The big news from tonight’s game isn’t the win however. We had some goal tender issues and played the first 4 minutes of the game with 6 players and no goalie. Thankfully we were able to do a pretty good job on both the scoring and defensive fronts and the score was a respectable 2 to 2 when the goalie finally took the ice. The rest of the game was played with the inexperienced backup tender and thankfully due to great defensive play only 2 further goals were scored; surprisingly, to all involved, none of them were bad goals either. Oh ya and did I mention that I was that backup goal tender?

My first ever experience goal tending. I have to say that it was a lot of fun, I really enjoy the game of hockey no matter where I play but I wasn’t sure if this would also be true of goal. I have much more respect now for the position as it was a lot harder than I expected it to be. Staying in your crease and knowing where the posts are is really difficult. The equipment is also very heavy and it is exhausting just picking it up and putting it down during the course of the game. Holding the stick was also a challenge since your grip is totally different, it is essentially impossible to stick handle and shoot without a very steep learning curve and a ton of practice. Anyway, through some combination of luck, flailing, and luck I managed to do a fairly respectable job but for sure it didn’t look pretty. I’m glad no one was taping the game that’s for sure.

One more item completed on the check list of life. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for future instalments of “What random thing did Adam do today…”

The tournament was sponsored by Black Knight squash who allowed the participants to test out a variety of racquets during their matches. I tested the Magnum M140 and the C2C Red models (C2C Red isn’t listed on their website since it is so new). I enjoyed the C2C Red very much and played two matches with it. The Magnum has a very large head which I found a bit awkward to play with but is great for beginners since it has a very large sweet spot. Both racquets are way out of my price range though at around two hundred each.

In my first game I played a guy named Andrew and won: 9-5 6-9 7-9. It was a good match and a great start to the day. He was quite quick and was able to get to many shots I didn’t expect him to however he didn’t make very many winner shots and won a lot of points through my unforced errors.

My second game was against a guy named Wenjin who was a very strong intermediate player. I lost the match but maintain that it would have been a lot closer if my endurance was better: 7-9 10-8 9-4. He was also very fast and was able to make some great winner shots. Early in the last game we had a long rally which pushed me over the edge into exhaustion. I had nothing left and everything I was able to run down I put into the tin.

The last game of the day was against Walid who is new to the intermediate division so I won: 6-9 1-9 7-9. The last match was a best of five where the previous games were best of three. Winning this match put me in third place overall which I was pretty happy about. Wenjin came in second and another guy I didn’t play was first.

After testing out a racquet players filled out a survey and were then entered in a draw for a new racquet. At the end of the day Walid won the racquet which I figure was worth around eighty to one hundred dollars. I was a bit jealous since I badly needed that new racquet as anyone who has seen my current racquet can attest to. Since the tournament I’ve purchased a new Dunlop racquet which I love, expect a post with some pictures soon.

Next term I am going to be participating in the squash league at the intermediate level with that hope that by the winter term I can move up to advanced. I really need to work on my finesse game as that is where I am currently lacking. See you on the courts.

1. find random interesting topic serendipitously (generally while away from a computer)
2. think over the idea to expand it and test its viability for becoming a post
3. sit at the computer and turn idea to prose (if I do say so myself; god the ego)
4. relentlessly edit content for form and style
5. post

So as you can see there are a number of weak links in the chain that delay blogging despite my best intentions. Thankfully with work and exercise the chain is shorter: find time, do it. I’ve mentioned before that I started playing hockey again. Our winter season is now over and we have to wait a month or so before the summer season kicks off. We ended up doing quite well in league play, finishing fifth out of around thirty teams. Unfortunately, we were put out first round in the playoffs by a team that had a fair number of extremely strong players. We played well, kept ourselves in it and I was proud of our effort.

This season of hockey has shown me two truths about myself. The first is that I am badly out of shape when it comes to short burst stamina. This problem essentially puts me out of the game after the first period. I am trying to work on it by doing sprints in a nearby field but getting myself out of the house is problematic. The second truth is that my hockey skills are very rusty. I am currently playing defense which I was quite good at in high school about ten years ago. Time has taken its toll and my skills are all equally weakened from stick handling to skating and from heads up play to knowing my position. Campus Recreation is offering a hockey skills course this summer and I am planning on taking it. The first course is focused on individual skills and the second (running in the fall) will focus on team skills. I am planning on taking both and hopefully will bring my play up so as to not let my team down in the seasons to come.

The title of this post mentioned an expansion of activities and I will get to that presently. I’ve covered the topic of Parkour several times on this blog and now that it is summer again I will be joining my friends in and around campus once more. However, squash is actually the latest thing that I wanted to mention. A few weeks back a friend lost his partner to an ankle injury which he happened to bring up one day to me. I used to play a bit at Brock but hadn’t in quite a while — even though I have my own racquet and balls — so I offered to partner with him until his regular guy healed. I love squash, so once I started again it was all over. I was recounting how much I love squash at the office and found two more partners. Sergey who I’ve now played five or six times and Mike Iley who I’ll be playing for the first time next week.

This summer is shaping up to be a very active one. I am hopeful that this will be what I need to push my weight loss past its current stall and take me down to my target of two-hundred pounds. What are your summer exercise plans?

After tonights game it looks like I am destined to be our teams goon. I swear that it is not because I am trying to be, honest! Body contact is not allowed in the league and is cause for a penalty when it occurs. The campus rec league is made up of players of all shapes, sizes, ages and skill levels. I am a big guy. You do the math.

Tonight I received three penalties: Body Contact, Tripping, and Body Contact. The tripping was definitely a good call, I was being lazy. However, those contact penalties were a joke and the ref knew it. The problem is that I am solid on my skates so if I come in for the puck against a smaller player chances are they are going to fall, and they did. Some of these players could come at me standing still and they would fall, and I would go to the box.

I am taking this as I sign that I need to work on my finesse.

So far the Screaming Donkeys are 3-0. I scored a goal in my first game last week so I am pretty happy. Our goalie, Sean Jackson, is playing amazing and the group of guys are really great. Soon we will be receiving our new shirts too, they are going to be nice.

At least a few times each winter I think back to playing hockey and am reminded anew how much I miss it. This year, just before Christmas break, I found out that a few current and former staff members play hockey in the UW Campus Rec program. I was immediately interested. Thankfully, they asked if I wanted to join up so I’ve been waiting anxiously for my first game. The teams first game was the same night that I had tickets for The Hour so I had to miss it but the guys pulled off a win. We are called The Screaming Donkeys.

Today I went to Canadian Tire and had my skates sharpened. I also bought stick tape and a new helmet since mine was old and a little broken. You can see it pictured above and clicking it will show you my hockey bag as exciting as that may or, more likely, may-not be. I have a feeling that I am going to make a fool of myself since I am really out of shape and my equipment is a bit snug but I’m looking forward to it anyway. Wish me luck :o)

First off I only recognize Sebastian Foucan who plays Molaka in the new movie Casino Royale (my review), if you can help identify more post a comment. Foucan has been working with Madonna quite a bit on this last album. I have seen videos of him on stage with her during the tour and he is also in another previous music video called Hung Up. He is taking Free-Running to the masses using multiple media.

As far as Parkour is concerned the video starts off pretty well. We see several young men in a city environment. The camera takes in the sweeping urban vistas which of course include 5-15 story roofs on which the guys are jumping; pretty standard in the media treatment of Parkour. The guys start jumping and the video kicks off to the beat of Madonna’s “dance”. The first major event of note is a rather large Tic-Tac-Drop at 0:20s. “Nice!” I verbalized upon first watching it, I was hooked, “I wonder other Parkour they will include?”.

The beat picks up and we see Foucan do an underbar on an Asian archway followed by a jump over a rail and then a drop down stairs. The scenes are all disconnected with widely varying camera positions so it doesn’t really flow that well. I think they actually wanted your focus on the Karate Kid head band instead. We then hit a pointless pole climb/dismount by a guy wearing very anime ninja styled pants and footwear. The chorus then comes in and we move through a few more jumps from height and almost miss a crazy underbar along the ground at 0:55s that I have now watched about 15 times. I can’t imagine he made it back to his feet afterwards. After this it is pretty much downhill into the Free-Running zone. Some of the notable things include: ariel drops, pointless tic-tacs, break-dancing on a car, back-flips, a front-flip, etc.

By the half way point of the video my knees started to twinge in sympathy. Check out 1:36s, 1:45s and especially 1:49s, ouch. Essentially Madonna is capitalizing on the cool factor of the guys jumping as most scenes are only quick clips of the first half of a jump. Even given all of this I can vouch for the effectiveness of video. I immediately wanted to get out and run. Music and exercise are becoming tighter and tighter as hardware vendors and marketing firms turn their full attention to pair. The Nike+ system I mention previously is a good indication of that. I think I am going to add this track to my MP3 player.

The iPod is becoming pretty ubiquitous for those that can afford it. Many companies have realized this and are starting to bring out devices that attach their brand onto the iPod. Nike+ is one such device. Nike realizes that music is as important to us as their shoe and clothing products so they are trying to utilize music to improve sales. To participate you will need an iPod, the Nike+ sport kit and Nike+ ready shoes. The sport kit comes with an insert that goes into the Nike+ ready shoes to monitor your footfalls. There is also a connector for your iPod that wirelessly receives data and can give you updates on your progress (via voice over). When you finish your run you plug the iPod into the computer and your run data is uploaded to the Nike site. The site tracks your runs over time so you can see your progress and the stats from each individual run historically.

It certainly is very similar to making the number on the pedometer go up but at a much higher technology level. I would love to get my hands on this stuff to test it out but it is too much $$ for me; maybe next summer. I would be curious about the longevity of the shoe insert, putting technology in such a high stress location is bound to be problematic. Combining music and the cool factor of this device would certainly get me out running more often. Does anybody have this? I’d like to hear what you think of them.

“No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.”

I love movies and have since I was about 16 when I first started plowing my way through the extensive collection of my girlfriends family. They had over a hundred titles in almost every genre but to me the Bond movies were my stand out favorites. I even went so far as to borrow the entire set and watch them marathon style. (Just to get this out of the way, Sean Connery is the best Bond.) Ever since those days I have been a frequent flyer at Blockbuster and Rogers Video watching a lot of the old stuff and of course the new as it arrived. I’ve reveled in Comedy, Drama and especially Action. I’ve dabbled in Foreign, preferring the Asian masterpieces such as Seven Samurai or The Emperor and the Assassin (by the way if you can afford it you should really have the Kurosawa set in your collection). While my favorite movies are inconsistent in genre the Action packed Bond series are an easy pick. Everything from the cool gadgets and cars to the insane villains and suggestively named women are great to watch. Most people would have to agree there are some low points in the series like George Lazenby and Timothy Dalton combined three movies and (the most heart breaking) the recent three offerings from Pierce Brosnan. I loved the return to force that was GoldenEye but the follow-ups are terrible.

Quite a few months ago now I heard rumors of Parkour being used in a movie and more specifically that a few of the more prolific free-runners were going to be in it. I then found out that the movie was going to be the next Bond movie and was going to star Daniel Craig, who? I ran out and rented Layer Cake since the Internet recommended that as his most impressive work and was blown away by the dark grittiness of his character and personality. I no longer had any problem that he wasn’t Dark and Handsome (as are the cries from the peanut gallery currently) and started counting the days until November 17th. It has now come and gone and I still haven’t gone to see it, but I will be once I get paid. Stupid theater charges and arm and a leg for a ticket these days all in the name of piracy. I can’t wait! Only a few more days!

For now I have started working the classics (that I have on VHS) into my viewing rotation. Queue the Bond theme!

You know you want the entire set!! Stupid thing is you have to buy it in a hundred pieces, well 4 but still.

It is always interesting to see all the first years and their parents. It seems that the parents are attempting to control their kids lives to a later stage and it seems like the kids are letting them. I’ve read an article or two that speaks to the same findings. Parents are calling up universities in droves trying to do all the work for their kids education that for certain the kid should be doing themselves. Also is it just me or do parents get angry really fast if things don’t go the way the want? “Do you know your sons student number?” “NO!, Why the F*** would I know that!” “We need it to bring up his information” “**grumble**, **swear**” (Under breath)”You son might know it if you let him talk.” Sigh. The last two years everything has gone so smoothly its scary. We have techs just sitting around waiting for something to do.

The return of fall means the return of the Parkour scene to Waterloo. It was also going in the summer but for some reason I was pretty lazy and didn’t get out much. This year we will have a whole new set of frosh joining us and learning, it should be a lot of fun. If your interested keep an eye on the forums on pkto in the Guelph/Waterloo section for meet times and locations.

My overall confidence has improved greatly and I am now able to execute the fundamentals with an average level of skill. Confidence is something that I grew through success and by taking only small leaps forward. The tenets of parkour dictate that safety is first and with that in mind it is easy to be a traceur no matter what your current level of athleticism or your weight. Just as muscle grows with use so to does confidence.

Physically I am much stronger than last summer due to my training regime. When I first started my friend had me attempt to do a wall climb and then pull myself up onto the roof. I was able to do the wall run and grasp the ledge but I could not lift my weight over onto the roof. Today I am able to climb up both with and without using my feet although it is not pretty to watch yet. I am going to be going in for another fitness test at my gym in the next few weeks to measure my progress. Initially I had about 28-29% body fat, two months later it was 25% and I am curious what the figure is going to be now three and a half months later.

As soon as I am able I will post pictures and video of myself to give you an idea of what parkour is and why I would put so much effort into it. For now I’ll just say that none of the minor injuries have slowed me down and I foresee myself continuing as a traceur as long as I am physically able. Good night and good luck.