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.

Gear and meetup plans

I got my hands on a camera for a bit so I have some pictures of some of my gear, not everything but I got a fair bit. Check it out below:
Bokken:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v516/mdemon9991/Gear/bokken.jpg
Some books:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v516/mdemon9991/Gear/bokken.jpg
Footwear:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v516/mdemon9991/Gear/footwear.jpg
Various things:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v516/mdemon9991/Gear/layout1.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v516/mdemon9991/Gear/layout2.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v516/mdemon9991/Gear/layout3.jpg
Shinobi Shozoku:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v516/mdemon9991/Gear/shozoku.jpg
Portable Storage:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v516/mdemon9991/Gear/storage.jpg
Woodland BDUs:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v516/mdemon9991/Gear/woodlandbdu.jpg
Proof it's me and some face paint:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v516/mdemon9991/Gear/proofandcamo.jpg

Black Panther Ninja is in town for a bit so I wanna take BSC and go out and meet him and maybe train together and all that. Not sure what we'll work on, might take a BSC training from last time and do it again with Black Panther there too. We'll see when it happens, expect a post about it soonish...

Summer Roofing II

This adventure was really exciting and pretty nerve wracking now that I think back to it. Here's how it went down:
Gear-
Me
Green Field Shirt
Brown Tank Top
Camo Cargo Shorts
Black Sneakers
Crisis
Navy Long Sleeve
White Short Sleeve
Jeans
Grey Converse
We were hanging out with some friends at night, feasting on free food (if you hang out late enough good left over food gets thrown out, just ask the guy to take some before they toss it) and walking around. After a while everyone needs to go home. Me and Crisis had decided ahead of time to do some roofing that night so this is our chance. After we all split up me and Crisis walk to a street where we want to climb a house. It's just a ladder leading to a fire escape in from of a lit garage.
Once we get there we sit on the stoop of an abandoned house and watch for people until the street clears out. After that I hop a low rail and climb up the ladder (it's much louder than I'd like) and start up the stairs. After one flight I stick to the wall and wait for Crisis, (his ascent is just as loud, I don't like the ladder). We go up the rest of the stairs and climb the hook ladder at the top flight to get to the roof.
This seems like a regular ordinary block of roofs until we notice once thing; the door leading inside one of the apartment buildings is wide open with light leaking out. Wow, you're leaving a huge welcome sign to any burglars who know how to use binoculars...
We decide to keep exploring the roofs before we do anything with the door. We climb over the door and check the sky light to look down into the staircase it leads to then proceed to the end of the block. On the last house we find a nice setup of chairs and a table where we lounge out and enjoy the view of the city for a while. After some relaxing we decide to go back down, Crisis is set on getting back to street level through the apartment building.
We get to the open doorway and check around before going in, Crisis is in point and he tests the first step, it squeaks more than a haunted house in scooby doo. Doesn't matter, step two is quiet, but step three is the loudest step ever also. We brace ourselves between the banister and the wall and swing down to the next landing quietly. We then jog down the rest of the stairs and just walk out the front door. Kinda very stressful the fact that we walked down the staircase of an apartment building we knew nothing about but it turned out good.
After leaving the apartment we decided to climb a nearby friend's house (well our goal was to get onto his roof). We walked down his block and went under an apartment into the back yards (there are small unlocked passageways that go from the streets to the yards). Once in the back yards Crisis gave me a boost to a fire escape and then climbed up an AC to get on himself. The fire escape was covered in chipping paint and seemed old. As I started on the stairs I realized that one was missing and the one underneath was loose I warned Crisis and we headed up until w-- CRACK! A stair breaks off under Crisis' foot (apparently more than one stair was loose). We keep going up and paint is chipping off everywhere, as we reach the top flight a light comes on in a window and my back goes against the wall, Crisis crouches halfway up the stairs. A hand pulls back some curtains and I see a face approach the window. After a few seconds the face retreats and the curtains close, the lights go back off. We slink back down the fire escape (the fire escape clearly hates us anyways) and jump across to the one on the next building. As we climb that one nothing seems to go wrong, we fast and silent like the ninjas we are but maybe there are ninjas in the house we're going up also because some lights come one while we're going up the ladder :?, I'll never know...
Once we finally get to the roof we moved around a bit and decided to head down in case people called the cops on us. Went down our friend's fire escape which is actually sturdy and hopped a fence. We walked to the park and lay low for a while then each of us went home. My cab driver was a crazy conspiracy theorist.
Lessons learned: Don't trust rusty old fire escapes.