Month: May 2008

A Rainbow Interlude

As I was biking down South Street Bridge, I happened to witness a little slice of perfection, being in just the right place at just the right time. South Street Bridge is known as one of the best places to view the Philly Skyline, so I stopped to capture some fantastic evening sunlight highlighting the skyscrapers beneath a dark sky pregnant with late spring showers.

As I kept shooting away, however, I was granted with a rare sight indeed—a perfectly framed rainbow forming! And not only that, but soon it was a clearly visible double rainbow. The intensity of the primary rainbow was truly breathtaking, as was its sheer size and height. This was one of the few times in my life I was able to clearly make out ROYGBIV. Even though no photos can do the scene justice, I’ll let the images speak for themselves. As with everything in life, the moment was fleeting, so I soon hopped back on my sweet ride and headed on.

Philly Skyline double rainbow Philly Skyline rainbow

And for a bonus, here’s a shot I took on a gorgeous day about a month ago that I’ve been meaning to post. Enjoy!

Flower & Sky

Learning the Wallflip

This past year I’ve been hanging out with the Penn Gymnastics Club, which is open to anyone with a PennCard. I decided to join since I realized that practicing basic parkour moves and elementary acrobatics in a safe environment full of experienced people and soft mats was probably a better idea than jumping around on concrete and grass while hungover (cough cough like the Collarbone Incident in 2005).

So I have been learning a lot and having a blast on the mats with my fellow club members.

It’s interesting—all of the women in the club have at least some experience in gymnastics (some are even part of Penn’s actual gymnastics team), but the majority of the guys in the club are, like me, amateurs looking to learn acrobatics for parkourish purposes.

But in any case, the following video was recorded a month or so ago (April 2008) and reveals my process as I finally learned how to wallflip. It’s quick, and it’s not pretty. But hopefully it is amusing.

I suppose the takeaway, though, is that it’s never too late to learn this stuff, since here I am at the ripe old age of 26 doing acrobatics for the first time.