One Night at Serang Beach

On Saturday afternoon, November 18^th 2017, most of East Java Parkour crews gathered at Serang Beach. The tiredness after ±1.5 hours motorcycle trip from Blitar city was paid off with a beautiful beach scenery, plus we could see the sunset directly from here later. Of course we didn’t just come here for no intention, because this was an informal event from East Java Parkour called “Bukan Jamming Biasa” (BJB), which means ‘not just ordinary jamming’. BJB is practically a kind of camping event, gatherings, and playing together among parkour practitioners in East Java. The purpose of this event is just solely to strengthen our friendship more.

Most of BJB participants were obviously from Parkour Blitar itself as the host, then there’re also from Tulungagung, Jombang, Surabaya, and probably other areas in East Java that I forgot to mention. After setting up the tent, we spread around the beach doing various things. Some of us were playing beach soccer, some were playing in the waves, some were doing flip training, and the others were taking photographs/videos. I spent that afternoon by doing flip training with the others, although my flip skill isn’t really good honestly.

After ±1.5 hours playing on the beach, the sun went down. The presented sunset view was really beautiful, it pacified our mind from the city’s hustle-bustle. Then in the evening, after the campfire session, every one of us continued to find dinner and chilled out in the cottage near the food stall around the beach. The poor phone signals here seemed to bring us back into 1990’s era, when intimacy of the interaction was really felt without being interrupted by gadgets. Later when we’d finished chatting, we immediately slept into the tent.

In the middle of the sleep, around post-midnight suddenly the rain fell so heavy. It even made a little leak in the tent that Andreas and I occupied. But because we were too sleepy, we just ignored the dripping water. And I also vaguely heard some furor from the other tents because of the same reason, but I didn’t really remember it clearly.

It was still drizzling around 05.30 AM, but fortunately the weather wasn’t really cold. I immediately got up to continue the flip training with the other BJB participants. As the time went by, the rain finally stopped and the sun got brighter. We did the flip training until ±11:00 AM while occasionally interspersed with breakfast, photo session, and a little bit playing in the waves.

Shortly before noon, we ended BJB due to the increasingly tide of sea water and our physical exhaustion. Once we finished taking a shower, packing the tent, and eating lunch; we immediately left Serang Beach. Then in the middle of the trip we separated each other to our respective hometown until only 3 motorcycles left: Andreas-myself, Herry-Erick, and Rizqi-Yohanes. The rain fell heavily for almost all our way home so that we had to stop several times for taking shelter. But apart from that, thankfully we arrived safely in Surabaya around 10.00 PM.

Although it’s just one night, BJB was really impressive for me. Through this camping the kinship and brotherhood between East Java Parkour practitioners became stronger. No matter new or senior practitioners, novice or expert skills, we gathered as one parkour family in Serang Beach. Hopefully we can meet up again next year at East Java Regional Jamming in Tulungagung.

video by Andreas Lucio Ivanno