Rendezvous II (English version)

London, city of dreams for traceurs.I tried to convince everybody to join me at this trip but only Pedro Gomes, Sérgio Mota and Bruce Rainha, Cnc, Kaoz and Hefaestus, for the more distracted.. We arrived to London at mid-night.It was our intention to stay the night at the airport because the hotel was only open at 07:00 but mr. Guilherme Costa had a brilliant idea due to boredoom. We follow this young and stupid man and we went to London in the latest bus, it was 01:20 when we arrived. Vitoria Station was huge, but closed. We fallowed the advice of Alex (Element4life) and went to Waterloo, because we didn’t knew anything about that place we toke a cab, that we end up to be iligal and charge us “very well”. We arrived to waterloo and the wellknown parkour spot Imax just got invisible and we missed it. We went to Londoneye park. Beautiful place i must say. I child’s park made the perfect place for our needs, having a bag with 9 kilos in your shoulder wasn’t enough for conditioning. Mainly to stay warm trough the night. Those 9 kilos were felted when we had to take offf because a drunk “gang” was arriving. We saw with curiosity one of the spots showned in Pkmv clips, but we dind’t go there because it was too dark. The museam of Dali was a good place for a temporary shelter but we had to find a better one. Vitoria Station was the target and, by foot we arrived ( remember the cab?). The Parcour (J) was filled with fun spots where i did my first 7 feet monkey to precision behind the Big Ben. It was amazing, really funny until the police arrived and give the sign to piss off. That was the first of many.

We arrived to Vitoria and it was already open, it was 06:00. We were totally broken, anger and thirst was the main concern. We found out that in there and everywere in London you have to pay to go to wc. Kaoz had pringles, we eat them up. We waited for the tube and, go to Stockwell. There we found ourselfs a bit lost, but we did found the hotel and was not a big trouble. The bags had found a place to rest.. We rest until nine o’clock, when we decided to go out and explore London at day light and, go meet Alex in Vitoria. Found our way trough the tube we get to Royal Oak at ease. We found a very famous skate park showed at one of Daniel Ilabaca ‘s vídeos. Great spot. We found Phily Dee training alone, right there i saw repetion in a large scale. Liked it. The kid has a great movement. In that moment i lost a mith. Blane and other caracters that were to me idols with there planches (muscle ups), were now distroyed. Those walls where bubble gum, I climbed a wall much bigger then myself in pop to monkey easily and did a catleap and a wallrun at a same time with not much trouble. The planche were easy and incredible fast, even kaoz, that until this trip was complaning about his was incredible surprised. With those walls, was easy. I have found some time to talk with some “authorities” in Parkour.

When i was playing with some bars, has usual, finding new forms of movement, a bit far away, was Daniel Ilabaca, he came close and meet me and saluted me. I found myself smiling. Kaoz told me after in the event that saw him doing my sequence. I found myself smiling again.

It was time to get in. I was already tired, a long night and this train make me sweat.

The only one that was still all this time and now was full off energy and jumping like a little rabbit was Bruce. We get in and we saw a magnificent gym (I never trained before in one). I must say that mr. Vigroux dressed up in the women locker-room and William Belle get in in ours and just stair at me and quickly apolagised and run out.Beasts of Parkour. From our group I was the one that had more “strong body parts”, and still were ashamed.. Only beasts! The mith of Simsm ( a Portuguese traceur ) is nothing, i already trained with him and he’s nothing compared to the guys i saw in there. Bahhh. Blane, Ilabaca, vigroux, Yahn...all of them were huge!

After the “brief” wam-up running outside, down and up the stairs, we did a séries of monkey walk and jumping exercices, wich take literally my breath away. I never thought about quiting our giving up. Even being almost dead due to night before, i did my best!

In the last exercice i just fell down, surrended. I had never felt like this, so weak.Then i saw reality, i am weak. But still, it wasn’t anyone that called that “easy” and everybody were giving their best to stay alive and giving our ultimate strength, the human heat was surprising in the huge gym. Some guy take their t-shirts of and then I saw how weak I was. What beasts!
Then, the obstacles course arrived. I found my spot at group number one, with the resto f the Portuguese. The first was a course with line obstacules that we had to jump one by one. I repeted the exercice ten times. I was crumbling and evend a side-walk i coundn’t jump when i finished. Kaoz just didn’t gave up. I like that. I sit near the water.

The second one was a bit more elaborated. It was made by an obstacle that you could vault, then a tic-tac in the wall and another vault and was finished by a gap fallowed by a cat leap. Very funny. I was amazed by the flow demonstrated by Bruce. I learned to do catleaps with one arm (with the two ). Aprendi. Laurent became useful to me and another guy that i don’t the name sorry.

The thirth course was a scaffolding very funny but i didn’t get very well in this part, it was a new thing to me that kind of movement. Bruce received a round of applause. I did like those movements, with precision and very fast execution. The forth was in the same plateform but the beginning was in the other side. Here I did better, but my strength was in a low level and the repetitions were few. Pedro did a monkey to precision that few attempted to do. The fifth was in another platform and Châu teach us how to do a wallspin and palmspin with different hands. Underbars were cool, but i didn’t get one movement that was like a spin in a bar, I called it gay, forgetting that that was English. I gave that my personal touch and became fun, I liked it. I did my first diving roll trough a underbar and went perfect. The movements for all Portuguese were nice, Bruce had a symphony playing for him, I’m still laughing about that.
After that we went outside, and we did monkey balance until we fell down, without strength.
Passe muraille in big quantities that fallowed i couldn’t complete. Now the “kink” in my muscles were too hard, too painful.
Forrest insists, look like troop. After this was the final Run, that was doing real Parkour trough the hole gym.

The first time was a mess, because everybody wanted to do big thing, and just slow too much to ritm and just make traffic. When was my second turn to begin and i already done my first monkey Châu told me to stop and Vigroux said to everybody to be fast and efficient, without stops. He asked me if I could do that, I answer that I would try. I tried and the thing didn’t get much worse. At the second lap i was more dead then alive. Yhan said to me “wow” at the thirth obstacule and Julie Angel started filming me and, just seconds after that I was in the floor smiling, because I fell down doing a mnonkey due to my lack of strength… I was dead. I stop and just sit near water.
Then, was the relaxation moment, in witch i was almost fallen a sleep, but the pain just kept me awaken. After that, stretching, it was so painful… the night before was now screeming, even Laurent and Châu laugh because my face was now translating my pain.
After that, answers, important one’s they were. It was the most inspiring thing i had witness that day. “Why to you pratice?” That was a really easy answer in times, but now, because who did the question, made it somehow different, important, and with another meaning. It was beautiful.

A hug to everybody I knew and to everybody I didn’t.

;-)