Yesterday I went to Evry and Lisses for the first time. It's a great trip and just being there and seeing the architectures makes it obvious that it was a place that facilitated the development of the art. I was there with my mother (who came to take pictures but forgot the camera). I did a bunch of training in spots I had only seen in videos.
At the Dame Du Lac I met two German traceurs who were staying in Lisses to train. The Dame du Lac is smaller than I thought it would be but it's scary climbing up nonetheless. I went to the gym fire escape, the buildings where you can cat to cat down staircase ledges and a few other Lisses and Evry spots I saw in videos as well as some I never saw before. A great trip. I plan on going again before I leave France but with a camera.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Summer Roofing 3 (France)
As you may know I'm in France. I stayed a few days in my mother's friend's house in a suburb (wow it's different). I did a quick op on the lst night:
Gear-
Black Chinese drawstring pants
Brown t-shirt
Black Bandanna
Red filtered L-neck military flash light
Black water shoes
(Excuse any typos or anything like that, google image search French Keyboard)
I prepared my gear, hit the lights, got dressed and took a listening break to make sure no one in the house was awake (including the cute, but annoying dogs). Satisfied that I was the only awake person in the house I crouch on the window sill and observe making sure that no one will see my escape; I was overly cautios due to the fact that I wasn't in my hometown, wasn't being an opportunist and that I didn't like hearing a ton of dogs bark earlier in the week while walking the dogs.
I'm just being paranoid though, I hop out the window, wait two seconds, crouch walk to the wall that surrounds the house, peek over it, note the empty but lit street and hop over with a wall run. I walk down the empty street until I hit a dark, alley with lots of plants in it that I choose as my route from previous scouting earlier that night.
The alley is uneventful, loud (gravel) and thus stressful. I reach the end and make my way to the center of town rather uneventfully, the whole place is empty the only thing out at this hour is stray cats, not so stray cats and two random guys hanging with a stray dog. Once at the middle of town I do some precision jumps and parkour then head back towards the alley, the two guys ask me if I have any cigs, which I don't. As I approach the alley I decide to visit the graveyard in town which is pretty interesting because all the graves are in small mausoleums.
On my way to the graveyard a car rolls by and I jog behind a gate to stay invisible, once it's gone I climb into the graveyard, it's elevated but has no gate on one side. I'm pissed that the ground is gravel, and move slowly. I sneak around and decide it's time for some stealth parkour to spice things up. The mausoleums are close to each other and on cement (which is much quieter than gravel :) ), so I move around on top of them, crouch running, QMing, and of course jumping. As I'm hanging out on top of one in the cover of an overhanging tree a sound freaks me out, it flits by a few times before I realize it's a bat. I move along the top of the mausoleums towards the side of the graveyard that I came in from after jumping around a bit, lower myself to the ground and drop out of it. I've decided to hit up one more place before turning in.
I walk towards a large grey building with lower orange buildings on either side. I want to climb up the front, which looks like a ladder stretched out horizontally, it's ridiculously exposed to the street and a bunch of light, so I climb up a small building on the side first. I'm happily assisted by a window covered by horizontal bars. Once up I get on my belly because I know there are tents full of (hopefully) sleeping campers on the other side. The other reason I'm on my belly is... Gravel, again... I creep to the edge, see that no light is coming from any tents and everyone seems to be asleep except what sounds like a sneezing girl. As I make myway back along the roof in crouch walk, I notice that there is another window and it's covered in horizontal bars that shoul keep me out, but actually just help me roof the grey building.
I'm going to let you guess what this roof is covered with (hint: it starts with g and ends with ravel). I QM and sideways walk along this one until I find a ladder cage leading to a lower rooflet. Once down on it, I see a nice route down accross this roof and that of the other orange building. I move over some rails and gravel, climb down a pipe and head back to my alley.
After that it's smooth sailing; head back home, hop the wall, enter through window, check my 6, close window, undress and sleep.
Kinda boring op, not used to the suburban setting yet. I understand the dog problem now.
Lessons learned: No one is out at night around there.
Gravel is still the suck.
Cats and bats are good at startling you at night.
Gear-
Black Chinese drawstring pants
Brown t-shirt
Black Bandanna
Red filtered L-neck military flash light
Black water shoes
(Excuse any typos or anything like that, google image search French Keyboard)
I prepared my gear, hit the lights, got dressed and took a listening break to make sure no one in the house was awake (including the cute, but annoying dogs). Satisfied that I was the only awake person in the house I crouch on the window sill and observe making sure that no one will see my escape; I was overly cautios due to the fact that I wasn't in my hometown, wasn't being an opportunist and that I didn't like hearing a ton of dogs bark earlier in the week while walking the dogs.
I'm just being paranoid though, I hop out the window, wait two seconds, crouch walk to the wall that surrounds the house, peek over it, note the empty but lit street and hop over with a wall run. I walk down the empty street until I hit a dark, alley with lots of plants in it that I choose as my route from previous scouting earlier that night.
The alley is uneventful, loud (gravel) and thus stressful. I reach the end and make my way to the center of town rather uneventfully, the whole place is empty the only thing out at this hour is stray cats, not so stray cats and two random guys hanging with a stray dog. Once at the middle of town I do some precision jumps and parkour then head back towards the alley, the two guys ask me if I have any cigs, which I don't. As I approach the alley I decide to visit the graveyard in town which is pretty interesting because all the graves are in small mausoleums.
On my way to the graveyard a car rolls by and I jog behind a gate to stay invisible, once it's gone I climb into the graveyard, it's elevated but has no gate on one side. I'm pissed that the ground is gravel, and move slowly. I sneak around and decide it's time for some stealth parkour to spice things up. The mausoleums are close to each other and on cement (which is much quieter than gravel :) ), so I move around on top of them, crouch running, QMing, and of course jumping. As I'm hanging out on top of one in the cover of an overhanging tree a sound freaks me out, it flits by a few times before I realize it's a bat. I move along the top of the mausoleums towards the side of the graveyard that I came in from after jumping around a bit, lower myself to the ground and drop out of it. I've decided to hit up one more place before turning in.
I walk towards a large grey building with lower orange buildings on either side. I want to climb up the front, which looks like a ladder stretched out horizontally, it's ridiculously exposed to the street and a bunch of light, so I climb up a small building on the side first. I'm happily assisted by a window covered by horizontal bars. Once up I get on my belly because I know there are tents full of (hopefully) sleeping campers on the other side. The other reason I'm on my belly is... Gravel, again... I creep to the edge, see that no light is coming from any tents and everyone seems to be asleep except what sounds like a sneezing girl. As I make myway back along the roof in crouch walk, I notice that there is another window and it's covered in horizontal bars that shoul keep me out, but actually just help me roof the grey building.
I'm going to let you guess what this roof is covered with (hint: it starts with g and ends with ravel). I QM and sideways walk along this one until I find a ladder cage leading to a lower rooflet. Once down on it, I see a nice route down accross this roof and that of the other orange building. I move over some rails and gravel, climb down a pipe and head back to my alley.
After that it's smooth sailing; head back home, hop the wall, enter through window, check my 6, close window, undress and sleep.
Kinda boring op, not used to the suburban setting yet. I understand the dog problem now.
Lessons learned: No one is out at night around there.
Gravel is still the suck.
Cats and bats are good at startling you at night.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
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.
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.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
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.
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.
Friday, July 17, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
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.
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