Happy derbyversary to me (and Boudi obviously)

One year ago today, while I was drunkenly running around at my birthday party, Boudi and I got derby married. I wrote about it here at the time. So yeah, now it is our wedding anniversary, haha. We have both come a long way in derbyland this past year, what with rolling around at the gym right when VDL started (hell, even before it was called VDL) and now between us we've skated with like over 8 leagues and learned a whole bunch of mad skillz.

Okay, I'm not going to be all like reminiscing like an old fogey right now (although we both ARE founding members of Team Nanna, and I just realized that there is no Team Nanna superpower of talking about what happened when I was your age or the olden days or something) but my wife is amazeballs and I like the fact that we are such an awesome derby couple. I think part of that is because we also have similar interests outside of derby so we can also support each other there as well, which is all good. Anyway, check out this awesome present I got her (since she was the one who had to propose to me last time, I felt it was  only right that I also showered her with gifts and whatnot):

And it is sparkly and red!

It's cute; it's like those little necklace charms you have when you're 12 years old with your best friend or whatever. I have the left half and I sent the right half to Boudi. I was talking to RayWoWW about derby wives a while ago at practice here; she's a transfer skater also so her wife is out on the other side of the country or something and she was like "I'm the husband in the derby wife relationship" since her wife is the one who does everything or whatever. Ha. I think I'm kind of like that too. But I was inspired by her for the helmet decal; that was her wedding present from her wife when they got married.

I haven't put it on my helmet yet (partially because I don't know where to put it on my helmet given my helmet is covered with other stuff) but I'll have to put a picture of it here when I do. And I can get Boudi to take a picture of her helmet with her half on it or something and maybe we can smash our helmeted heads together and make the decal line up or something in the future. Ha. Anyway the whole point of this post is that my wife is amazeballs. Hoorah.

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!!

The prodigal daughter, part two

So, two things happened last night at training:

1) It rained a lot and the roof leaked onto the track.
2) I got back on skates after a month of injury and got my orange star.

I was injury-paranoid so I taped up BOTH of my ankles.
I would have also taped my knee as well except I ran out of tape.

Yep. Getting back on skates was so awesome. I was kind of stupidly nervous though, like my legs wouldn't know what to do or anything like that. So I was really conscious of being down in derby stance, pushing hard on crossovers, and that sort of thing. But it all came back pretty easily, and after a few laps I was back (except for when I nearly crashed into the bin that was on the track to catch the rain). I have to stretch my ankle a lot more though, because it's still pretty weak, and I was feeling it after a while. Rav took people through training, and Sarge and Legz took me through the remainder of my orange star test. Gah! WTF! So apparently what I had left was booty blocking, whips/pushes, and jumping over cones.

What? Jumps? Hahaha. I was so nervous about that. I'm usually okay with jumps, but I was worried that the force of it would be too much on my munty feet. But anyway, there were a bunch of cones set up and I NAILED IT IN ONE. Part of it was probably because I didn't want to do have to do it multiple times, but I also happened to jump over like seven or eight cones instead of the standard five, because Legz had put two cone-tracks next to each other (one was for people to do the one-leg slalom thing for yellow star). Haha. I'm dumb.

But yeah, then it was booty blocking, whips and pushes. Jillie was partnered up with me for this, and she's kind of mega awesome at skating so I was a bit worried I wouldn't be able to booty block her, or whip her (haha, last time I whipped anyone I ended up on my ass with a concussion). But she was a really good partner and gave me pointers for what to do (we had to skate around other people doing drills). So yeah, that was all good. Then Sarge and Legz tallied up the marks and I passed and got my star! Whoo!! (It was also the last session they were starring people for the year, so I totally squeaked in--no pun intended--to getting my orange.)

But when you have an orange star, you can be drafted onto a team. We got our first two teams announced as well: since we have a varisty themed league, our teams were the Ph.Demons, and the Cheerbleeders! And I'm a Cheerbleeder. Whoo! Sarge picked the names of all the oranges out of a hat and split them randomly, making adjustments for evening up the size, skill, experience etc. of the players. Boudica got drafted onto the Ph.Demons; Sarge split up me and my derby wife! Noes!!! But on the upside, this means I get to beat up my wife in the future, heh.

Oh, fine, so maybe three things happened last night:
3) I got drafted onto the inaugural VDL intraleague team.

I didn't scrimmage last night, but while I was NSO-ing (as the WORST NSO ever since I was wasn't even non-skating :P) I practiced doing some tomohawks and shooting the duck. Ha. Tomorrow is my last training session with VDL until March, and that sucks a bit. Sad face. I really want to scrimmage and 1) live up to my "Most likely to be ejected" shirt and 2) get more use out of my scrimmage tank and 3) try NOT to hipcheck everyone in the knee.

Yep. It was a good night to be back on skates.

That's right, I'm a goddamn champion!

Oh yeah I almost forgot

Last weekend Boudica made an honest woman out of me!

It was the day after my birthday and I had a party at my house, and then at one point she got all the derby people together in the backyard and we were all standing around, and then she derby proposed and then gave me this mega cute necklace with a bearing in it. And I think I said something like "What the fuck? Yes!" And then everyone cheered.

So here we are getting married:

(Photo: Elastomp)

Er, ignore the fact that I look like a slutty pikachu and she is dressed like Officer Serious Lady. Also, I was apparently too excited about the fact we were getting married to be able to do up the necklace myself so she had to do it, all Patrick Swayze-like.

And then of course there are customary mandatory hipchecks!

(Photo: Elastomp)

But anyway, it was a lovely ceremony. Then I proceeded to drink too much vodka and run around on a wrecked ankle and get hipchecked into a fridge, but that is another story.

Here is a picture of the necklace itself; it is MEGA cute. (I am bad at self-portraits with it around my neck...) But yeah, so I have a yellow one, and she has a purple one. And now when she messages me it's like "Hi wifey!!" which is super awesome. Eeeee.

Apparently people thought we were already married?! Well, we both are pretty awesome... :)

This girl will self-destruct in 10… 9…

Derby girls (and boys) are often described as being somewhat crazy and hardcore to do roller derby in the first place. I don’t know if the claim is true or not, and I don’t want to really get into that whole side of it. But training with the yellow stars (while they’re doing their orange star tests) is definitely a step up from the whities. As much as I think it’s important to make early derby training as accessible and friendly as possible for people learning how to skate, there comes a point when you really just want to be able to do get into the tough and aggressive smashy side of things.

We did pace lines with (non contact) weaving, whips, booty blocking, pushes and the like. But my favourite drill by far is the obstacle avoidance one. Basically, one person skates around the track while a pack of 4 other skaters spontaneously fall in front of them. The pack skaters can fall however they like; they don’t have to fall small or in any of the ways that you’re actually taught. The person skating has to avoid crashing into or tripping over the fallen skaters, and can do this by stepping around them or falling and then getting up, or (my favourite) jumping over them.

This is what you are trying to avoid doing (with skates on)

Boudica and I didn’t get tested on this tonight, because we’re pretty much the newest yellows and we aren’t getting tested to the same degree for our orange stars as everyone else. But we got to be part of the packs that fell in front of people. Sometimes strategy was needed to try and fuck it up for the person who is avoiding obstacles; sometimes it was just a matter of getting in front of them and getting all in their grill (or legs, as it were). But yeah, I certainly didn’t think that throwing myself under the wheels of oncoming skaters would be as fantastic as it was. I ended up doing a lot of really big sprawls; maybe it’s because I’m pretty little anyway so I wanted to spread out more to increase the potential for fuck-uppery. A lot of what I did was a cross between a superman dive and a starfish. I did slide a lot as well, which was cool. And once the person had avoided you, you basically skate as fast as you can to get in front of them and try again. Bahaha. I did manage to trip Ravish, and after a moment of satisfaction doing that (because she’s an awesome skater), then it was right back up to throw myself under her wheels again.

This is how I sprawl.

It was stupidly fun. Given that you’re pretty much not padded where your vital organs are, I’m surprised that nobody ruptured a kidney or got some wheels in their spleen. I did get some skates VERY close to my head, and I’ve been thinking a lot about whether or not skate helmets are really that good at preventing concussions. But I wasn’t kicked in the head or anything which was good. Hooray for not getting brain damage. And apart from a bruise on my sidebum(??) from constantly throwing my self on the ground in the same way, I didn’t get any real injuries.

I can’t wait until I get to do it again. And maybe this time, maybe I’ll get to avoid them so I can jump over people too. Yeah, maybe I do have a bit of a self-destructive streak.

Oh, and then after we got kicked out of the gym we decided to get our orange star fitness shit out of the way. This meant that a bunch of us did pushups and situps (5x10 of each) and planks (60 forward, 60 for each side) on either a hard concrete basketball court or a duck shit-covered wet patch of grass. Well, we are crazy and hardcore like that.

FUCK YEAH YELLOW STAR

So Boudica and I were supposed to go for our yellow stars on Sunday, with Pitts and possibly Jaxhammer as well. After training on Sunday, I booked the gym hall for an hour today so we could have a skate around and run through the test as a practice. I told Sarge about it on Tuesday, and he was like "oh cool I'm not doing anything on Thursday so I can come down and have a look and give you some pointers" which was super cool of him.

Check out my helmet. Also note WFTDA rules test on the floor.

Anyway, so we show up there and set up the track. And then we started going through the test. We did our 5-in-1 first, which is basically doing 5 laps in a minute to pass. I fucking stupidly played soccer yesterday and corked my left thigh and had a mega bruise on my right (just where the kneepad sat). So putting weight on my left leg was kind of shitballs. And of course there's a lot of that when you're crossing and it's your inside leg. But I managed to get the 5 in 1 done in 59 seconds. :P Boudica did it in 57! I am sure I could go faster but I was doing dumb shit like not counting my laps (and I thought I was done after 3... really?!?) and that sort of thing. I didn't feel like I was really in the groove for it, but oh well.

Oh, and one-leg slaloms. FUCKING CHRIST. Seriously, I did these okay last Sunday when I was casually practicing, and for some reason I think my nerves got the better of me. It seriously took me like TWENTY goes before Sarge suggested that I go into the slalom on the left side of the cone, so I go to the right between the first and second cones. And that totally makes sense because on my left leg I tend to drift to the right. Why the fuck didn't I think of that before?!?! Duh. But after he suggested it I got it in ONE go. Seriously I don't think I'm the right kind of smart for derby sometimes...

Then we had to do a coast and squat for one straight and a corner, and then a lap of squat and sticky skate. And some falls (baseball, 4-pointer, 180 degree one-knees).And OMG 60 second plank. Normally when we do it off skates I'm fine with it and can hold it for more than 60 seconds, but for some reason today on skates I felt like I was dying! But that worked out okay. As did the 40 sit ups and 40 pushups (which I managed to do properly, even on my munted rotator cuff).

But fuck yeah. I passed, and so did Boudica. It was awesome. I just felt really good about getting it, even if at some points I just squeaked through. I'm sure I could do the 5-in-1 better if I had another go, and also the one-leg slaloms.We aren't saying anything about it yet until Sarge officially announces it on Sunday, but yeah. Awesomesauce.

Of course, right after that, we were onto some orange star stuff! Hahaha like for serious. I really like the 5 jumps in a row, and we also practiced the 2m plow stop. God that shit is hard. But I can't wait to start doing it! And whips! And hits and all that stuff! Scrimmage time here we come!

White Star!!

Since we’d been skating for a bit now, last night Sarge surprised us all with roller disco for everyone, and white star testing for most people. WTF. I really do shit under assessment pressure. Prior to this, we had our own system of sorting “freshmen” and “sophomores” (we’re using a college theme for our league. Other leagues sometimes use pirates or military or whatever). Basically, there it was Sarge watching us skate and seeing how we were with stability, having proper derby stance, fitness, etc. I realy sucked at derby stance when I started. I was so frigging upright I probably should have been a figure skater (or, at least off-skates someone without joints in their legs). Haha. So when we got sorted into Freshies and Sophies I didn’t make the cut. And that was kind of gutting. But it turned out that my non-lesbian-equivalent-of-a-derby-wife (or rather, more like derby BFF) Boudica didn’t make the cut either, and we had the same kinds of things to work on, so yeah. We have a pretty long-runinng joke now where we are “Team Nanna” because when we started we used to skate around and hip check like geriatrics.

So, instead of doing the Freshie/Sophies thing, we switched over to the star rating, which is what people use normally in Australia. So CRDL uses it, I think the Sydney leagues do, Victoria RDL does, etc. For the uninitiated, the star ranking gives you a different color star depending on how derby-ready you are. Without stars you’re fresh meat, a white star means you’re getting basic derby skills, a yellow one means you can do some kind of scrimmaging or something, orange means you can be drafted onto a league and scrimmage with big girls, and green is like you’re some kind of skating superstar and you can get onto the all-star team or something like that. I’m not sure what the actual designations are, but it’s something like that. Another CRDL friend (Lee Wrecks) recently got her orange, and the main thing for her there was that she could get drafted, and I think you actually do full-contact scrimmage there.

Interestingly, these are the things I suck most at on my assessment.

And I had a pretty rough idea of what goes into white star testing. CRDL’s November tryouts had a list of minimum skills you needed, like stops and falls and how many pushups and situps you could do and stuff, and I think that was based on the star test. So I wasn’t super worried, although I DO like to do well on tests. :P

Anyway, Rubi was my tester, and I had to do T-stops on both feet (FUCK I HATE T-STOPS), a plow stop, 20 situps (it’s supposed to be 10 situps and 10 pushups but I have a crap shoulder so I got to do 20 situps, only I ended up doing 23 because I can’t count), a lap of sticky skating, weaving through cones, crossovers, a thing where you had to do walk forwards, backwards and sideways on skates without falling over, 1 and 2-knee falls (others had to do 4-point, but again, shoulder), and glides. Like, when you skate on one foot in the straight bit of the track.

I think I did okay, except I fucked up one of my t-stops (I started going in a circle instead of stopping, but then I eventually stopped) and apparently I need to swing my arms more(?) when I skate. And crossovers need to be more “fluid”. But I passed!! Woooooot! And what’s more was I was in the first group of 3 to get tested, so that was pretty much a big relief. Then the rest of the time was just social skating until everyone else was done testing.