Trampolining

So, Jen took me trampolining tonight. For the few people reading this blog who may not already know this, Jen dragged me into trampolining two years ago in Toronto and I've been doing it ever since - once a week - as a class, with a coach and everything. I will never be an Olympic athlete, but it's fun and challenging and I am learning to overcome my fears - slowly!

The trip to the trampolining club is a long one. We have to take a tram from our neighbourhood all the way downtown to Flinders Station (the Melbourne equivalent of Union Station) and then take a train way out to Nunawading station, then walk for about half an hour. All told it's pretty much a 2-hour journey! Fortunately Mark, our coach, has decided that it's unacceptable for us to take public transit all the way home (we wouldn't get home until almost midnight that way!) so he's driving us. Yay Mark!

The trampoline classes are part of a larger gymnastics club, so unlike the club I go to in Toronto, there are all sorts of other pieces of gymnastics equipment set up too, and only two trampolines. However there's only five of us in the class and I like the system Mark has set up. First you climb up to the trampoline closest to him and he gets you to work on a specific skill, then when your turn there is over, you bounce over to the second trampoline and practice. So I feel like I spent a lot more time on the trampoline tonight than I ususally get to do. The trampolines are not recessed in the ground at this place, like I'm used to, but surprisingly it wasn't as scary as I thought it was going to be to climb up and be bouncing 3 feet off the ground.

The crazy part came near the end of the evening. Off in one corner of the gym, there's a huge pit (about the size of the supertramp at the club in Toronto, for those of you who know where Skyriders is) full of cubes of the foam they use to fill the crash mats. The cubes are about 20-30cm on a side. It's kinda like a ball room for grownups. Beneath the massive amount of foam cubes is a foam floor. And on the side of this pit is a mini-trampoline and a tumbling track. The idea is to practice your flips and other big tricks on the mini-tramp or tumbling track and end up in the cubes - a nice soft landing. WELL, let me tell you it's bloody hard to get out of the cubes once you're in them! Each time I did a flip and landed in the cubes, I swear my butt sank all the way to the bottom of the pit, which left my arms and legs sticking up in the air - and totally drowning in foam cubes. It was a real struggle to free myself and get myself upright. In the end Jen had to lower a big blue crash mat into the pit so I could grab its edge and struggle up that way. Then she tried to reassure me that EVERYONE looks silly climbing out of the pit. Small consolation! The funny thing is, I kinda liked the crashing into the foam bit - just not the climbing out part.

Unfortunately I forgot to take the camera tonight, but I'll do my best to remember it next week so you can all see what we were dealing with. Craziness.

Jen has her first supply teaching job tomorrow - she's covering a Kindergarten class (or, as they call it here, a Preps class). So we'll be up early to see her off. I'm sure there'll be some good stories to share tomorrow!