Impatience

Sorry for the lack of updates. Southwest Virginia is nice, but NO DERBY YET BECAUSE MY STUPID HEALTH INSURANCE IS TAKING AGES TO GO THROUGH. Argh!! It's frustrating. Apart from skating with Boudi in San Francisco, I haven't skated for about six weeks now. I'm not going to skate without my insurance though because I am the Queen of Munt and will probably  break my face or something.

Stupid university administration; how long does it take you to do someone's insurance application?! Boooooo! Seriously, I can't wait to start skating again. I'm hearing about everyone learning these new things and having open scrims and I'm totally jealous and want to play too. Sadface.

Anyway, on an unrelated note, here's a picture of a slice of pizza that is bigger than my head that I ate at the my work's welcome reception on the way to a welcome dinner with my work peeps:

NOMTASTIC.

Hopefully I'll be back on skates next week, but we'll see how effective the administrative machinery is around here.

Does size matter?

Today I was at my faculty orientation for the new job, and we had to do a boring thing where you go around and introduce yourself and then say something interesting about yourself. (Sidenote: academics REALLY like that pedigree shit; everyone was like "I'm so and so and I did my Ph.D. at such and such university" or whatever.) Obviously, for my interesting fact, I said that I did roller derby. Some people laughed; others just looked surprised or confused. Whatever, that's not a weird reaction at all I guess. Then, later in the day, a woman (who was probably in her mid-30s) came up to me and was like, "Aren't you a bit small to be a rollergirl?"

I'm sure she meant well, but what the fuck?

I'm about five feet tall. Maybe 5'0.5" on a good day. But until this point, I wasn't aware that there was a particular size and build that people who do derby. Maybe she was just thinking that women who do derby are giant amazonian behemoths who can crush walnuts with their thighs or something. Maybe she thinks they're the kind of women who kill men by Snoo Snoo. But whatever it was, I was kind of taken aback.

I didn't really respond to the question except to probably smile weakly and say "no", and then I was trying to think of something else to say. Okay, so people make assumptions about all sorts of things all the time. Maybe I should have told her that one of the reasons I liked derby was because it didn't require people to have a particular size or build to do well; hell, I thought any team in their right mind would want a combination of skaters of different sizes, because differet people can do different things. Isn't that what the all-inclusive spirit of derby is about? For example, check out the infamous video of Rice Rocket taking a ride on Beyonslay:

Surprisingly, I'm not just posting this video for the "WOW, HOLY SHITBALLS" factor.

Obviously, there is a sense in which size does matter. If it were the other way around, I seriously doubt that there'd be any youtube videos of Beyonslay taking a ride on Rice Rocket without crushing her. Beyonslay is clearly great at what she does, which is blocking the shit out of the incoming jammer (after all, she's the "shark/power blocker" in that play), and she knocks RR out a few times before the ride in the full video of the jam. Likewise, RR is a great jammer and uses her size and speed to get around the rest of the pack with more or less no problem. So there, it looks like size is important, in some kind of role-specific sense.

But then, there's another, broader, sense in which size doesn't, or shouldn't, matter. If you had a team of all Beyonslays or all RRs, well, I think that'd be an interesting bout to watch. Most teams will put a combination of different skaters in, to optimize their abilities and whatnot. Having people with different abilities based on different sizes is one way you don't put all your eggs in the skill basket. That said, it'd be interesting to see how derby strategy develops if a team was all made up of tiny skaters who could skate five abreast and not touch each other or something, or a team of all really large women who could booty block the entire track or something.

But that can't even be true. What you can do in derby isn't contingent on what size you are or what your body build is. I mean, okay, maybe people who are bigger and heavier can take out smaller people more easily, but that's not even a given:

(Photo: LRR)

That's London Rockin' Rollers' Murder Urs taking out a blocker who is pretty much twice her size. Ans she's doing a fucking good job of it. So it's not like big girls have a one-up on little girls by default. (Also, she's little and blocking! As much as I like jamming, I get a bit bleh at the assumption that little girls jam and big girls block, and there's no in between. Also I think I think this because I'm not very good at jamming.) But yeah, so size doesn't seem to matter here.

Finally, it's not even that you have big girls and little girls. Derby skaters come in all kinds of combinations of height and build and ass-sizery. I don't have a skinny ass. Hell, my butt pretty much starts right at the bottom of my ribcage and goes to my knees or something in a continuous ass-and-thighs-in-one-thing. It's not mega huge either though, even though I can pretty much leg press Ze Boyfriend (and he weighs almost twice as much as me). So you might think that if size matters, it's size where that matters. But I'm not sure it does. Also, the twelve-year-old boy mentality in me is tittering a lot at talking about size and where.

But I can't get over the fact that said lady at my work orientation even made the comment at all. Is it because I'm short, that she thought I must be likely to be crushed to death by women bigger than I in derby? (Okay, muntings aside, really.) Or maybe she's just thinking about whatever impression of derby she's got, like from Whip It or something, but even then, that can't be right.

They all look more or less the same height and build.
Also, I am seeing a distinct lack of derby booty.

Or maybe I am taking this out of context and she just wanted to have a friendly conversation with me, and I am a socially retarded idiot who is taking this too far.

Virginia is for lovers, or shovers, or something

So here I am in Virginia. More precisely, I'm in southwest Virginia, like, the bit that sticks out and borders with West Virginia, North Carolina and Tennesee. It's a lot different here than anywhere else I've lived, that most of the places I've lived have been flat and politically liberal, and apparently here it's mountainous and conservative.

I took this picture while I was driving on a highway.

Anyway, when I found out I had a job offer and was possibly moving here (so, back in April) I looked up the nearest roller derby league to this town. Actually, my job choice was essentially a function of 1) how good the actual job was in terms of job security, salary, whether they would pay for my health insurance, etc.; 2) what the actual city was like; 3) how far the nearest roller derby league was. For the record, #2 ruled out Detroit.

That said, Detroit is about to get a Robocop statue, so
I might have to visit there anyway. Check it out here.

Anyway, so the nearest league to me are the NRV Rollergirls (NRV being New River Valley, which is some general description of this entire area which is surrounded by the Appalachians), and I've been in contact with them about training and stuff. They asked me about my bouting/scrimmaging experience, eep. And they train three times a week and do 30-60 minutes of scrimmage EACH TRAINING. And they train Sunday, Tuesdays and Wednesdays so there's minimal recovery time. Holy crapballs. I am going to die. I'm not skating with them yet, because the university hasn't given me my fancypants employee health insurance, and knowing how munted I get I am not skating without health insurance. Also, from my experience with BAD, WFTDA insurance is supposed to be supplemental to your own insurance, so were I to get munted I wouldn't be covered anyway. But once I get my health insurance sorted out, I'm going to go and skate with them and I will report back.

Part of the Huckleberry Trail.
It looks okay, but hilly.

Another thing is that this place is unintentionally skate-friendly, even with the hills. There are a lot of bike tracks, and they're usually asphalt and (more or less) sealed. There's a particular trail I'm going to test on the bike called the Huckleberry Trail that goes into the next town (I think it's like a 12-13 mile round trip), but that one seems to be okay with skaters. At least, it's apparently okay for "inline skaters" so presumably quad skaters won't die on it. It'll probably cure my fear of outdoor and hill skating.

I am also considering skating to my classes and to work but the sidewalks here are sometimes mega-shitty or actually just flattened dirt for a block or something. And they're quite narrow, so if I plow stop I'll take up the entire sidewalk, and that's with my stumpy legs. Still, I'll have to scope it out. Also I have work Tuesday, Wednesdays and Thursdays, so in theory I can be on skates four days a week, and on Tuesdays and Wednesdays I will be on skates for most of the day. Hooray indeed.

Finally, I am in the process of changing my derby name! Don't worry, you can still call me Mouse. But keep your eyes peeled on that one...

Ze Boyfriend is awesome

I'm not the gushy type, but I have to post this because Ze Boyfriend decided to get me a surprise. I normally hate surprises because I'm one of those impatient types and I like to know stuff. But check out this awesome ring that he got me:

It's a custom ring that he got someone to make at a website that normally does monogrammed rings and whatever but he got them to put my derby number on it. AND THE OTHER SIDE OF THE RING IS A BOTTLE OPENER. I have opened many bottles with it in the past week. Yay.

I am now wondering if there's a way I can heat up the ring without injuring myself, so I can brand people with it when I hipcheck them or something. Or maybe an inkpad will do in a pinch. But yeah, isn't that awesome? :D

Also the picture makes me look like I have sausage fingers, hahahaha.

Boudi and Mouse in San Francisco, Part 3

Sea lions!

After we finished stuffing our faces with awesome seafood, we headed down to Pier 39 to see some sea lions. Pier 39 is the touristy one and kind of ridiculous to skate in, since it's made up of boardwalk boards and full of people (with children in prams--and one rude bitch rammed her pram into the back of my legs so I would get out of her way and she could park her child in front of the sea lions, and she kept yelling at me in Spanish. WTF, really). We walked around that one, and then geared up for our Embarcadero skate! (However, the sea lions were pretty neat too.)

The Embarcadero is the waterfront road/pier area in San Francisco, and it pretty much goes from just before Pier 39 down to near AT&T Park (where they play baseball). It is about 5.8 miles all up, but quite flat (since it's all waterfront). It's got tourists galore though, and also cyclists and those weird bicycle-rickshaw cart things. Plus there aren't any barriers to stop us going onto the road or into the water. However, it's considerably wider than the Golden Gate Bridge, so we weren't at risk of running over sock-and-sandaled feet. It's also not consistently paved, so some bits were much smoother to skate on than others which felt like we were getting a nonstop foot massage on a massage machine that was having a seizure.

This is something to look at when you're skating the Embarcadero.

There isn't much really to look at when you're skating the Embarcadero, building-wise. We passed the Alcatraz ferry launch and also a building that was Pier 29 1/2 (where the "/" in the 1/2 was a lightning bolt like in Harry Potter). The busiest part was around Pier 1 and the San Francisco Ferry Terminal where people were actually using the ferries and being tourists and whatnot. However, because the footpath was really wide, it wasn't a problem getting around them. I found familes with gaggles of children a little bit annoying to get around (because they would walk like five abreast or something, and also unpredictably stop or change direction) but even then it wasn't too tricky to manouver.

At the Bay Bridge.

Our endpoint at AT&T Park.

Again, people were really nice and supportive of the fact we were skating. At one bit I had to slalom around a whole bunch of metal grating and some random guy was like "Nice moves!" and another time we skated past this guy that was like "faster faster faster faster YEAHHHHH" which was a bit weird but he was all smiley so, yeah. We also passed lots of people who saw us skating and were really happy and smiley, and of course we smiled back. We stopped briefly at Rincon Park to take photos of us at the Bay Bridge, and then continued onwards to AT&T Park. As we were heading towards AT&T Park, we started having to slow down for clumps of baseball fans (some of which were carrying or towing coolers) and the footpath narrowed a whole bunch and got mega bumpy. I ran out of water, and I had to go into a cafe (which included walking up stairs on my toe stops) to buy more, which I think was amusing and somewhat confusing for the people eating in there. But I didn't stack, so hooray.

I think our skate overall turned out to be over 8 miles, since we looped back.

We skated back to the Ferry Building/Pier 1, and geared down outside. It was pretty sunny so we sat there for a bit and aired out our gear (that is, maybe the blazing sun and the breeze from the bay will make our wristguards non-stinky). Then, a quick walk through the Ferry Building and around the Embarcadero Center Market (where they have specific "no roller skating" signs), and then on a streetcar to The Castro! (I'm not sure what the difference between a streetcar, tram and trolley is, but it is apparently different to a cable car, which is the touristy thing you hold onto.)

Anyway, we took the streetcar down to the Castro area, which is seriously one of my favorite areas of San Francisco. It's the gay district, and everyone there is happy and shiny and there are really cool shops and stores with names that bring out your inner twelve-year-old boy (a nail salon called "Hand Jobs"? Titter.) There's also a good cookie store called Hot Cookie that sells delicious baked goods and underpants/hotpants that say HOT COOKIE right on the crotch. Hee. Anyway, our first stop as we got to The Castro was the Creme Brulee Cart! It's not really a cart; it's a food truck. I love food trucks, but that is another story.

The Tupac. California knows how to party.

Our new friend. Also, he made his own shirt.
We didn't even get his name, so he will be
forever known as Glitter Spats Guy.

Anyway, so we got some really delicious creme brulee (mine was called "The Tupac", heh) and we're just sitting at the streetcar terminus in the garden eating our little tubs of creme brulee and this guy skates past us with the shiniest skates I have EVER seen in my life. Of course, then we had to chase after him and talk to him, but we were still stuffing our faces with creme brulee and he looked like he had disappeared down Castro Street, which was very sad.

But then we saw him come out of the Hot Cookie store, and he was skating towards us! Of course we stopped him and told him he was awesome, and how did he get his fantastic skates and whatever. He actually stopped and talked to us for like ten minutes about how he made his "glitter spats" for his skates--they were velcroed on skate covers over his Riedells, with little pockets so he could put his wallet and cigarettes in them. Then he told us where we could buy glitter spats fabric in the Castro, haha. We told him we did the Bridge and the Embarcadero that day and he was like "Oh, that's so awesome! I love skating in this city!" and then we talked a bunch about the skate culture in San Francisco and also suggested a bunch of skating places too. Whee!

Close up of GSG's glitter spats. They have a velcro
piece on the side and elastic strap up under the trucks, and
under the spats are little pockets over his laces for
holding stuff in.

We walked through the Castro for a bit and came to Harvey Milk's camera store, which is now a human rights centre. By that time, we were pretty wiped from being out skating all day, so we hopped on a bus to get home. Well, we had to take two buses. On the first bus, the guy sitting across from Boudi randomly started talking to us about how he wants to give some girl who was his best friend relationship advice or something, and that almost started a fight on the bus.

He sounded pretty camp, and there was a lady who was sitting in front of him and she was listening to our conversation and mumbling some apparently homophobic stuff and first we were trying to ignore what she said but then the conversation went something like this:

Guy across from Boudi: So anyway, what should I tell her, because she's my best friend and I love her to death but she just can't find a man--
Old lady: Well, maybe you should be with a woman.
GAFB: Nobody's asking you, bitch.
OL: What did you call me?!
GAFB: You're a bitch.
OL: (jumps out of her seat and goes and stands next to him) What did you say motherfucker! I'M GONNA FUCK YOU UP!!

Double runner ice skates.

And all this time everyone's like sitting in their seats thinking, "Whoa, what the fuck!" and this old lady's jumping out of her seat while the bus is going and yelling at this guy and telling him to step outside and she will fuck him up and the bus is still driving and she's threatening to hit him and everything and then finally the guy sitting across from me is all like "hey, sit down" and stuff and eventually she calmed down and sat down again, and the bus driver actually had to turn around and ask if we were all okay. Wow. But then GAFB started talking to us again, but then almost missed his stop and had to run off the bus and OL was all like "YEAH, THAT'S WHAT I THOUGHT." when he got off the bus, and the guy sitting across from me had to engage her in conversation to get her to shut up and whatever.

Anyway, there is a skatey point to this story. To defuse the sitaution, the guy sitting across from me saw that we had skates and then started talking to us about roller skating and how he used to ice skate a whole bunch like 10 years when San Francisco had a bunch of ice skating rinks, and we said roller skates are different to ice skates because ice skates just have one blade and on quads your weight distribution is different and then he started talking about these crazy ice skates with two blades that we could use because the weight distribution would be the same and then asked me where I got my Antiks and I told him that I got them at Cruz, and he was all like "yeah I know where that is; those people there are awesome" and stuff. So yes, look at that, it's the power of skating coming to make people less grumpy and more happy and awesome! Whoo! And then he wished us a good day when we got off the bus.

Chantilly Mace (aka Skater 26). OMG I JUST REALISED
I HAVE WORN THAT JAMMER PANTY AT BAD TRAINING.

So, we were all like WTF WAS THAT when we got off the bus, and then we had to transfer to another bus. It's not like any more random conversations can happen, right? Oh ha. And then on the second bus, the guy sitting across from Boudi there basically saw us and was all like "Do you guys do roller derby??" and then we had a pleasant conversation with him about Skater 26 and how he knew the people that made it until he got to his stop, and he also wished us a good day. How nice.

Then Ze Boyfriend bought us Puerto Rican food for dinner because by that time we were exhausted and starving. And then we watched Die Hard 4 which is an awful movie, but that doesn't matter. And then I discovered I had a mega reverse farmer's tan from my shoulder getting sunburnt and my arms not getting any sun from being in my elbow pads. Also, my chest is really red.

Boudi and Mouse in San Francisco, Part 2

MASSIVE EPIC SKATE DAY TODAY. After a bit of a sleep in, we packed our skates, gear and water (it was pretty warm!) and took the bus up to the Golden Gate Bridge. Yep. Our first skate for the day was on the bridge, and we went from the southern base of the bridge to the North Tower. It's apparently illegal to skate the bridge, but I couldn't find any information on that online. Travis from BAD had told me that she skated it with a couple of other people and was told it was a $10,000 fine (but they didn't get fined) but I didn't see that online, and the only thing I found was something about how officially the law permits skating "on sidewalks in residential areas", which is absurd. You'll see why in a second.

Anyway, bridge skate. We started at the south base, just past the pavilion. I have to admit that was I a bit nervous when we were gearing up, like as if we were doing this and then the cops would come and arrest us or tazer us or something before we even started. But nobody came to tell us off when we were putting our gear on, and a guy tried to not-very-surreptitiously take photos of us. Anyway, then we put our shoes and warm clothes into our packs, and we were off! (Well, we did stop when we got onto the bridge to be like "EEEE We're on the bridge!!!" for a second before we started skating again, but you get the idea.)

We took this picture AFTER our skate.
This is the only sign we saw the whole time
about the impermissibility of skating the GGB.

The bridge has a slight slope at both ends, and we had to also go around pedestrians and tourists. There's also barriers on either side, so we weren't going to fall into the bay (which has a 98% success of death rate) or get hit by cars. Anyway, the first part of the skate was just us getting used to the path, and there were some spaces between the pavers in the sidewalk that were weirdly shaped--like, every third one was slightly wider than the others--and there were also metal gratings and whatnot. If you skated too slowly over them, your wheels would get caught and you'd stack or something. There were a few times when I would get wobbly because I wasn't going fast enough over the cracks, but it was okay. Luckily nobody caught my flailing arms in the mouth.

Then we got to the South Tower! It wasn't very busy so we could stop and take photos and have a water break and whatnot. There was a little bit of getting around tourists taking photos of giant orange metal rivets and whatever, but nothing that couldn't be done by hopping around on toe stops. After that, we kept skating onwards. By this time traffic was picking up a bit (it was about 12:30 or so) but it wasn't giant tour groups or anything, so it wasn't too tricky to negotiate.

It wasn't clear if we were pedestrians or bicycles.

I think after this point we kind of realised that we would be okay skating the bridge and wouldn't stack and die (although I guess getting tazered was still a real possibility). But then we started to enjoy ourselves on the skate, rather than more "oh god let's just hurry up and do this". People were looking at us all in our gear and stuff, and kids would point and smile and one guy on a bike was like "Roller skates! That's awesome!" and everyone was really happy and excited that we were skating the bridge. I think that made us a bit more confident with what we were doing, and we were smiling back and stuff. We got to the halfway point (the dip in the cable) pretty quickly, and then after that the bridge started on a gentle slope downhill towards the northern base. There was a bit more plow stopping that had to happen here, but it wasn't too bad.

Note random Asian tourist umbrella lady
who basically came around the blind corner
and didn't stop staring at us for 5 minutes.

We got to the North Tower and had another break. The slope down from that to the Northern Base is a bit steeper, and it wasn't clear where we could stop afterwards. (Later, it turned out that we could have stopped in a little concrete section near the base, but we couldn't see it from where we were.) Anyway, we then turned around and headed back to the Southern Base. We also stopped for some photos again, and ended our skate at the Southern Base before the blind corner. Basically, at this corner, pedestrians go one way, and cyclists another, but the cycling thing is hella steep and kind of dangerous (since it's a giant steep hairpin with no barriers). So we geared down, did some stretches and put warm clothes on (it was cold and foggy) and hopped on a bus over to Lombard Street.

The only casualty on the bridge skate was a tourist who was leaning against the roadside barrier and then stepped forward without actually looking to see if there were oncoming cyclists and skaters, and I may have run over his foot a little. :P Well, I felt a little ba-bump kind of thing. Boudi was behind me, and when I stopped I said, "I think I ran over that guy's foot", and she said "yeah, then he made some kind of "Arrrggggghhh" noise when I skated past him". Whoops. But he seriously didn't look, so if I had been a bicycle or something he would have been much more run over than just "Arrrrggggghhhh". Also, I think he was wearing socks and sandals as well, so maybe he deserved it. I wonder if that's just traumatised his bridge experience or whatever.

The idea of skating down this part of
Lombard makes us want to cry.

Now, let's speak more about "traumatic". Lombard Street goes over the many hills in San Francisco and has ridiculously hilly bits, like where your driveways are at a 45 degree angle or whatever. We climbed up one of those hills (with our gear and skatey jelly legs) and looked down behind us and it was seriously a death skate. So we didn't do that. However, Lombard is also famous because it has this CRAZY crooked part with zigzags. We joked about skating it. Technically, it's a residential street (i.e. has houses on either side of it), so it's legal to skate on Lombard. I think if we tried to we might (in some possible world) have succeeded, since it'd be like shitlots of slaloms and plow stops. But tons of cars drive down it as a tourist attraction, and it does open out onto a road with more cars, and if that doesn't stop you, the wall of millions of tourists at the bottom taking pictures will. We just walked down it. Then we walked up it again. It's fucking steep and has stupidly shaped steps, plus we were carrying all our derby gear and it was the middle of the day and the sun was blazing hot, so if you can think of a better workout for your ass and legs while also taking in views of the San Francisco Bay Area and photobombing like 20 tourist shots, I'd like to hear it.

*random nod to CRDL*

At the top of Lombard, we caught a cable car down to Fisherman's Wharf. Now, I didn't take any photos on the cable car because it was like how it is in the movies with people hanging off the sides. Specifically, we were hanging off the sides of the cable car, since it was full by the time we caught it. I now have hulk arm from holding onto the cable car with one arm, which also happened to be the arm that my backpack and skates were hanging off (because I didn't have time to put my other arm through my pack strap). And there was one part when our cable car was going downhill and another was coming uphill and we were SO close to the people on the other car we could have high fived them. I had to derby stance the whole way down to not fall out or drop my gear. But then at the bottom we were just north of Fisherman's Wharf, and it was almost on 2pm and we hadn't eaten since breakfast.

We went to Alioto's and ordered from their "Fried foods in a basket" section of the menu. Seriously, that is what it is called. Fried calamari and fried fish and lots of chips, nom. It also came with salad (pfffft) or clam chowder. YES PLEASE. They also gave us half a baguette and like six hundred pats of butter before our food and we pretty much inhaled everything. I even made my own bread bowl for my chowder too because I am classy.

NOMTASTIC.

Boudi and Mouse in San Francisco, Part 1

The little skate icons are so we know what we're going to do,
in case we forget.

Yay my derby wife and I are reunited! Boudi was on the other side of the country doing research and stuff and then she came and visited me! We've only got a few days together before she heads to Tucson so we've been doing some serious catchup and skatey things. Yay. Because I am a little bit overexcited and/or OCD, I made her a list of awesome things to do, which was going to optimally cover skating things and also eating lots of awesome food.

Anyway, we started with Mexican food in the Mission before hitting up Cruz Skate Shop. Motley remembered who I was, and asked how the Antiks were going. I showed her the scar on my foot from the super gross blister I got earlier this year. And I needed new wrist guards, so she recommended some things. I now have the new Triple Eight RD Wrist Guards, which I'll do a product review for later after I've had a bit of a go on them. But yeah, Boudi got new wrist guards too, so now we are matchies. And then we went and did some touristy stuff like go to Muir Woods and stuff, and then it was time for a skate!!

Neither of us had skated for a while so we wanted to hit up somewhere flat and away from cars and pedestrians for a bit of a skate first, so we went to the skate area at Golden Gate Park. Happily, Old-guy-with-the-boombox was there, doing spins on his front wheels and toe stops (seriously, wtf, I want to learn how to do that even if it has absolutely NO use in derby). We skated a bunch there and caught up on little tips and skills we had learned from our time away with other leagues. Between us, we've skated with like eight leagues or something. Boudi had this really cool tip about hopping onto your toe stops when you're pushed out of bounds, instead of falling/stopping and then coming back into play. It saves a bunch of time in a jam, but I think I need more practice skating fast and then popping onto my toe stops and turning around. I also got to scuff/break in my new kneepads (which also are due for a product review), which was nice.

We then decided to be more adventurous and skate in the park. We were on the sidewalks and didn't have much of a problem with outdoor skating (except for a part which was slightly hilly but had also been watered lately so it was slick), and we went to the California Academy of Sciences and skated around the Music Concourse out the front of it. It's pretty and flat, and apart from some old men and a little girl on roller skates with her family, it was empty. Yay, more skate!

Me, Boudi and Francis' Butt.

There was a fountain and some circular paths, and we did some continual crossing for a bit around a statue of Francis Scott Key, who was the guy who wrote the Star Spangled Banner. He has his own statue with all the verses around it, haha. It was pretty fun, and it's on a hill looking down over the rest of the concourse and it's all pretty and whatnot. Then we headed to the end of the concourse, where the bowl was, and it actually said NO SKATING on the ground. Lol indeed. We didn't even know that the area was a No Skating one until we got to the end, since it was all one continual concourse.

But then, of course, instead of just being like "oh we should leave because it says NO SKATING" we took photos of ourselves with the signs on the ground. But anyway, that bit wasn't too fun to skate--it was bumpy and kind of full of chairs on gravel--so we headed back around the concourse and up to the path towards the skate area and the car. The sun was setting when we were done. We actually skated for about two hours all up, but it didn't seem like much of a hard skate, although we were really hungry and then went home where Ze Boyfriend ordered pizza for dinner for us. We also went down to the local dessert cafe and got craploads of pie (and some very specific reheating instructions for optimal deliciousness on chocolate lava cake). Nom.

Incriminating evidence.

Also, at the Concourse, we stealth skated up to a squirrel, which seemed to look straight at us but not realise what we were doing when we were rolling towards it.

Anyway, more skating tomorrow! Yay!!