Homecoming

Yesterday was my first training back with VDL after my American adventures. It was good to be back. There were cupcakes and a big sack of chocolate and hugs all around, and lots of new faces. Yay. I missed being in my own league while I was overseas; it's like, you know that visiting another league is just that--a visit--and then soon you'll be gone. So it was good to come back to familiar faces and not having to be the new kid for a while.

Apparently when someone leaves the league or comes back there's a stacks on tradition. So, after getting bowled over bya crap load of (mildly stinky) people, it was back to doing drills! Then there was scrimmy scrim scram! I hadn't scrimmaged for several months, and I think it showed. There were a lot of big hits, and I fell down a lot. Whee! Oh, of course, there's the other tradition that I have, mostly related to scrimmage: when I scrim, I get injured roughly 80% of the time, where "injury" here is when I find something that hurts or doesn't feel right. So a slight bruise doesn't count as an injury, but a concussion, or twisted ankle, or ass bruise that doesn't let you sit down does.

Anyway, the other thing is I have to find new and different parts of my body to munt. Last night it was my left hand. I fell on it funny when my fingers went one way and the rest of me went another. I iced it and it seemed okay; it's not like you need fingers for derby (unless you are reffing), right? So today I had a look and my fingers weren't straightening or bending or whatever. It didn't look so bad from the top, but I have bruises underneath my knuckles, like on the inside of my fingers.

Some minor bruising on my fourth finger, and my third finger is fat

My third and fourth fingers are kind of stuck in a fat purpley sausage position.

It's purpler than the picture makes it. Also, my Antiks are hilariously tiny when I skate; it looks like my front and back wheels are touching each other. But they felt good on my feet tonight (except I can't remember how to skate on wood floors! Argh!) and I didn't get any blisters. Actually, I preemptively put a blister bandage on over the blister scar that I have on my foot, and the bandage fell off and stuck to my sock:

It kind of looks like a sad slug.

Ew. But yay, I'm back.

A bunch of goodbyes

Derby tourism can be hard. You go visit a league, and the people there are awesome and wonderful and you feel cruddy when you have to leave them.

The last time I laced up my skates for training was about two weeks ago. On that Sunday, I went to BAD training. It was really good, Hammer and Lucas put us through a bunch of drills: monkey bars, weaving with partners, and this awesome fun partner blocking drill. Basically, you have two blockers and a jammer, and 3/4 of the track to stop the jammer getting through. For some reason, the drill had 4-5 people jam continually, and everyone else rotated as blockers. I got to jam for like an hour. It was pretty fun, I tried to jump the apex but I think my legs keep crashing into the person I'm passing, and then Hammer threw another skater at me to get all in my way. Haha. But anyway, at the end of training I mentioned to a few people that I would be leaving soon, but that next week would be my last one. However, Hammy wasn't going to be training us next Sunday, so when we were leaving BAD HQ I told her I was going and thanked her for all the stuff that she had taught me, and then she gave me a big hug. I'm enough of a fangirl to be like "Eee! Hammer sweat!" but yeah, she's an awesome person and a great teacher.

Then, on Monday I went to SCRD. Now, I really have a soft spot for SCRD. They're still growing as a league, and because they're much smaller a league, their community feels a lot more tightknit. It was a hard training session (although no scrimmage, boo) and at the end I said that this was my last one. There were hugs all around.They also gave me a SCRD shirt. There's one particular skater who's still a newbie, but I've been informally mentoring her (read: giving advice on wheels, skates, bandaging ankles, not to give up because training is hard, and whatever) and it has been really good to see her develop as a skater. I'm keeping in touch with her because I'm excited to follow her progress; her enthusiasm for derby is really contagious and she's really thrown her heart into the sport.

Anyway, then it turned out that I couldn't go back to BAD the following week because of the stupid I-have-a-giant-blister-and-can't-walk incident. That sucked big time, because I didn't get to see everyone and skate with them one last time. In particular, I wanted to thank Mindi and Lucas for the awesome work they put in every week to get our skills up, and say goodbye to the badass ladies I've been training with the last couple of months.

It is kind of shitty to have to say goodbye. I've never been good at them, and I never seem to get to say it to everyone that I should. But they're only temporary. The thing with derby families is that you can go anywhere and meet amazing and wonderful people and be part of their fold. You learn so much from them, and you become more than just people skating together--you become actual friends. And it sucks to leave your friends. But derby families are also tightknit, and when you go back it will be like no time has passed (although, of course, everyone's skate skills will have improved presumably). You'll skate together and hit each other and then go and have beers in the parking lot or at a nearby dive or whatever. And things will be all good. I guess the upside of the goodbyes is that there is also a corresponding "hello and welcome back" when that time comes, whenever that time will be.

Injury roundup, post US

(Some of the pictures in this are pretty gross. You have been warned.)

I've had a couple of injuries since I've been in the US. Interestingly enough, not all of those were derby-induced. Here I think is the roundup of total injuries I got in the last 3-4 months (although some were caused by other things, as indicated in italics):

1. Concussion (snowboarding)

Picard doesn't understand why I am onTeam Munted so much.

2. Whiplash with messed up neck and shoulders (snowboarding)

3. Arm bruise from crashing into a cast iron bench, as seen here.

4. Shin bruises from some unknown but derby-related cause, as seen here.

5. Munty wrists from falling on them without wristguards (snowboarding). I have to stop putting my hands out to stop myself faceplanting in the snow. It might just be safer to faceplant in the snow. Ugh.

6. Mystery claw foot. I've narrowed it down to being under my little toe on my right foot, and under the ball of my foot on my left. So, it's not really to do with my arches getting sore, I don't think. I've been getting a can of beer out of the fridge and rolling my foot on the side of the (cold) can, and that seems to help. I put the beer in a glass before I drink it. :P

7. Nose infection (Some unspecified underby thing) I managed to also give the inside of my right nostril an infection. I know this sounds stupid and gross, but basically I lost my nose ring so I was trying to use the straight metal bit of a safety pin as a temporary spacer until I could get a proper nose ring put in. I had wire cutters and cut the pin to the right length and voila, spacer. Except that the wire cutters cut the end of the pin to a flat thing that looked like the blade on a flat head screwdriver, and the inside of a safety pin is not stainless steel or whatever. In a few days, I was wondering why everything smelled like rust. Then the piercing started closing so I poked the pin through it, tearing the inside of my nose skin, which, because the pin was rusty, got infected. Ew. It hurt, but it wasn't mega unsightly, and I managed to fix it. Phew.

This is actually not bad, given my record. Here are my most recent ones:

8. Munty shoulder
Remember how I dislocated my shoulder ages ago at VDL? Well, snowboarding made it worse because I fell on it again, and now it is deliciously crunchy. Audibly so, when I rotate it. It seems to have all its mobility though, so I'm not sure what I need to do (if anything) about it.


9. The biceps bruise
I got this bruise flipping tires two weeks ago at SCRD! I think it's because my arms are too short and the tire comes up to my bicep and probably caught on my skin and tore it. It's actually darker than in this picture, and it has little abrasions in it from random grit in the tire. Yes, I cleaned it out and it's now healed:

Also, I have tiny biceps muscles. Yay.

10. The MEGA GROSS BLISTER
Okay. I'm not kidding about this being gross. Seriously. And there are pictures.

On the first day I wore my Antiks, I got a blister on my right foot at BAD training, just under my ankle (on the inside of my foot). I thought it felt weird and then when I took off my socks at the end of training a piece of skin about the size of a quarter fell out of my sock. WTF. It fucking hurt like the dickens to shower it, and it was stinging more than anything I think I've ever experienced. There was a lot of swearing. Anyway, the next day it looked like this:

Because I am a really, REALLY smart cookie, I decided to bandage it up with toilet paper and strapping tape and then go to SCRD training that night. Yes, I know. Facepalm already. When I was done, I took my sock off at training and the bandage was covered in yellow leaky stuff. Ew, gross.

On the way home ze boyfriend got me some of those blister bandaid things. I put one on after I cleaned the area:

The blister bandage was pretty nice. They're waterproof, and really helped with the stinging on the raw skin. They're pretty clingy though, so when I tried to stand with my foot flat on the ground it would pull on the skin near the blister, and that hurt. I've been trying to not use my right foot, or when I do I am using the outside of it. I bet it is pronating my foot. Bah.

Oh and then two days after I put it on, the bandage got all fat and puffy and started leaking clear yellow stuff. So after I had a shower I peeled off the blister bandage (which also hurt a bit because it didn't cover the entire blister), and my foot looked like this. Hold onto your lunches:

Seriously, WTF. I look like someone has shot me in the foot. There's actually one angle if I am sitting with my foot kind of on the ground where you can see a hole and the skin flap around it with the watery shit coming out. Actually, because I am mega gross, here is a picture of that blister again, but closer up so you can see the watery meaty goodness shit that is inside:

It also smells a bit weird, but nothing mega terrible. I tried cleaning it but it obviously stings a fuckload and is more swollen than before. I think some of the soggy white floppy skin is it healing, but it's pretty fucking infected. That yellow shit around the outside is like congealed watery yellow pus stuff that has been leaking out of my foot for the last three days. Ew.

Anyway, I made myself a little moleskine out of toilet paper and strapping tape, to air it out today (I think the blister bandages seal the blister and all the bacteria-y watery shit stays in the raw meaty area. Yum). Then I strapped it with this cute athletic tape that ze boyfriend got me (it's like porous and attaches to itself, how handy):

It also matches my nail polish, yay.

Yes yes, I am going to go seek medical attention and whatever. Actually, I called the health provider people and was like "I'm wondering if I need an appointment" and then I told them about my foot, and they were like "YES YOU DO NEED TO COME IN" and stuff. Ugh. Then I was describing my injury to the nurse on the phone and she cut me off because it was so gross. Hahahaha. I think I'll probably need antibiotics for this fucker at this rate.

Update: I went to the hospital and the doctor cut off all the dead skin (that spongy, pasty white floppy stuff around the hole). He had like fancy medical tweezers and really pointy scissors and I was a little worried that he was going to stab my "foot meat"--yes, now it is a medical term. The doctor actually called it that. Apparently I took off like pretty much all my epidermis which is why the stuff underneath is also shiny and red. Anyway. So he cut it, and all this leaky stuff was stuck in the layers of dead skin and poured out. EW. The blister was like twice the size with all the skin off. But yeah, the reason he needed to cut all the dead skin off was so he could clean the wound. WITH SALINE. WTF. Like, can you say THIS FUCKING STINGS or what?

I stopped taking photos when he actually started doing it because I thought it might be rude to photograph someone hacking at my foot.

But he was nice about it, and then after he cleaned it he put some ointment on it and gave me these giant clown bandaids the size of my hand to stick over the whole blister. The bandaids are breatheable which is probably going to help drain stuff from my foot.

AND THEN I HAD TO HAVE A TETANUS SHOT. SERIOUSLY. NOW MY (GOOD) ARM HURTS TOO. FML.

I also got this SUPER FASHIONABLE foam shoe thing to wear! It apparently stops my toes from bending so it keeps my foot skin nice and flat, so I won't tear it while it heals. It's also a little bit more elevated than my chucks, so I have a bit of gump foot. It was also raining last night and wearing a foam sandal and socks in the rain was a little bit crappy. But hey, I'm not a Canadian.

Update #2: I have to clean it twice a day and replace the gigantic blisters. The next day, I undid the bandaid and it looked like this:

It's much less angry now, although it's twice the size with all the dead skin cut off. But it looks like it's on the mend. Hooray. I'm not allowed to skate for 1-2 weeks while it heals, and after that I can actually put my foot back in my skate boots to mold them. And actually skate.

Actually, most of this post was just to get to this point where I could post pictures of my disgusting blister. I've had a couple of derby injuries, but this one takes the cake in terms of ridiculous self-inflicted pain and grossness. Huzzah.

ANTIKS! EEEEEEeeeeeee!

 ...in which I build my skates. WITH MY HANDS.

Yesterday, I got a very exciting phone call. The peeps down at Cruz Skate Shop called to let me know that my Antiks had come in. EEEEEEEE INDEED! Today I went down there to get my Antiks. How excitement. I kind of wanted to wait until Motley was around, but she's not working until Monday, so yeah. I guess I could always go there and show her what I got (even though I bet she's seen like 3865926352962 pairs of the damn things).

So I went there and got this box:

You could tell it was mine because it was the one with the ridiculously small size:

Size 3 is the smallest Antik ever made. Yay.

And inside were my boots!! YAY!! I don't have a picture of the actual inside of the box, because I got excited and forgot to take a picture of the skates then. I just got the boots and plates, and I was going to put my wheels, toe stop, bushings etc. on it instead of getting new ones. After all, I just got new toe stops and bushings, and I like my wheels. So I tried on the boot in the store, except obviously without wheels I couldn't stand up in my boots on just the plate or I'd bend the axles. But yeah, my boots were there in the box and I got to lace them up and whatever. One thing that I noticed with the Antiks is that they have ridiculously long laces. Like, the ones I have are just the standard 100" ones. Now, 100 inches is a LOT. That's like 2.5 metres of lace per boot, for you metric people out there. That's like 1.5 times my height. Some people do the old school wraparound thing around their ankle, but I didn't want to. It reduces agility in your ankle movement, and makes it like fiddlier to do up anyway, and doing up Antiks already takes some getting used to. I'll write more about that when I skate on them this weekend and do a product review.


But yeah. I can't roll around on just boots and plates; we need to make some goddamn skates! Basically I had to take out the kingpins and switch my bushings, put the wheels on the new axles and put the toe stop in. Eric (who was in the store today) was with another customer (or two, and then like ten people came into the store) so he set me up with some skate tools while he helped them out. I only vaguely remembered my skate anatomy lesson from Steffin, but it seemed easy enough, and all the bits seemed to come out and go into the right places easily, so phew. I diassembled my Diablos, and moved the parts over, but I had to also reassemble their parts since I might be selling or giving my skates away to some newbie. So yeah, doing everything one way in taking the parts out and then doing it back the other way was kind of tricky.

It was really fun, fiddling around with the tools and whatnot and moving parts from my Diablos onto my Antiks. I got DynaPro plates, because it was either that or the Powerdyne Reactor plates, which would have been nice but would have made my skates close to $800. No other plates came small enough to put on a size 3 boot. (Also, it's a size 2 plate and SO cute. The curved bit is pretty much like an inch long.) One thing that I thought was pretty cool is that the DynaPro plates that I have don't require those giant nuts and washers for toe stops, like they do on the Ridells--you know, the ones that require the 3-way Powerdyne Skate Tool to take off, and then you have to adjust the height and hope that 1) you've screwed it in tight enough and 2) the nut that is adjusting the height doesn't move around. Instead, the plates come with an allen key, kind of like the ones you get with Ikea furniture. The plate has the hole for the toe stop to screw in, and then a little thing that looks like a line machined to the side of the hole, and then a gap for the allen key next to that. Basically, you screw the toe stop in, and then hold it in place by tightening the plate around the toe stop with the allen key. That was kind of new for me, and I was a bit worried that tightening the toe stop so much would pretty much break the allen key. Haha. 

My skate has arguably the tinest plate in the world.

The powerdyne bushings that came with the skates were pretty hard (they're stock bushings, meh). I guess that means some newbie gets to skate on brand new bushing though, for whatever that might be worth. I'm not sure how tight to put the trucks on the Diablos now, but whatevs. Anyway, I moved my orange bushings over from my Diablos, but I've got those conical ones, so OF COURSE I put the damned things on backward first. Ugh. And it's not like I haven't looked at how they went on my skates; I knew that the pointy bit was on the bottom; I think the kingpins threw me off for some reason. I don't know. But yeah, it all eventually got done, even if I had to do it twice because I fucked it up the first time. (I wonder what skating on that would have been like...?)

Anyway, construction time was over. My hands were all grubby, but whatever. Time to go home and wear my skates! I coughed up my money (with discount and deposit, $425) and took my skates home. Well, my Antiks now with wheels and everything are skates, yes? And then I also took my Diablos (or what's left of them). Yay. I was so excited to get them home and roll them around on the floor. And then I got a parking ticket outside Cruz. Lame.

I've just worn my Antiks around the house for a bit today, which was really fun. I relaced them with my yellow laces (also I forgot to put the toe covers on so I'd have had to undo the giant laces if I wanted to stick with those anyway). I still need to check the truck tightness, the toe stop length and how tight I want to tie the skates around the ankle but they seem to be pretty good. They're really padded on the inside, and there's the option of heat molding parts of the skate (like the sides and toe and around the heel). I haven't really done that yet but I might try that out or something for shiggles. Product review to come when I've actually used them properly.

 I can't wait to take them to training! Weekend skating with BAD, here I come. WHOO.

Definition Derby

Hellarad has a nice dictionary of derbyesque terms going, which I think is awesome:

Clicky

Some of these are pretty hilarious. I have to say that the Cougar is one of my favorites.

What ones would you add?

SCRD tryout publicity

So remember how I did SCRD tryouts a while back? (There's an entry about it here.) Well, Lindsay (aka Erin Knockabitch) pointed out at training tonight that there was an article in the Press Democrat that had been written about it. And for some reason there's a fucking big picture of me with the article. Ha ha ha.

The article is here. It's awesome; it mentions a couple of the fantastic people I've been skating with (some of whose real names I didn't actually know until I read the article. Or I knew their first name but it'd have some little snippet thingy about their personal lives and I'd be like, "oh really?" kind of thing.) Yeah, it's nice to see that SCRD is getting some publicity. They have a great venue and the people there are amazeballs.

Photos are here. They spelt my name wrong. Fuck! (Haha, it's probably because the photographer guy asked me what my name was and couldn't understand me with my accent. Boo indeed.)

Oh, so you'll be able to see that yellow onesie lycra bodysuit thingy that I was talking about. It's in one of the photos, I'm sure.

A hard copy of the article is framed and on the wall in the Wrecking Yard. It has backing with leopard print. (I bet Sparks did that.) I should get a copy of this article and send it to my mum; I don't think she knows I do derby yet. I'll have to write about that some other time I think.

Try before you buy!

This is the packaging that my fancy arch support things came in.
Is that a frog or a gecko? And why is it in German?

So here's a story about why it's important to try out skates before throwing your money down. Also, maybe the moral of the story is that I'm dumb.

On the weekend I went to Cruz Skate Shop. Ze Boyfriend wanted new wheels and bushings and laces and whatever, and I've been looking at getting some skates while I'm in the US. After all, they're heaps cheaper here and I kind of wish I had bought skates when I first got to the US. Then I could have skated on them for like 2 months already and broken them in. Boo. Bad timing.

Anyway, I've been having foot problems recently. We do a LOT more toe stop work here than I have in Australia, and in the last month or so I've noticed my feet cramping up after I skate a lot. Like, the bottoms of my feet would be all cramped and my toes would feel like they were scrunched up. Ouch. My claw feet were getting pretty bad, because they were affecting my knees and back and stuff. I thought having sore feet was normal after you skate. FYI, it's not. I even got fancypants arch support thingies in my skates to see if they would help. They don't, and they actually made it worse. Once after BAD training my foot hurt so much it took me like five whole minutes to get it out of my skate. And I couldn't even swear properly because my teeth were gritted.

Fancy arch support thing with heel cup. Did not work.

So I'm telling Steffin this in the store, and she gave me a bunch of skates to try on. She also measured my foot. My feet are a 3.5 in skates. The Diablos I've been skating on are a 5. WHAT THE HELL. I have been skating since May last year on skates that were over a size too big. No wonder I've got foot problems and I've been sliding out everywhere and whatever.

Yay, skates to try on. The ones on the right are Pain GaLaura's.
I put my sweaty feet in them before she did, hahaha.

Steffin was really good and gave me a bunch of skates to try on. In fact, I think I tried on every skate boot in the store except the artistic fancypants break-your-ankle ones and the R3s (hell, I have Diablos, why would I need to try on R3s?!?). Nothing fit. Seriously, stupid tiny feet. I even tried on Pain's skates (which she hadn't picked up yet from the store). They were a size 4, so still too big. But they were pretty nice. I approve of Pain's purchase. (Note: I told her this at training the week after, yay.) I tried on Bonts, all the Riedells they had, a pair of Antiks that were a 5.5 (so WAY too big, but the padding was nice), and I can't remember what else.

By this point, it was clear that none of their stock stuff was going to fit me. Steffin suggested that I come in on another day when Motley (that is, Motley Cruz, who owns the store) was in, so she could measure my feet properly and recommend stuff. So, a few days later, I hopped back down there to see what Motley could do.

My boot size isn't even on this goddamn scale!!

It was pretty awesome. First, she had a look at my feet (in the socks that I said I skate in). Then she measured my feet for length, and also for something called "ball girth". I have the mind of a twelve-year-old boy so I thought that was freaking hilarious. Basically, that's the bit around the ball of your foot (near the base of your big toe knuckle and around to your little toe knuckle and back over). It measures how wide your feet are. Mine are pretty damn wide, like a D size in shoe width. However, she also looked at my ankles and they're tiny and narrow, like a B width. I also have quite boxy toes, so she also took that into account. She recommended a couple of skates for me, like the 395 and the Shedevil, a pair of Bonts and something else. The thing was that a couple of them didn't actually come in a size small enough for my feet, so I'd have to get them special ordered. But that would take like 4-6 weeks, and I didn't have that much time in the US.
 
But yeah, then there were the Antiks! Yep. They fit nicely, and were in stock in my tiny foot size. I have the AR-1s coming, yo. I'm not going to be all like "OMG ANTIKS" just yet, because I haven't gotten them yet. But I certainly did put my deposit down and Motley ordered them for me that day. I liked the fact that they had some ankle support and were really cushy inside. I also got Dynapro plates (the Revenge ones don't go that small, boo). I ended up with the stock ones, because the color options were another $90. It'd be cool to have a pair of bright yellow Antiks or something, but yeah, the black ones will do for now. I AM SO GODDAMN EXCITE. I can't believe I skated that whole time (like, since May 2011) on the wrong size skates.

I AM GETTING THESE BABIES. FUCK YEAH.

Hopefully when they arrive and are the right size, I'll actually be able to skate properly, read, be 5636298x better at skating than I am now. Whee!!

But seriously, apparently claw foot can become permanent and stuff. Motley told me my foot pain was because my toes are scrunching up to try and get some traction in my skates since my feet are slipping around in them. Also, it means my front wheels aren't under the ball of my foot to be able to control where I go. It's totally worth getting someone to check out your feet and make sure your skates are fitted right. Having the wrong size skates also makes you more prone to muntings by falling or wrecking your ankle (which I did last year). So yeah. Have your feet checked out! You use them enough as it is, anyway.