The fountain was a blast as usual. This year I wised up and brought a bathing suit so nobody would have to be scarred by pictures of my err-wit. We played, splashed around and had fn until an uptight security guard called the cops, by which time we were safely away ordering a quick refreshing beverage at an outdoor cafe. When the cops finally came (Dominoes pizza beat them by 17 minutes) the Security guard (snitch) walked over and pointed us out. Not wanting any "confrontation" with the nice officer lady we left in quick fashion. I don't know if she had much to go on, but a i was in a bathing suit and no shoes, soaking wet in the middle of downtown Chicago! She must have walked behind us for 1/2 mile! We even ran through a bit of broken glass (did I mention I didn't put my shoes on yet?) where Hak offered to carry me. the walk back to the cars was uneventful until the Slurpee machine exploded on me - clearly an equipment malfunction and not an operator error.
Back at Ando's the fun was just beginning. Ando's dad rocked the Grill while Muse-of-Fire heated up her incredible Moroccan chicken. We had chicken burgers and steaks provided courtesy of APK. There were plenty of antics including some incident with a watermelon (who would have guessed?) for details, show up at the next jam!
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