Slackline in the park

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 in: News, Travel

Working with yo-yo world champions can be tough at times for a beginner like me. I can do some basic tricks but I don’t have nearly the experience or vocabulary to “hang” with the masters, so I sometimes feel foolish taking my own yo-yo out to practice when I’m out with them. Of course, they’re still very encouraging, but I am totally outclassed.

So when they express an interest in something I’m pretty good at, I’m glad to return the favor and be the sage for a change. I brought my slackline with me from the states. I decided that although it’s a little bulky and heavy, I couldn’t go without it for so long, and there are too many awesome places to slackline around the world, why should I forfeit those opportunities? Some of my coworkers and their friends have already checked out some of my videos and want to try it for themselves, so we decided to find a good spot.

Back home, just about any park would do; decent trees and potential anchors aren’t hard to find. In Japan, things are a little tricker. The park layout is different, generally much more controlled, and so the trees will usually border the park itself, and aren’t really suitable as slackline anchors. We took a virtual drive around the neighborhood in google street view, looking for spots with some potential, and settled on an unnamed park a kilometer south of the office.

We found some suitable trees and set up the line, but they were too close together to get a decent amount of bounce, so I moved it to another pair of trees almost twice the distance apart. Much more suitable this time around, the only drawback was a rather uneven landing, halfway over a cement walkway. Oh well, beggars can’t be choosers. Just don’t eat it too badly!

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VORDByS8oMo

The guys soon learned that slackline isn’t quite as easy as it looks, but I assured them that with practice they would improve. They actually made remarkable progress, making several unaided steps by the time we tore the line down. We attracted quite a crowd, mostly kids who came to the park to play. A lot of them fearlessly jumped on the line, and had a blast.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz2QXdom79E

Kazuya and his friend Nobu brought some diabolo (chinese yo-yo) with them. Kazuya is apparently a pretty big name in the Japanese Diabolo community, and he’s got skills to prove it. both he and Nobu have over 10 years of experience playing diabolo, so when they got going the kids went wild. “Is this a dream?!” one of them asked, bewildered.

Never a dull moment, all afternoon I was either slacklining, yo-yoing, kicking around a soccer ball or hackey sack, trying my hand at diabolo, or climbing around on the playground equipment. I really hope I can make this a regular part of my schedule; it felt so good to run around and play for a change!

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OAoJdeeyB0

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