Many people enjoy watching the popular TV show: American Ninja Warrior, and so an outdoor course set up in your neighborhood is a perfect opportunity for your moment to shine and become a Ninja Warrior yourself! Flipside gives that opportunity to Oak Park and surrounding neighbors every year!
Oktoberfest is a yearly celebration of the changing of the seasons, but in Oak Park, IL it is called Oaktoberfest. It has a mini concert, a variety of food from local places, and many activities for the whole family. Oaktoberfest was held at Marion & Lake St. on September 20-21. One of its many events is the Flipside ninja course. Flipside Academy of Movement is a parkour, tumbling, and fitness gym, and has been doing a ninja course for the past five years at Oaktoberfest. The course is a short one, and is set up usually on Saturday from 12:00-5:00 pm. If you are running the course, you have two choices: competitive or fun run. Fun run is when you get to run the course without being timed and usually people can go whenever they want as long as they are spaced apart. The competitive run is different… the race is on and you are timed as you go! If you are competitive, you are spaced farther so you don’t run into each other and have to stop. For competitive runs, if you fall, your time stops and your run doesn’t count (although we let you finish the course if you want). The winners get prizes from Flipside.
Imagine you come to the course and are set to run. First, you’ll jump back and forth between staggered triangular shaped blocks called tics. Then you balance as you quickly run across a series of wooden planks and metal bars. You must then vault over three obstacles before you make it to the monkey bars. Three bars are set are various heights, getting lower and lower, as you crawl beneath them without knocking any bars down. Next, you’re up and running towards an angled up platform from which you jump down to the mat and are faced with the Cat Box. The Cat Box is a tall rectangular box about 6 feet high that you must climb on top of in order to finish the course!
Some kids try over and over again, trying to get the fastest time. You don’t have to be good to do this course; all you have to do is want to try it.