Sunday 1 Nov

Attended the training session on sunday. It was great fun. Talked to a few other participants, trained and took notes and photos. I've got a good direction for the first comic - I recon' I'm gonna start at the end, with the strength and conditioning. I'll be working out the pencils this week, wherever I find a moment to take from work. Everyone at parkour is great, and its easy to feel part of a common clan in training. Non-competitive challenge is the best kind.

I put off transcribing the notes until this morning, in doing so I relived a moment of prosecution from a random bystander that I think is worth including here:

A notable incident occurred in training: during the balancing segment of our lesson – on the north-east side of the Myer music bowl. As we started walking the ropes, an older guy (in his 50’s?) dressed in a t-shirt, shorts and a red hat began yelling at the whole group while keeping a solid distance from us. Without any apparent interest in our activity, he demanded that we “Get down from there!” The trainers seemed only a little ruffled and told us to simply ignore him and continue our training. We ignored him as he circled the group -- always at a distance – getting progressively irritated with our lack of response. The only brief response he received was after he threatened to “report this”, it came from one of the instructors, who told him to go ahead and do so, before turning back to the class.

Ten minutes later a park-ranger jeep pulled up and for a short period of time stood at a distance. Some of the younger class participants seemed a bit worried as a ranger in his mid-twenties stepped out of his jeep. The instructors went to meet him, but before they had a chance to say a word he told us that “he though it was you parkour guys.” The ranger was obviously unbothered by our activities. He intercepted the instructor’s explanations by making it clear that it was all-OK with him. He had received a complaint, which he said was framed in the context of a concern for our personal safety, but having seen that we were organised, and what we were doing, he was quite happy to have us carry on. He also pointed out that security cameras monitored the aria and that the music bowl had its own security staff – since they hadn’t told us to move on, he saw no reason to do so.

As the instructors returned to the class I stuck around to talk to the ranger. He seemed embarrassed to have disturbed us. As an excuse he said that sometimes the “emos” get drunk in the park and had it been them climbing around he would have told them to move on. He also commented that parkour “looked like fun” and that “he’d like to give it a go sometime” before leaving us to train.
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Looks like it happens to everyone. I must say I find this fascinating. What prompts people to react like that? Is it really a concern for our safety? I'm not entirely convinced. Might ask around on the forum, and later, in person to see how many others have had similar experiences.

Training notes: Started jogging in the mornings, gotta improve my stamina. Still doing regular night runs.