PKUSA, the national jam in Texas, is now finished. Jereme Sanders writes...

 "I know that I personally had a really good time. Read more for an overview of my experience and a sampling of what went down."

Thursday the 25th was a pretty chill day. We had a small, laid back training session with the Louisiana guys (Justin and Slava) who showed up early and some of the San Antonio people. Just worked whatever we wanted at this school near the base of operations; had a lot of fun just seeing the visitor's ideas for their new surroundings. That night was spent playing conditioning dice, which is pretty much the same thing as craps though instead of betting money you bet work outs--if you win everyone else has to do your workout and if you lose you have to do it. It’s pretty fun in bigger groups I must say, and can go on forever if you let it.

Due to a long running game of conditioning dice most of us didn’t get any more than 5 hours of sleep. We were still ready for some of the pre-jam festivities Friday the 26th, though. This day was intended to be more of a chill pre-day as with Thursday, but we actually ended up having a good turn out of about 20 people. Our first spot, a local high school, saw us all playing around the multitude of benches and ledges that were in the courtyard. It was definitely a lot of fun though it was short lived as, little did we know, summer school was in session there and we ended up being asked to leave. After some miscommunication, poor directions and a bit of yelling we migrated from the high school to San Pedro Park, closer to downtown San Antonio and in a place where we were almost guaranteed not to run into anymore summer school students. San Pedro Park’s best assets, I’d have to say, are its amazing trees; and we spent the rest of the day playing around in only two of them for the most part, drilling various fluidity runs and precision techniques, and ending our time at the park with a short lived but fun looking game of Capture the flag. After some food and a bit of rest we ended the day with some fun gym training from about 9pm to midnight, at which time those not staying the night at the gym headed off to their respective sleeping areas to rest for the main day of the jam.

The next day, Saturday the 27th, centered on downtown San Antonio as the base of training, and we seemed to have a turn out of around 40-50. It was ridiculously hot that day, so after I lead the running part of the warm up and everyone got all stretched out and whatnot, we all kind of just started doing our own thing while trying not to instantly get sunburn. There were a lot of small groups doing a bunch of different things; but the consensus seemed to be that everyone was at least still having a lot of fun challenging themselves regardless of the 100+ degree weather. The downtown spots we hit up for the day were primarily the Tower of the Americas and the wooden playground at Hemisfair Park. We were able to train at a couple other spots for a short amount of time though we were asked to leave each shortly after. We trained downtown till about 4 then got ready for the dinner everyone was going to have at Tycoon Flats. This burger joint near downtown San Antonio had very nicely agreed to give a percentage of all of our Traceurs’ meals back to the Texas Parkour non-profit and it went off without a hitch, providing a much needed rest and relaxation period from all the training that had taken place the past couple of days. After Tycoon Flats there was more gym training and then an early night (for me at least) so that I could be ready for the last day of the jam.

Sunday the 28th marked the last day of the jam, and on this day the venues we had set up were Texas State University and Children’s Playground, both of which are in San Marcos. The gym people had a bit of a hold up as far as misplacing keys to lock up among other things, but everyone ended up getting to the location fine. We spent a very short amount at the school for some unknown reason, though we had a lot of fun for the time we were there,. After training at the University, we headed off to another wooden park nearby. Since everyone was kind of winding down it was a very relaxed kind of session, most people just playing around and watching those that had the energy to continue on. After a couple hours at the Park the BBQ crew arrived and began prep while some went to cool off in the river before eating. The food at the barbecue included sausage, brisket, chili, and all the good things you would enjoy at a real Texas Barbecue so that our visitors would get a taste of our State before heading off back to their homes.

It was definitely a fun jam that saw around 50 people from Texas, Louisiana, Arizona, Colorado, and Virginia all meet down in San Antonio for some good times and hard training, definitely a good experience for this year’s summer.

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