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The Denver Jam is living up to its title; there are people here from Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Virginia, Washington DC, Wisconsin, Ohio, and of course Colorado. Big thanks first off to our hosts, Ryan Ford and Matt Marshall, and of course their respective families for putting us up and for putting up with us! This is the first of probably a 4 or 5 part write up, more to come from me and others, the jam spanned four days and many many great locations! I think overall there were close to 100 people in attendance. "Read More" for an account of the second day of the jam, my first day there. 
Matt came to the airport Friday night to get Willgrind, Ando, NoSole, Stone, and me. Of course Willgrind was supposed to arrive Thursday, but when does an airline deliver service on the same day you paid for it? Rarely it seems. Of course the problem was weather, I think it was raining in China where they make the foil that packages the peanuts that aren’t free anymore, so of course it’s not the airline’s fault! After packing wayyy too many large people into a 2 door chevy cavlier we headed out for Matt’s. The ride for me was pretty comfy, as I was “on top”. It really is amazing how many people and how much luggage you can cram into a car when you have to! Back at Matt’s we were greeted by his wife Carissa who is a saint and a damn good cook! She had dinner all ready for us, a sort of chicken and mushroom filled pastry, totally over the top! We watched several episodes of Ninja Warrior and had a relatively calm night. The next morning Carissa hooked us up with huge pancakes and some eggs while Matt made some mad smoothies. Truly great hosts! We got all our s#it together and headed out (late) to join the crew at CU Boulder. After a quick stop for a quad iced espresso and some Mini-DV tapes we arrived in style (still 6 of us in the car, NoSole’s turn to be on top) at the CU Boulder Engineering center. The first 9 people I saw were, disappointingly enough, guys I know well. I saw Steven Low, Akh, Skipper, Leon, Skynative, Cloud, Kipup, and Demon. The other 50 people I didn’t know so well, yet. After a brief camera fest (people filming people filming people with camcorders) Demon quickly rounded us up for a group shot while we were all together. Somehow I ended up sitting on Leon’s head. These things happen. The architecture at Boulder is amazing! The buildings are made from cut stone, built in a brick like pattern, except that the faces of the stone are left rough to jut out, creating very grippy, perfectly climable walls. There are also boulders (oddly enough) all over the place, and in Boulder they’re very good at using these as landscaping elements which is both aesthetic and very palatable for the traceur! Tony from Team Moz was the first to nail a huge wallclimb. Sat Santokh, Skipper, and Skynative did some impressive kong to rail precision to frontflips in sequence, and someone came up with the idea to create a massive backflip wave off a wall which was spectacular, like being at a beach with an ocean made of agile people. Someone did a roof gap which was pretty high up. A few guys worked on a very cool kong to precision on one of the earlier mentioned boulders, although I don’t know what size it goes from “rock” to “boulder” these may have just been plain old rocks. From there we moved to a very cool dolphin gray concrete stairway in a shaded area. The stairway has a nice drop from a low wall on the top side to the landing where the stairway wraps around itself. Demon did this as a kong to drop onto the stairs themselves (very technical) although I missed it as I was introducing myself to Sat’s parents. There were a surprising number of adults there, some in support, some as chauffeurs and some just out of curiosity. What I did see were some people taking the drop very hard, amplified by the hollow echo of the concrete. I hope their knees forgive them some day. Apparently someone then upped the ante by frontflipping the whole lot. It was a pretty good drop, about 10 feet. As we moved to the next spot a few of us discussed that there were a lot of extremely talented people around, but that there were also a lot of guys who hadn’t gotten involved yet. Matt (Kannagasai) led a great and grueling warm-up that brought everyone in synch and got people out of “standing around with hands in pockets” mode. What happened as we moved to the next spot can only be described as terrible. There was a narrow hallway, more like an outdoor breezeway formed by a glass-enclosed staircase on one side and a smooth concrete wall on another. A couple of people made their way through this in a “stem” – a climb where you force your feet against one wall and your hands against an opposing wall and shimmy yourself along. I can only guess that they used the black metal window frames a support for their hands. When “Spoon” tried the same move, he had assumed that people had been supported by the glass – a wrong assumption and a tragic mistake. He started the climb, got himself up to about 5 or 6 feet and then started to traverse, by pressing directly on the thick tinted glass. I looked over immediately as I heard the sickening vacuum sound of a large pane of glass yielding to the force of Spoon’s hands. I saw as Spoon started to fall straight down amid the still shattering glass as if it was happening in gooey liquid slow motion, luckily, he landed on his feet, not pushing through the glass and falling into the stairwell. I saw him retract his hands and for a moment had a ray of hope, thinking “I know that when this happens, people get cut up, badly – could this be the one time that someone escapes in a stroke of luck that beats the laws of skin vs glass?”. What I saw next gave me a very clear answer, Spoon was cut badly. I was about 8 steps away when this happened, and by the time I got my hands free of pulling my shirt over my head, someone else already had their shirt off and over Spoon’s wrist. I adjusted the one that was there, added my own for extra compression and squeezed as hard as you would if you felt you could hold the life from draining out of someone- hard. I yelled for someone to call 911 for an ambulance, and the phone was already dialed. Fortunately there was a trained EMT who I think was handing out parking tickets and just happened by. He came right over to help, donned a pair of latex gloves, and had us remove the t-shirts to apply a sterile gauze pad. As we removed the shirts we could see that it was a very serious cut, unfortunately Spoon looked too … and understandably became even more queasy than he was. He apologized, saying “This isn’t the image we want for Parkour” – a ridiculously selfless thought at such a time. We comforted him and assured him that the ambulance wasn’t far off. I squeezed my hands around the EMT’s hands to help keep the pressure on, and had him wrap his thumbs around Spoon’s wrist to keep even pressure. When the ambulance arrived, they asked us to remove the gauze and t-shirt compress, but we were a little wiser, and got Spoon to look away first. As we pulled our hands away to be replaced by the ambulance crew’s experienced digits, I couldn’t help but look again into the deep wound. They asked us to put pressure back on, and we did, quickly. One of the ambulance crew stroked Spoon’s fingers asking him if he could feel it, he said “a little” to which she replied “that means yes?” a stern question as herm mind worked furiously to determine the extent of the damage. We helped Spoon onto the stretcher and they wheeled him into the back of the ambulance. “Team MOZ Ma” volunteered to accompany Spoon to the hospital. Meanwhile, a Police officer who had arrived with the ambulance was asking for details. I got Spoon’s cell number from him as he sat in the back of the ambulance, he was pretty cheery considering. I gave the officer Spoon’s cell phone number. He was extremely reasonable and I have to say received the situation with a calm that surprised me. We explained to him that there was no harm intended and that we fully intended to pay for the damage. I gave him my full name and phone number. (We will call the school Monday with the same message). As things were now under control, I grabbed my camera and got a parting shot of Spoon – who apologized again. I surveyed the damage to the window, unable to tear my mind from the terrible things that could have happened if Spoon’s momentum had been in the direction of the stairwell. The massive pane of glass hung with jagged tinted fangs, I was afraid of it having seen its wrath, but stuck my hand through to get a picture of the stairwell below. What was left was broken glass, some blood, and a reminder to traceurs everywhere – your brain is your most powerful safety equipment, and you need to evaluate situations based not only on “what you can do” but on what your environment can sustain. Later in the night we would hear that Spoon was being flown back to Phoenix to have emergency surgery on the tendons in his wrist. Our thoughts are with him. Many people had already moved to a quad area by Baker hall before the Spoon incident, so the small group that stayed behind with him headed up that way. NoSole was trying on huge precision from an angled concrete pillar to the corner of a planter. Not only was it a formidable gap, but the conditions were way less than ideal. In the end, I think I saw 5 or 6 people stand up, size it up, and slink away, deciding to find a more suitable challenge. Skipper tried it and got his feet across, but not with enough momentum to finish it off. NoSole came within foot-pounds, not inches, as his feet were there, he just couldn’t pull his hips through. At the same time, Sat and some others were trying a massive kong to precision across some planters. I think Sat nailed it, Demon nailed it, and some others may have. Tony from Team MOZ took a shot at it from another angle, but I was focused on the precision, not sure if he ever pulled it off. At the parking garage there is a great wall-climb with multi levels that many people had a go at. Tony was the first to make it up the biggest part, I think Leon may have been the only other person to summit the massive vertical plane. |
