Thanksgiving

I ate a lot of food...

Carmel cookies from Amsterdam are irresistible. Once I finish the last bag I should be good.

New LyfeStile

Inspired not only from the music by Jason Mraz, but also his outlook on life. Finding out more and more about his lifestyle and way of living on this planet has made me want to make a change on how I interact with this earth.
Reading his journal on, www.jasonmraz.com, and I came across the Repair Manifesto. This is quite simply some guidelines to start repairing things rather than throwing them away or replacing them. This helps open up your imagination to see how creative you can be when it comes to reusing different items.
My friend Frosti always talks away saving the world, well this is my beginning to help follow him in his crusade.

Everybody Wants to Rule the World

This is still my favorite song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK9O30d_yiE

Born to Run

After finishing the book "Born to Run" by Christopher McDougall, I have a new outlook on life, training, and running. One of the main principles talked about in the book is running for fun. It's very important to find enjoyment in what you do.
The Tarahumara tribe are called the Running People because they can get up and run miles and miles and miles. Ultra-marathon miles. Now after just watching a marathon in Washington D.C. and seeing way to many bloody nipples, I have no desire to run long distances. But after reading this book and how the author touches on barefoot running and the vibram five fingers I am inspired to slip on my five toed shoes and run, play, and train parkour. Tarahumara live on simple diets consisting vegetables, pinole and chia, all of which I would like to adopt. They eat and live to always be ready to go. I feel many athletes who practice parkour look for this same way of living. To be strong and useful at any given notice. You could almost say the Tarahumara are ninjas..... running ninjas.
I highly recommend this book if you have ever ran in your life and I know you have, because we are all born to run.

Rain of the day

Every time I have been to NY it has rained. Not a big fan of this weather.
On a better note, Rich and I robbed a jewelry store today. I jumped through a demolished wall and began to lute the place as Rich held our hostages at gun point. Fun day at work.
Anybody interested in a 20k necklace or ring? We'll cut you a good deal.

New York, New York

I find myself back in the big apple working on another film called "The Other Guys". This time I am lucky enough to be working with two of my teammates, Victor Lopez and Rich King, as we freerun through the streets of New York. The east coast is a fun place to work for two reasons, 1) grew up on the east and have a lot of friends that still live out here and 2) I get to see Melanie.
This time of year New York is a little cold which is never fun, but as long as it doesn't rain as much as it did last time I was here then it should be all good. It's great to be working.

Mastering Lemons

I am on the 5th day of the Master Cleanse (aka Lemonade Diet) and it is going pretty well. The key for me is to lose the desire to chew food. You can drink as much lemonade as you want so you are never hungry. And the lemonade actually tastes really good. My goal is to lose 10lbs. I'm half way there.

New Brother

I managed to pick up a new brother over the weekend. My sister and her now husband were married in Gloucester, VA on 9/19/09. Easy date to remember. Autumn Darnell is now Autumn Shrock. She picked up a good man and I am very happy for her. The wedding went great, she looked beautiful and everyone had a great time.

Ninja Warrior

Today was the second day of qualifiers for the Ninja Warrior. A huge Sasuke like course was set up in a parking lot where people from all over the US were able to try out the course. Today was my turn to try out the course along with my teammates Luci Steel, Gabe Nunez, Caine Sinclair, NoSole and my buddy William Spencer.
Running through an obstacle course is a lot of fun. It's a big kid's playground. Everyone on Tempest did great. Next stop..... Japan????

The playground begins...

Every since I moved to California I have been wanting to get a house with a yard so I could have some space and now I have a house and some space. First addition to my backyard playground is a $100 round 14ft trampoline that I bought of craigslist (which is quite possibly one of the best websites ever). Until my teammates and I are able to build/buy/create our own freerunning gym, my backyard is just going to have to do. Come stop by for a bounce.

SWEDEN!

My freerunning adventure has landed me in Sweden. From a national gathering in Colorado, to the World Championships in London, then all the way to Sweden for the Red Bull Art of Motion. Freerunning, it takes you places.
I'm with my team up in Helsingborg, Sweden where the stage for the comp is located in the stairs of a castle (pretty epic). We have been here for a week, hanging out with the guys from team Air-Wipp.com. Red Bull knows how to treat their athletes. They hooked us up with a 3 bdrm apartment just two small blocks away from the areana. The event is scheduled for tomorrow night where I will be sitting on a tower along with 4 other judges watching the competition. Judging is a lot easier on the body, but very difficulty with the level of talent that will be competing. Will it be the bulgarian? or the swedes with the home court advantage? maybe the strength of the UK? or a little nugget from USA?
It's going to be a fun event to watch. Make sure to search for all the youtube clips.

http://www.redbullartofmotion.se/

Vegas

I finally experienced Vegas. A crazy town that never sleeps where you can entertain yourself for days. From 80oz guitar drinks to $100 bets on black, you find yourself stumbling through casinos and hotels in a drunken high. Sleep is overrated and seldom got. I mean who wants to spend their precious hours laying down with their eyes closed when you only have 72hrs of Vegas fun to experience. I definitely want to go back and back and back. I just might need 2 to 3 months to recover after each visit.

The NEW Shag Palace

Finally the time has come for an upgrade. Victor, Oj and I have moved into a huge house in North Hills, CA. We have so much space we don't know what to do with it. This two story valley house comes with enough closets for a whole school of 6th graders to play 7mins in heaven.
First time having some yard space since living in California, we are sure to make the best of it. Already we are planning our mini-parkour playground that we want to build in our backyard.

Swedish fish

Skinner from Team Air Wipp has been staying with me over the past week. We've been hitting the streets of LA training, partying and making videos. Skinner's such an easy going guy who is down for anything. Tomorrow is the goldfish tradition. It's about time we officially make Skinner apart of the Tempest family.
Training has been going well. Oj and McLovin are laying down some solid tricks in prep for Red Bull. I've been in the gym working on my twisting. Tweeked my right knee at a jam this weekend, but determined to keep training.
Music is a plus. I've been listening to a play list my friend back east made for me each day and I can't get enough of. Good songs bring you back to certain parts in your life and where you want to be. Now it's my time to make a little musical compilation. I have the perfect mix in mind to put together.

Hitting the wall

Today was a good day. Way too hot. Apparently it was a recorder breaking high today so you could say it was a little hot. The highlights of the day was getting a call from Nitro Circus which is the sickest show on tv right now. Those guys are so talently crazy you want to watch them do everything. Travis Pastrana and his crew are ridiculous. They go full out on every extreme sport and crazy idea they can think of. The call was about having Tempest come out to show Nitro Circus how to freerun! It would be so sick to get on that show. Fingers crossed.
The other highlight of the day was a nice little training session by the LA river. I found a sloped dirt bank to practice wall flips. Today was my first day trying wall flips since my knee surgery. My technique was a little off, but my knee held up and I felt great. Looking forward to getting back to inverted wall tricks. It's a great feeling flipping off a wall. The progression continues...

Crunch time

Blogs always start off with good intent and then they become stale and forgotten. Mine has fallen into that demise. Let's see if I can't get back on track.
My knee has healed better than I thought it was going to. Most of the pain is gone and I have a good range of motion which has lead to more training. The team and I have been training for the Red Bull competition coming up at the end of May. Every one is stoked to go to Vienna. Training hard in the gym learning new tricks, training outside and conditioning with Crossfit. Mike at Valley Crossfit has been working with us to make us stronger than we could be with our own training. The comp is less than four weeks away so now it's crunch time.

UCLA secret spot

I was out training the other day with McLovin at UCLA and we happened to stumble upon a dirt path we decided to follow. It lead us into a whole other area of UCLA that is filled with fun walls, railings, and edges to play on. It's the new secret spot at UCLA. I'm taking William Spencer and Oj there to train tomorrow. Man, it feels good to be back jumping around. My knee is still a little stiff and I have sharp pain we I do a deep squat, but I can jump! My right leg is significantly smaller and weaker than my left. I plan on training hard and eating right to build it back up.

Second day of training

I have been putting my knee to the test over the past two days and things have been going well. It's not back up to 100% yet or as strong as it was, but I can run and jump! Training right now is slow, but I can do just about all the conditioning exercises. Next week I'm going to start yoga back up. It feels good getting back into the groove of things.

Livewire's new video is out. Very big inspiration for me. He went threw a similar surgery on BOTH knees and now he can do this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z40Hy8F7Md8

On the mend

Starting my 4th week out of surgery and I'm close to full range of motion back in my right knee. Physical therapy had been going well. They have given me a bunch of daily exercises to help get up running and jumping very soon. Looking forward to making a new freerunning video. It's been tooooooo long.

Thank you LYNDA

I have been watching Final Cut Tutorials for the past couple of days from this site called www.LYNDA.com. I've been meaning to get better at editing and these tutorials have been helping me out a lot. I just finished up the Essentials of Final Cut editing and now I moving on to the effects part. Computers are amazing things. Maybe I should start working toward 10,000 hrs, then I could become a computer expert and rule the world!! Na, I'll stick to freerunning.

Outliers, 10,000 hours

I just finished reading OUTLIERS by Malcolm Gladwell and enjoyed it as much as his other book titled BLINK. Malcolm has a great factual style of writing that is easy to follow. Each of his books that I have read really make me think about the topics and make me want to share them with my friends. You know it's a good book if you can't stop talking to your friends about it. OUTLIERS dealt with people who were very successful. Malcolm breaks each person's story down to how they were able to achieve the level of success they achieved. And what you find out is that these people were at the right place at the right time. Given certain circumstances it was hard for them not to succeed. These people are special in there determination and perseverance, but without certain occurrences and the right timing they could have been completely different people. Not to say that isn't true for most people, but Malcolm goes into detail to point it out for the stories he chose to describe.
One part in the book talks about becoming an expert in something requires 10,000 hrs of practice. Once musicians have reached that expert level they have had nearly 10,000 hours of practice. He found that to be true among musicians and programmers. I want to apply that to my training. I want to start logging my training in a way that I can add the total number of hours I train in freerunning and parkour. My goal is to reach the 10,000 hour mark in my lifetime. I'm sure I have a few hundred hours under my belt already. 3hrs of gymnastics practice 4 to 5 days a week for 4 years definitely adds up. All in all it will help me log my training and become more proficient in my all my techniques.

Time to BLOG!

When you can't walk on two legs you really have to rely on your surroundings, mainly FRIENDS. Everyone has been great to help me as my knee recovers. Bada-bing bada-boom! Time to start a blog!
This is my first entry. I just remade my personal website using iWeb. I wanted to make a plain and simple website that is easy to update where I can put up my photos and videos. Let's see how it works.
-PD