Blowguns and ninpo taijutsu

Yesterday I went to train martial arts with a friend (same guy I took a tkd lesson with). He had developed his own secret kicking technique, but after some analysis and trails we found that it wasn't too effective. We went over various kicks and how they're used. After that I showed him some ninpo taijutsu kamae, foot work and some techniques. We worked on body conditioning, sprints, and some other stuff on the side as well.
Today I finished my second blowgun, it's a regular straight one. I tested out both of them (the straight one and the corner one) with balls of news paper and they work well. I want to practice aiming with them so I can get better and maybe do some night training all that. I want to find a place that sells darts or find a way to make good ones, because newspaper balls are just that, balls of newspaper. I don't plan on poisoning anyone any time soon but I'd rather train with the real thing.
Bonus points: The blowguns are PVC and make good field expedient clubs.

Kenjutsu and New Tobi

Yesterday practiced rolling and sword stuff out back. Lots of drawing techniques, making sure I had a good grip on the sword and various cuts. Just regular sword training really.
What I'm happy about is I learned a new jumping technique, it's an old ninja technique and for jumping straight up with no momentum it's better than the parkour jump (from my comparison). It brings up the legs but in front of the body wit less of a bend in the knees, you can see a video of a Bujinkan guy teaching it here It's approximately the same for me in terms of high jumping with a running start but I haven't experimented with it much yet. Gonna start stretching around the hips to get it to work better.

Operation: Pitt's Parkour

Crisis as you may know ops with me a lot, he also happens to be a lifeguard at a pool with an awesome parkour spot right behind it part of the park it's in. Unfortunately the park closes at 9ish and when I am there the park workers are also there to dissuade me from training a bit because the parkour spot is fenced off. I happened to be around there with Crisis and some other friends, we were all going home and I suggested to him that we sneak in and train a bit. Here's what happened.

Gear:
Me-
Red sleeveless shirt
Camo cargo shorts
Nike Sneakerboats (awesome shoe btw)
Woodland bandanna over mouth/nose.
Crisis-Black wolverine shirt (turned inside out so security wouldn't recognize him)
Navy BDU pants
Grey Sneakers
Digital camo bandanna on top of head

We walked through some projects and hopped some rails/fences to get to the park/pool faster. Crisis had a new haircut so he put his bandanna over his head to make it recognizable. We got to the outer fence and climbed over it quickly, we stood in a bunch of under growth underneath a tree, the air was so humid my body felt heavier. We looked through the inner fence and so no activity and I began my ascent, at the top of the fence I quickly looked around and then slid down (vertical spikes with a cross bar at the top), upon landing I moved into some bushes and waited as Crisis followed suit. Once there I decided on a quick route to the parkour spot. We moved to a handball wall and were covered in shadow, we crouch ran to a red shed and then hopped a low wall onto a staircase leading to the parkour spot behind the pool.
Once on the stairs a lot of QMing and pausing ensued as we crossed the entire parkour spot. We took a few listening breaks and looked around, after we were sure no one was there we moved along back and forth doing some parkour training on the obstacles, in between moves we got behind something for cover. After some training we took a water break, sneaking down to the pool deck and taking some water from a water fountain. After that more parkour training and then we exfiltrated by the same route as our infiltration. A good time and fun training, especially because of the pressure.
Lessons learned:
Doing parkour with a bandanna on your face makes you run out of breath quickly.
Pools/parks lack security.
The pool on Pitt St has a cool parkour spot right behind it.

CTF!

The long awaited game of CTF, was really happy with it even though it could have gone a lot better. A bunch of traceurs were playing (all on the same team of course) and I was there with Crisis. We were on the blue team, there was a red team as well. Did pretty well mostly, social stealth was a big thing here, was not dark out yet so walking around looking bogged down by the heat got you far and usually left you unnoticed. Most of the time people did realize I wasn't supposed to be on their side I used some wall runs and low jumps over things to evade them, speed helps a lot too. I went in a black tank top with black cargo sweats, my waterboats and a black bandanna, Crisis wore the navy blue BDU pants and a black tee. Overall was a good time. Parkour was super useful here for both reach and escape (as it was intended), moved through construction sites, yards, streets and a variety of places to move in on the flag.
Here's the downside: Police cops ruined our game. After some how acquiring a map they patrolled the play area constantly and started to spread deception. Police officers told us (people playing) that someone had gotten hit by a car and the game was paused/cancelled/delayed, wasn't true at all. Later they shut the game down under the pretense that we didn't have a permit, I didn't know you needed a permit to run down the street.
Lessons learned:
Be aware of police if I ever set up a game of this sort (which I'm considering)
Social stealth works really well, adapt a look that works for the situation and walk past sentries.
Most people will rush in situations like this if they get into groups, not much tactics, especially on the defensive side.

General update

I painted the corner blowgun black, would of liked brown but I don't have the paint for that. Recently got a new knife, old one got confiscated t an amusement park. Looking forward to Friday when there's a huge game of CTF, hope to put various skills to the test (parkour, stealth, speed etc...). Other than that, id d a bit of low movement training, various QM stuff, rolling and crawling. Some sword training on the side as well. Internet is broken at the moment, don't expect too much activity.

Sui

Lots of swimming as of late. I've been in and out of the water a lot lately. Mostly for fun but every time I end up swimming I make sure to practice some suijutsu. Either for stealth or awareness, working on two warrior techniques in addition to regular swimming (freestyle, breast stroke, side stroke etc...). One is a shinobi/stealth swimming method similar to the breast stroke with the top of the head above the water, another is an awareness technique similar to freestyle with the head out of the water, it was used to move around quickly and efficiently around an aquatic combat area. Might train parkour with the either UVPK or another group.

Quick update (Blowguns)

I've made a blow gun to shoot around corners and I'm working on a regular one. I got the ideas from SnookyToeFlip's video. I also finished reading Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa, great book, it's fictional and gives a good perspective on what a warrior is. Never really got to train with Black Panther Ninja, he left before we had time to train, he was here during a very busy period of my summer, we'll train next time he's in town. I'm reading/rereading Sun Tzu's The Art of War, still a great book, read it if you haven't.