A long time coming, but the update about mine and Antek’s trip to Adelaide is finally here!
It started with a fairly early flight from Sydney – a coffee and some flips at the airport helped cure the tiredness, and we were both really excited. We had a mixture of anticipation about what lay ahead, and in the case of Antek, anticipation of the flight – it was his first one in a whole heap of years. By this stage I had gotten over being annoyed at online check-in and having to print my boarding pass at the airport. The call went out for any families with young children to board the flight – obviously that meant Antek and myself – and we boarded the plane first.
The flight was fairly good, will use Virgin Blue again. After waltzing through the airport, with no baggage to claim, we met Brooke, Frazer and Kenan outside – then headed into the city for the start of training!
I remembered most of the way around Adelaide, which was pretty good, and when we pulled up quite far away from the Adelaide Festival Centre, I knew it would be a fair walk. That’s the only problem with Adelaide, parking in the centre is a bitch! I’ll explain later the most amazing discovery, however.
On our way to the AFC, where we were going to meet Brooke, we stopped off at the tree. A fairly generic name I know, but there are two reasons for this. Firstly, it is THE TREE – meaning it is massive, and epic. Second, it’s a bit of a secret, so new people don’t come and break branches off etc. Frazer told me a few stories to this effect, and so this is why I shall not discuss its location.
There isn’t really a way of describing the tree, apart from the word epic, so I will let you watch the video. There is so much stuff to do in it, you can (and we pretty much did) spend a day there. Massive branches for running along, climbing and jumping between, rail-sized roots sticking out of the ground, and smaller branches to swing on, it has so much potential. In addition to that, there’s a rope swing, and so after a while you start to feel like a monkey. We didn’t spend long here on the first day, but later on in the trip we did.
We continued to AFC, where we met Brooke, and did some pretty fun training. We also had word that Tony would be coming out later on to train which was awesome. The first day was a fairly relaxed day of training, as we didn’t want to exhaust ourselves, so we mainly toured around the main spots, and did a bit of training at each – this helped us decide on places we wanted to revisit. We noted that Brooke had parked near AFC at the War Memorial, behind a boom gate. He got in, and was hoping he would get out. Luckily he did, and so from then on, this was our preferred parking spot – it is pretty much empty, free, and in the middle of the city!
On day 2 we woke up and had a chilled morning, and then headed into the city. I told some relatives I would go visit, so myself, Antek and Frazer went there. On the way there, after getting frustrated from not being able to go on some 1 way streets due to road works, and seeing a potential training spot, we arrived at the house. I wasn’t as shocked at the size of the house and its hedge this time, but Antek and Frazer were. After having a nice chat and catch up with them, and subsequently being invited to dinner the following Monday, we headed off. Before going into the city, we stopped to train at the spot we noticed before – and we were glad that we did. The place was a school, with an awesome wooden playground, sort of resembling a castle. Between the castle and some other wooden walls was a tree, and the ground was soft bark chipping stuff. There was also a frame perfect for swinging on, and some other play equipment and building a little further around. Needless to say we spent a good hour here, training and filming – I was pretty pleased with a precision high up in the tree, and then swinging onto the castle. I also did some standing fronts, as the ground was nice and soft. We all got some really nice movements here – Frazer’s huge swinging abilities were great to see, and Antek’s confident techniques were sweet to watch. I’ll let you watch the video to get a bit more of an understanding of the stuff that we did here. Unfortunately I picked up a little injury here, after I was going to do a small precision between a slide and a metal cylinder. At the last moment I realised that even though it was more of a drop than a jump, my feet would slip off the slide, so I decided just to drop off. However, this meant I was going to head into the metal cylinder, so I decided to keep my knees clear and take the impact on the front of my body. This didn’t hurt, but what I realised is that my knee had clipped it, and so was starting to swell. I ignored it, and trained on it to stop it stiffening up, so it was fine for the rest of the day. You’ll see in the video the red metal cylinder when I precision to it – lucky I hit the rounded and not the edge part.
After this, we headed into the city, and met some familiar faces at the AFC – and also met Ronnie and Sima, some Adelaide locals. Antek and I proceeded to get a new cat to arm that hadn’t been seen before, which for me was a very mental achievement. Myself and Kenan also pushed ourselves to do some precisions with drops on the other side – its a completely mental thing, and doing the same precision with no drop is easy to stick. I was pretty pleased when I got this, as it has opened up some more things to do.
We headed to Subway for a late lunch, and after introducing Antek to the wonders of Farmer’s Union Iced Coffee we met up with Tony and proceeded to the Uni and Lion Arts area for more training. Lion Arts is the place in the video with orange walls and green rails – so good for striding and precisions. After this we headed to a spot around the corner and drilled some more precisions and running precisions on rails, and a precision with a drop on both sides. We also filmed the end sequence of the video here – many lols were had. The majority of our filming was done on the second day. All but Tony headed back to Frazer’s house in the dark, and had some dinner, however not before some fun at Woolworths. *Attention all customers. Sydney Parkour, WOOHOO!*
Tony drove over a while later, for numerous games of online minigolf – which Antek sucked at, haha! Not hole-in-one-tek, more like hole-in-one-zey! After some epic harmony and duet singing by Fraz and myself (The Way It Should Be – Pez), the guys told Antek and I about a 24 hour bakery – something which we don’t have here in Sydney, so we hopped in the car and went down for some cakes at a ridiculous hour. And due to Tony having to leave, we walked back, doing some missions on the way. Needless to say we were very, very tired.
The next day was a late start, as we were all fairly buggered from the previous 2 days of training. Nevertheless, we headed into the city for a lazy day of looking around. We stocked up on cookies, lollies, ice cream and iced tea from Woolworths, and Frazer showed us around some challenging climbs and missions – a great thing to do when tired! We visited some great places, which was slightly annoying, as we didn’t have the energy to do many movements there.
On the fourth day we felt fairly invigorated to train – apart from Antek, who felt pretty sick – probably due to the amount of food eaten the day before. We headed out to the tree once more, for a really good session of precisions, climbing and swinging – there are endless possibilities. Antek ended up filming a fair bit of stuff this day, however as the day progressed he felt a bit better, and busted out some awesome movements. We then headed for some lunch in Chinatown, at a place called Ken’s Chinese Restaurant. Apparently Frazer had been going here since its opening, and knew the owner personally. Couple that with a cheap lunch menu, and it was the perfect eatery! Frazer instructed us to try the iced milk tea for our drink order, and it didn’t disappoint – it was a great drink to have with a spicy meal. Oh, and a pretty huge Your Mate entered the restaurant – it was hilarious, because Antek promised to get me with a huge one – and Antek had his back to him, so couldn’t see. The amount of joy I felt calling the Your Mate on him was huge. After taking Antek’s picture with the Your Mate, and eating some tasty Chinese, we walked to the TAFE, a spot we had visited the previous day, but had no energy to do anything there. We filmed a bit here; it’s the spot with purple walls in the video.
Soon came day 5, and nearing the end of our time in Adelaide. We used this opportunity to revisit some previously sessioned spots and do some things we hadn’t had time to do. We also checked out the Uni’s on the North Terrace, however at each one we were kicked out pretty quickly. I then reminded Frazer and Kenan we should visit a spot I trained at last time I came, near the Uni, but out of the grounds. Kenan and I promptly attempted the big level cat-precision we had tried a few months ago, and we were both so close to getting it. I experimented with taking big strides into it, a technique which I have since played around with and gotten confidant with. We were moved on by some nice police from this area, and so we decided it was time to go get some late lunch at Ken’s, where we met up with Tony. As we were finishing our meals, Frazer spotted a friend of his in a store opposite, so went over to say hello. We took this opportunity to run away from him, and only after a 50m sprint did we realise that no one was at the table, and we hadn’t paid for our meal. This made us jog back sheepishly, and apologise profusely to the waitress. The food was awesome again, but it was a bit of a silly decision to eat late, because we were heading to my families house for dinner that night. Antek can usually only eat around 1 meal a day, so it was a shame not to demolish the roast Debbie had cooked. After the meal, we headed to Frazer’s dad’s house in Mawson Lakes, and then went out for a nice barefoot walk at night to help us sleep. The walk back was interesting, as we had found some abandoned strips of carpet – perfect for making shoes, or so we thought. Mine were really comfy, but died about half way home, as did Antek’s. I think they are finally at rest in the lake.
Day 6 was our last day, and we felt really reluctant to leave. Frazer took us to Glenelg for a bit of a look around and a few tricks, and then we headed to The Pillow, which was fairly near the airport. It was mine and Antek’s first experience of a jumping pillow, which was like a cross between a jumping castle and a trampoline. It was like a 10mx4m pillow stuck in the ground, with sand around it. Needless to say, it was awesome for tricking. I did some poor attempts at round off backs, and some ok backtucks, but it was Antek and Frazer who dominated with their awesome combos. Unfortunately the time came to drive to the airport and go home. My relationship with airports is love/hate. I love them because they are like a gateway to another place, and there is an excitement of going to those places – or of seeing someone arrive. But I hate them, because it is always sad when you have to say goodbye to someone and go home, or watch them leave. They seem like such a bad place to end a journey, because up until the point of getting to the airport, the reality of leaving doesn’t set in.
Over the course of the week or so, we all achieved some great things – the highlights of which are in the video. I felt a real progression in myself mentally, and I saw this same thing in others. The spots are awesome to train at, there is an awesome tree, we did a lot of climbing, and the atmosphere was so chilled. Most importantly though, the people are awesome.
Thanks to Kenan, Tony, Brooke and Frazer for some awesome training, Frazer’s parents for their hospitality, Michelle for her great cooking and for being like a second mum, Debbie and Steve for having us over, and of course, special thanks to Frazer for housing us and driving around everywhere, for the laughs and memories, and for being an overall great mate. Love you all.
Here’s the video – make sure to click through to the Youtube page and watch in HD!
-Wizey
