Erie Parkour

By Robert Cooper AKA BelasVinn

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

As EriePK’s first move against the ignorance in the world–and way more particularly, in Erie–we held our first official group meet, which we had decided previously to mix with the Leave No Trace Initiative. Members Josh, Pat ‘Kirbz’ Bodendorfer, and myself, Robert Cooper; and Kirbz’s younger sister were, sadly, the only four that could make it with limited or short notice. Arriving at a local school–Grover Cleveland School–from Tae Kwon Do, at 7:00 PM, Kirbz and I started off with a quick walk to our favorite spot around the school, then realized that it would be easier to get started picking up than to train and have to rush the clean before going home.

We made our jokes about how horrid the students must be as we shoveled, swept and bagged the trash on our way back around. At about the mid-point of this, Josh spotted us from where he’d been waiting for about five minutes and started to help. A small group of the students sat and watched, occasionally commenting on what they evidently thought was an unbelievable–and very likely stupid–effort.

The ending point for the Leave No Trace part of our meeting was when we got to the garbage dumpster. Not that we threw away the trash quite yet. First, we had to clean a basement entrance stairwell. At the bottom of this stairwell was a discarded Macintosh computer and a thick layer of old cans, bottles, and candy wrappers, which had–by the smell–been urinated on at least once. Pat and myself ventured into the pit, crammed as much would fit into the bag, picked up the computer, and fled–finally getting rid of everything in the dumpster. After that, we got to practicing. Each of us–save for the sister–tried our hands at upward wall-running and shimmies.

Josh then took off for home, and the remaining three of us continued on. We drilled two-foot takeoff precision jumps, tested some other miscellany, then decided to leave before it began to storm, at around 8:00 PM.

Maybe next time, we won’t need to clean, and we can just feel dirty by training, rather than by picking up pee-covered trash.