Saturday afternoon, while we were checking out the bicycle madness at the Tour de Fat, our wanderings introduced me to something that I had previously never heard of, nor could I ever have imagined was a real thing: freestyle walking.

Huh? What? Was I the last person to ever hear about this? Evidently, I do not spend nearly enough time surfing YouTube, because this was a whole new world for me.

The discovery occurred when we decided to take some time to explore Gasworks Park, the site of the Tour de Fat in Seattle. This was one of the coolest parks I had ever visited: basically, it was a coal refinery that was closed down in the mid-1950s, cleaned out from the groundwater up and turned into a park. Rather than destroying the old machinery, the city simply painted everything bright colors and turned it into a giant jungle gym.

This part was cool. This I understood. I have a healthy nostalgic love for playgrounds in general. But when we walked outside of the “play barn,” All of a sudden, I was surrounded by grown men (and women), their faces fiercely focused and determined in a sort of Napoleon-Dynamite-esque fashion… jumping on things. And across things. And up stairs. It was all very strange.

I watched with great confusion. Everybody seemed so… intent. I finally asked Mike what was going on, and he told me that they were practicing “freestyle walking.” I looked blankly. He tried to explain it to me. I was still confused. When we went home, I immediately searched youtube and found out that he was right. This is a real thing. And I am still confused about it.

I think that this is one of the things that I am liking about Seattle- innocent wanderings lead to really intense people obsessed with really strange things. I am not going to take up freestyle walking. I still don’t entirely get it. Honestly, my coordination and sense of spatial relations is so poor that I would probably really really suck at it anyways. But I like anybody who gets really excited about anything. I know the quality of our video isn’t great, but you can get an idea of how seriously people were taking the act of jumping up stairs. I am entertained.

Mike was entertained too.  He even let me take this picture:

Sexy.