Seasons Beatings, the second year: the night before

So here I am packing seasons beatings again. However, this year I managed to only pack two bags of food, which is equivalent to about this much:

That foil thing is two PB&Banana and two PB, Nutella and Banana sandwiches.

Goliath once said that I take enough food to a bout with me to feed a small village. Heh.

I'm super stoked to be driving up tomorrow to see and skate with all the awesome people I met last year! Yeah! 

(Also, this post was a sneaky way for me to test my liveblogging capacities. Phew!)

Seasons Beatings, the second year now liveblogged!!

So a few exciting things:

1. I now have entered the 21st century and have a smartphone.

2. I am going to Season's Beatings again this year. It is this Saturday! We're driving up in the morning and my first bout is at 11:45.

This time will be mega cool; the people I skated with last year in the beginner division have been in touch and we're all stoked to go back to where we met (but now in the intermediate group) and also, there'll be more people from NRV headed up (and now that I know them better, it's like there are more friends all around. Yeah!). So hopefully that will be good. Last year it was super fun although afterwards I could barely walk or do anything.

So what I'm going to do is try to liveblog the event if I can get my phone and blogger to co-operate. Yeah!

A very derby weekend

So two weekends ago was very derby-eventful:

Hehe, Mouse with a mouse. I am so funny sometimes.
(Photo: Bettie Lockdown)

Thursday was the league's Trunk or Treat at the skate rink. Basically all this means is we do Halloweeny stuff and give out candy to the local kids. I can't say that this event is a great success, since there's usually a godawful low turnout of children (well, the rink is kinda far away from everything really), but I got to eat a shit load of candy bars and pixie sticks. And I revived the pikachu outfit but this time it was family friendly and I was sober (but full of sugar).

Halloween is also the anniversary of my munty hand injuries. One year later, my fingers are still slightly crooked and still require physical therapy. Good times.

Friday was a party at Pumpkin's house. Pumpkin is my Team Pie collaborator here at NRV. She is super artsy and makes awesome food. So a party at hers means a shit load of awesome food and lots of nice homemade arts and crafts things. A bunch of people from the league showed up (in costume!!) and I learned about some awesome American cultural practices like this totally INSANE game where you wear oven mitts and punch open boxes (yes, WTF!) and then we did things like drink a lot of booze and play spooky bingo.

Arrak-Kiss and I wanted to play a geography game where people would have to list the states in Australia (given that I get shit for not knowing where ANYTHING is in the US, I thought it'd be nice to reciprocate), but we had maps of Australia and Canada and I didn't even know Canada looked like how it did until someone pointed out that I was looking at a map of Canada. MEGA FAIL. :P But it was a super fun night, yay.

Okay, seriously, how the fuck was I supposed to know? :P

Then Saturday was pre-bout day! The B-team had a bout out in WV, and a few of us decided to take Beth's RV and go camping the night before. Hell, it was more like GLAMping--this RV is the fucking shit. It was super fancy and had a TV with cable and a fancy kitchen and oven and running water and everything. It was seriously good fun and an awesome team bonding experience.

FANCY SHIZ YO! (Note presence of TV)

And we got to have fire-roasted bananas and smores for breakfast the next day! How fucking fancypants is that, really!

Fucking breakfast of champions!
(Probably not really, because too much chocolate = crash)

And finally, Sunday was bout day! We had a lazy morning (complete with smores--see above), showered, played with some of the native wildlife (well, some of us wanted to throw grasshoppers in to the fire... :/), then we packed up the RV, and then headed over to the Civic Center in Charleston for some bout prep. There's an entry about it here, but this was basically the pinnacle of an awesomely derbylicious weekend. Yeah. That felt good.

Bout v Chemical Valley

(I know there was a photographer at the bout, but I haven't found any photos yet, so I haven't posted them. Plus--as you'll see--chances are that most of them involve me getting my ass kicked or my face punched in.)

So our last bout of the season was a B-team bout against Chemical Valley in Charleston, WV.

Due to some previous stupid shit, our bench was much, much shorter than we had anticipated. We played with only nine skaters, which meant that there were a lot of back-to-back jams for people. Lindy and I were primarily jammers, so we went in every second jam, with Ape occasionally coming in as a relief jammer when we got too buggered.

And hell did I get buggered. First of all, I was told to be in the first jam of the bout, and I am REALLY not good with that. I usually take a while in the bout to get my head in the right space, so being told I was not only jamming in the first jam of the bout but also doing that slow-mo demo jam before hand was seriously like a deer-in-the-headlights moment for me. I was nervous about fucking up the demo jam, hahaha. Ugh. I hate all that stupid winding-up-to-the-bout stuff that happens, with intros/national anthem/demo bout stuff. I just want to start skating dammit!

Lovely rink rash from sliding on the concrete, or is that
just from someone's velcro? I don't even know anymore.

But when that happened, shit was tough. The first two jams CVRG broke first and got lead, so we didn't get any points on the board until the third jam when I got lead jammer and put five points on. Then it was a slow crawl up the scoreboard, but at the cost of getting seriously pummelled. I don't know why but my ankles and shins were super killing me (I think it was playing on concrete and banging my toe stops on it when I was running, or something?) and as I got tired, I got stupid and sloppy. In fact, at one point I cut track, got sent to the box, came out (the other jammer got sent to the box), cut track again, got sent to the box AGAIN, then the next jam started when I had 0.16 seconds left on the box so I came out and immediately backblocked the shit out of someone, then got sent to the box AGAIN. I was sent to the box THREE times in two jams. How fucking embarrassing. UGH. I wanted to punch myself in the face.

But after all that time out I got my shit together and didn't have any more penalties for the entire game. Yay. And I didn't need to punch myself in the face because my face (and the rest of me) was suitably tenderized by CVRG. They have a pretty big team, so my face was a prime target for elbows, fists and shoulders. Surprisingly, I didn't get a bloody lip this time, but I did get elbows to the eye, and shoulder blocked so hard in the face I had someone's number on my cheeks. I got at least three people boxed for high blocks. I also stopped counting how many times I got hit in the face after about six. :P

Lovely face bruise, complete with blood pooling.

The best one was an elbow to the meaty part between my cheek (like the bottom of my eye socket) and my eyelid. Apparently the refs were going to make that an ejection but then they rescinded it. :/ But I got ice on it and after a while my field of vision got a bit obscured by puffy eye meat. Lovely. I took the first four jams of  the second period off, while I was trying to sort out my shit. But once I had had a bit of a rest, I did feel much better going in. We racked up a few more points in the second period but didn't end up winning. No biggie though.

The score differential was so much that I don't think we really cared. On the B team we don't get to do a lot of bouts, so I think most of us were just super stoked to be bouting at all. It's hard to get practical bout experience if you're not an A team or bridge skater, so being able to have our own bout (with some A teamers helping us out of course) was a very exciting experience. And there aren't really that many just B team skaters, so sometimes it doesn't feel like we get a lot of bout time, or bouting experiences. So I think we just wanted to get out there and skate, and we really did. We busted our asses out there and tried our hardest, and it showed. We were still learning, and it was still fun for us even if we got our asses handed to us on a plate. We didn't care about that.

Oh, but this was the best bit:

The mug was actually full of Kit Kats,
but we ate them on the ride home in the RV.

Seriously. I vaguely heard them announce it after the bout and I was just like, "WAT" until somebody (Psycho? Shilo?) told me to actually go up there to get my award. Haha. I'm so dumb. The cynnical part of me wants to say that it was because CVRG felt bad for punching me in the face too many times. :P But whatever it was, this was a seriously humbling experience. I totally never expected anything like this because all I wanted to do was jam (and not get pummelled too much).

But yeah, hooray. :) And that's the end of our season!

Thunder in the Valley, the prequel

Tomorrow is the Thunder in the Valley double header over in Salem!

 Star City Rollergirls are hosting, and basically the nearby leagues are coming to bout. NRV's All Star team is playing Chemical Valley in the first bout. And then the NRV B Team skaters are skating for Blackwater Rollers as guest skaters, and there will also be some other skaters from Iron Mountain to round out Blackwater's lineup.

It'll be a long day for me. I'm NSOing the first bout and then skating in the second. I'm also NSOing a position that I've not done before, and it's probably the scariest one to fuck up. I'm jam timing. I have to practice blowing my whistle. Fox40 whistles are fucking confusing, especially to get the four blasts to end the jam. I feel like I'm drooling everywhere. And because of the venue, I'll have to be extra shouty. And then of course when I'm bouting I'm going to need to be extra shouty too.

I'm particularly nervous because Jam Timing is one of those positions where if you fuck up, EVERYONE knows. So apparently tonight at the WFTDA Division 2 playoffs, the JT thought that overtime was one minute jams, and then stuffed that up. I haven't found out all the details yet, but knowing that there will be a sufficient amount of rage if I fuck up makes me a little twitchy. Hell, you have a whistle and if you sound wimpy blowing it, then you kinda suck. Now I'm not a super loud person so this will be an interesting experience on the boundaries of my comfort zone.

In fact, I think I'm going to go down to the car and lock myself in it and practice blowing my whistle. :P

In an unrelated note, the place we are bouting at tomorrow is also know as the stadium where the rodeo scene for Borat was filmed:

I hope the audience will be more friendly. :P

Post Tax Smackaroo

So Post Tax was this weekend. There were four womens' teams and three co-ed ones. I just did the women's bout; I think co-ed is something I'll need to work up to.

Psycho, Maluvicen, Caboose and Iron Man get cute little
MVP trophies and also calendars from the SPCA for
being awesome at the co-ed bout finals.

Overall it was fun; I saw some people again that I met at Beatings last year, and met some new skaters too. Anyway, it turned out that most of the people on my team were relatively new. In our first bout, it turned out that only one person said that they jammed regularly, although we had a few "I'll jam if I have to" people. I think I was one of those, but maybe more to the "I'm okay jamming" side. So, as a result of that, I was given the jammer panty for the first jam of the first bout. I was a bit like O_o.

O_o turns to :O very quickly when the jam whistle goes.
(Photo credit: Albert Hartley aka Mr. Whip)

But when the benchie gives you the panty, you take it and you put it on your helmet. So there I was, jamming in the starting lineup. I didn't get lead, and I think I got hit a bit and fell. But I made it through the pack. Yay! I jammed a few more times that bout, although I did get boxed twice. The first was for "taking a knee to avoid a hit" which seriously was a bit of a WTF (okay, so I get that I'm short and if I'm using my toe stop and in derby stance I'm low, but my knee didn't make contact with the ground).

Sweaty head bandana also doubles as a bandage.

The second was for a low block, where I fell over someone on the opposing team who was down, and someone fell on me, and I got boxed. Bleh. But that time when I came out of the box, my shin was really hurting. I thought I had crazy shin splints, and I barely even made it through the pack without getting the crap pummelled out of me. At this point, I also got can opened, and I've never been on the receiving end of a can opener, but my boobs hurt and it felt like an elephant kicked me in the sternum. (Almost a week later, it still hurts, and it feels all crackly.)

After the bout, I looked at my shins and it turned out in the low block sandwich fall I had landed on someone's trucks on my shins and they were doing purple. I had to ice my shins. Then Beth taped it for me so I could do my second bout.

I didn't jam as much in the second one because my shins and ankles were all crying, but I did manage some good hits I think. I like creeping up on opposing blockers and hitting them when they are not looking, hahaha. I also have to work on not throwing myself at the opposing jammer, and leaning more into them with my hips I think. My shoulders are bony, but I think most of the time if I just do that I bounce off them, whereas I might get more power and control in my hits if I am leaning them out. Anyway, we din't win that bout either, and as a result our team was eliminated from the finals. Sadface.

Beer in a bowl, hooray!

There were a total of 7 bouts I think throughout the day, so I had a bit of time to also just hang out and watch some good derby. I learned a bunch just from watching other teams, in terms of working out strategies and that sort of thing. I should have written it down though. :P

And then we had giant bowls of beer at Macados and more shennanigans were had, when our party of 6 people turned into an alternative to the after party when 5 other tables of loud, smelly derby people showed up.

We took up one whole section of the restaurant and probably scared off a bunch of people. Apparently part of the section we were sitting was reserved for a bunch of high school kids going to their prom dinner or whatever, but they ended up reseating them faaaaar away from us. :P Hahahaha. At least we tipped our poor server guy well; I think he was probably traumatized by the whole incident.

Post Tax Smacks

Tomorrow I'm heading up to Roanoke to skate in their Post Tax Smacks, which is kind of like the scrimmagey all-day bout that Season's Beatings was. I'm excited, although one big difference is that the teams are of mixed skill levels. So I have people like Gritz on my team, and I will be beaten up tomorrow by people who are Gritz-like on other teams. Whee.

It's also tournament-style, so it'lll be a bit more competitive than Beatings. There are four women's teams (and three co-ed) and you basically will be playing elimination-style. I'm in the first bout, and then there's a while until my second bout, so hopefully I'll learn a bit of stuff tomorrow, even if my team gets eliminated (which of course I hope it doesn't).

I'm also trying a new layout with wheels (with my poisons--which are new and I will have to write a review for--and my 88A bullets). But yeah, again, I've packed enough food to feed a small village, as well as all my gear, and this time four different colored shirts (in case there are spare spots on other teams). Hopefully time there will be no bloody lip and no vomit, but we'll see. (What else is there, crying?)

The closest bout ever

So this happened earlier tonight:

I think a lot of us thought NRV was going to get thrashed because LC beat Charlottesville by a heap, and Charlottesville beat NRV. But transitivity fail: we beat LC by a hair!

NRV did great; the first period they came out really strong and with a smaller bench than Little City. But at the beginning of the second period Little City was fighting back and they closed a pretty good gap quickly. There were lots of amazing walls and some pretty hard hits.

I think the lead changed in the last five minutes about five times. And in that time both jammers went to the box. Plus the last few points were calculated after the final whistle, so it was a surprise I wasn't having a hernia by that point.

Also, I was NSO-ing, doing THREE jobs: penalty tracking for both teams, and inside whiteboard. I didn't screw up and I didn't have a meltdown (although sometimes it was close). So, everyone wins!

Bout vs Blackwater

It's been a busy week, derbywise. We had the bout on Saturday, then practice Sunday, bout review Monday, then Tuesday and Wednesday were practice. My bruises from the weekend are coming up nicely, and we're now looking forward to the upcoming bouts.

Anyway, Blackwater. So this was the place where I popped my bouting cherry, as it were. Well, properly bouting anyway. I'll try to recount some of the things from the bout.

I remember there was a lot of stuff that had to happen before the bout actually took place. I mean, not just getting there and warmups and stuff, but then there are introductions (at which I failed very clearly), captains meetings, the singing of the national anthem, random announcements, the bout demo/slo-mo jam, and THEN the bout could start. It was weird because I was so ready to bout when I put my skates on at the beginning, then all these things had to happen before we could start and it was anticlimatic and clearly I was jittery since I did a bunch of stupid things like almost crashing into people in the high five area and getting a bloody mouth in warmups.

Once the bout was underway though, I think I stopped being that stupid. I don't even remember much about the first half. We had two lineups and we just alternated those, and rotated our jammers. I didn't think I was being super effective in the first half; a lot of it was just getting used to being on the track and working with the lineup. I did feel like I was giving up my point a bit easily at some parts because I was kind of floating and there were so many things I could do at any given moment that I couldn't decide if I should do offense or defense or what the hell.

I think this was in the second jam or something.

I think our jammers were working really well and we racked up a lot of points. We also did a fair bit of power jamming, and the strategies we had been working on (passive offence stuff) worked pretty well. I think our walls could have been stronger because Blackwater were really good at getting in between us and breaking up our walls and we weren't reforming very quickly. We also had problems with being aware of the opposing jammer; a few times she snuck through before anyone had even turned around to see. (Of course, the bench is all there screaming JAMMER!! but it doesn't necessarily mean that the pack is going to notice.)

I think it was at half time when we went back to our team area and noticed that I wasn't getting the numbers on my arms redrawn on that I figured I needed to hit people more. I felt like I was good at positional blocking, but knocking down some skaters would help the jammer score some easy points. Plus, it's fun to hit a bitch. I actually wanted to see if I could take out the biggest skater on the opposing team. Of course the likelihood of that was minimal, but it gave me something to work towards.

I think I felt much better about blocking in the second half. We did a lot of backwards bridging, so you hit the jammer out, the scoot back so she has to reenter behind you, while the rest of your team is bridging so you can still take her out:

Imagine I'm the pink blocker who hits out the yellow jammer.

 

Then the other blockers peel off and bridge so I can still engage the jammer.
In practice it works better when I skate up to the next pink blocker so it becomes a 2-on-1.

OMG I AM HITTING SOMEONE. LOL.
(Actually, this was the hit that knocked the jammer out and we did
an awesome backwards bridge and forced her to cut, hooray.)

I hit the jammer a few times and she fell down, and then I ran backwards on my toe stops a bunch to make her reenter behind me. I really like toe stop work. Anyway, yeah so the backwards bridging I think worked quite well. Making sure you bring at least one other blocker with you also helps, so you end up with the jammer having to get past two blockers (which is harder than one).

Most times for hitting other blockers, throwing myself at them wasn't so great, so other times I think leaning people out worked better, but as they got tired, hitting became more effective. So I guess I'm also a late bloomer in that sense; I found my fire halfway through the bout. (I guess that works though, since people who had their fire early on were tiring out, so the amount of fire-ness overall in the team stays consistent?)

During one of our power jams. Ape and I were both rookies
and we were the only two blockers on the track. We managed
to send of two Blackwater blockers for destroying the pack, whee.

I also think we need to do more work in terms of actually doing something when the jammer isn't around. I felt like we would be like "oh here's the opposing jammer, let's hit her. Oh now she's gone, let's stand around until she comes back", which is actually probably quite boring to watch. Plus I'm sure fucking with the other team's walls and whatnot throughout would throw them off a bit.

Oh, and about halfway through the second half I got to jam. Before the whistle blew for my first time as jammer, there was a time out. The anticipation was horrible. I felt like I needed to pee and throw up and crap my pants all at the same time. But once the jam was underway, it was okay. I somehow got lead and then on my scoring lap I managed to make it through and call it before the opposing jammer got through. I need to pick up my feet more. Also, I did fall a bunch. That's something I need to work on: not falling when someone smacks into me. It's just so much easier to fall, but I got sucked back into the pack a few times as a result. I guess the way you get better at that is just to get pummelled a whole bunch and try to stay on your feet? I'm not sure what other drills there would be for this...

The final score was 206-347 to NRV. I learned a whole bunch, and going to the after party was also awesome! Now we get to do it all again in a month, wheeeeee.

All of the rookie fails.

Officially now I have bouted in a full (although not WTFDA sanctioned--that might be the next step) bout. Hooray! And I wasn't munted (well, severely). Hooray! The weather was awesome; a couple of us drove up to Appomattox together and it was nice to get the road tripping experience in as well.

I'll write more about the actual bout in a little while, but this is just a list of some of the things you should NOT do during your first bout.

Another thing that I should do for a bout:
Provide a picture for the program.
(But yay, I'm actually in a program!!)

I guess I didn't really have pre-bout jitters or anything; I did a bit of work earlier in the day, made myself two peanut butter and banana sandwiches, ate a stupid amount of breakfast burrito and packed my gear. We got to the skate place with plenty of time to spare, so there was no rush to get ready or gear up as we went to hit the track.

Then I went on to commit all the rookie mistakes possible in the history of roller derby.

During warmups we were doing the "three people in a wall and a jammer tries to break through the wall" drill and I got elbowed in the face and busted my lip. DURING WARMUPS. The bout hadn't even started yet and I was already bleeding. And the EMTs weren't getting there until right before the bout, so I had to stop warming up and go and wash out my mouth and mouthguard and everything, but there wasn't any ice so I just had a fat lip for the first part of the bout. Interestingly, getting elbowed in the mouth was exactly what happened in my first bout for Season's Beatings too. My prebout ritual is now eating a peanut butter and banana sandwich, and getting a bloody lip from a teammate. I'm 2 for 2.

Then, when the bout was about to start, I fucked up the rollout by almost plowing into our bench manager.We were doing an intro when we skated around the track in a pack, and when your name was called, you skated a lap, high fiving the other team as you went, and then rejoined the back of the pack.

What normal people did.

Gritz was announcing, and she had a little description of everyone based on their derby names. So mine was something about "cruel and unusual punishment", and then I got very excited and started skating my lap. We were right about to go into turn 3 when I started. I took the corner too fast and almost smashed straight into Smack in the high five line, but she was right in front of the Blackwater team so I could either skate into her, or into the opposing team. I think I made the right choice. :P Still, that was embarassing as fuck. I don't even know how that happened.

What I ended up doing. FML.

I also managed to projectile vomit (well only a little bit) on myself and possibly an opposing blocker in the second half of the bout. I was jamming and back blocked someone. But I backblocked them so hard and because they were taller than me their butt basically went into my stomach.

The drill, or the jam, or whatever.

The downside was that I was full of gatorade and breakfast burrito and bananas and water and clif bars and it was like getting punched in the stomach, and all that predigested food had to go somewhere, so as I sat in the box it came up a little. It wasn't like I was skating and barfing on the track at the same time, but it was enough that I had little chunks of undigested gatorade-clif bars-banana on my wrist guard and in my mouth guard and a bit on my pants. Go me. And I was only in the box for four seconds, so I wasn't feeling too amazing when I got out and finished the jam.

But seriously. Who the fuck does that?! At least I didn't puke on the track. It would have been worse if they had to stop the bout because I had barfed all over the track and it was ruining people's skates.

I think those were the main things that one should probably not do in their first bout. Okay, so maybe I didn't commit ALL of the rookie mistakes in history. I didn't forearms anyone, I didn't multiplayer block anyone, I didn't hit anyone with my elbows (I think). I spent a total of FOUR SECONDS in the box for the entire bout. I'm not sure if that means I wasn't working hard enough or something. Or maybe I was playing very cleanly.

I hope this means I won't be such a derp in my future bouts. I just get a bit overexcited at the prospect of actually bouting. Hopefully that is all (or mostly) out of my system. No pun intended, but you get the idea.

But it was fun, and I learned a lot from it, whee! More on the actual bout later.

Bout day is here.

There are many mountains in derby. You pass fresh meat, you get to scrimmage, you get drafted to a team, you do your first bout.

Today is bout day. It's the first time I will get to bout for a team representing my league. I will get to do a rollout. I will get to wear a team jersey with my name on it (see below) I will get to do a 2-3 hour road trip with my teammates and leaguemates to travel to the bout venue. I will get to play derby with people with whom I've trained and practiced with for the last couple of months, and we know how each other work. 

I don't know if we'll win, but that seems secondary to actually getting to bout right now. It feels like it's been a long time coming for me. But, as the Chinese saying goes, for every mountain, there is a higher mountain. So the challenges will still be coming, which is good for not stagnating.

I'll write a report up of how the bout went later today (or maybe tomorrow, depending on how tired I am), but if it was anything like the practice bouts and scrimmages I've done, things will be good. This is one mountain I've been looking to get over for a while, and I'll be happy to have conquered it.

Also, don't forget that any part of a good uniform involves sparkly yellow derbyskinz (they look better with a butt in them):

Today, after almost two years of skating...

 ...I am finally on a roster for a bout I will actually get to bout.

Yes.

So, last night I had a dream that I was buying warpaint for derby, and then today the roster went out for NRV's B team bout against the Blackwater Rollers. Coincidence? I think not. (Yes, I have dreams about derby. I often hipcheck Ze Boyfriend in my sleep.)

Okay, so I've been on rosters before. At VDL, I had been drafted to both the Cheerbleeders and the Dishonour Rollers, but I never actually got to do their bouts since I was overseas or injured. I did the CRDL Scrimmage (which was terrifying at the time because I had NO idea what I was doing) and I also did the mini-bouts at Season's Beatings last year.

But this upcoming bout will be my first proper bout with a team that I actually am in a league with. I will get a jersey with my name on it, and I will get to hit people in the name of my league. These things matter; it means that I'm not such a late bloomer after all (although I admit I was getting worried that if I didn't have any bouting experience and I had been skating for years, people might think there was something wrong with me).

It also will be the first time I get to do a rollout. Yay!

This shit is bananas.

Okay, so the NRV all-stars are having their opening bout tomorrow for the season. I'm on the bout production committee, and my job (at least for this bout) is to make some snack baskets for the teams and the refs. We have baskets; all I have to do is fill them for about $30.

Also now all the food has been on the ground next to my
stinky gear. At least everything is prepackaged. I call this
a food handling win.

I feel a little bit like a waterboy doing this. Also, I have an idea of how much a derby girl or boy eats (a LOT), and feeding that many people for virtually under $1 a person is pretty tough. Plus, you want the things to be nutritious to some extent, and/or be good sources of energy. And THEN presumably they've got to be relatively easy to eat; something prepackageed and edible with hands (with stinky wrist guards on, ew) would be the goal.

So off I went to the store. Shopping on a budget is hard; shopping on a budget with nutritional restrictions is even harder. I had to get lots of things that were on sale or were cheaper if you had a membership card from the grocery store. I actually ended up spending something like $38 but got a fair bit, and there are leftovers for next time as well. So this is waht the baskets look like:

The baskets don't look super terrible when they're filled.

This is what they have in them:

• Bananas (obviously)
• Chocolate chip cookies
• Peanut butter cookies
• Peanut butter cracker things
• Cheese cracker sandwich things
• Berry trail mix
• Random assorted mini candy bars
• Gummi bears
• Potato chips (you could get an assorted box of snack size ones for $10)

I assume I don't have to get each person one of everything; presumably these are supposed to supplement food that they already have with them. But yeah, I managed to cram them all into the baskets, and then also have some left to make a snack/thankyou box for the announcer (who is driving from Charlotte) and also possibly feed the NSOs.

Oh, and I also got a free box of cake mix from the store with some random store coupon, so tomorrow I'll make cupcakes for the NSOs; it's like they are always neglected in these cases and they work pretty damn hard. And that way I'm feeding pretty much everyone who has anything to do with the bout for under $40 because I am a champ. :D

FREE CAKE. YOU CAN KEEP YOUR NASTY HEALTHY FOOD.

 I just hope it's enough food for everyone... it's not like I'm Jesus or anything and can do magic food division.

SASHIMI AND BREADCRUMBS FOR EVERYONE!

Random reminder that I am in the South: when I went to load up my cart with bananas, the guy who was stocking them was looking and said "are you making banana puddin' or something?" and I said no and explained why I needed like 20 bananas, and then I was like "damn I really want banana pudding now, because that shit is tasty." I love southern food.

An away game!

Varsity Derby League took on the Blue Mountains Roller Derby League last night in their first travel bout of the season, and they won 244-168. I has a proud. :D

Of course, because of the time difference, I was getting the updates much after the fact. But if you check out VDL's facebook page you can see how it all went down. It looked like a pretty close bout.

In other news, I'll hopefully start bouting with the NRV B team in March, when they have their first away bout against Blackwater!

Beefcake.

So, at Season's Beatings, in my attempt to be an athelete, I got that big ass bottle of gatorade and some muscle milk. I don't know if drinking protein shakes and whatever is effective, but if it helps me recover faster and fix my muscles and whatever, then hells yes. I also tried to eat things like protein bars and peanut butter and banana sandwiches to get my energy up.

No.

Last week, I bought my first actual pack of protein shakes. I don't want to be like super muscly or anything, just have a better recovery time after my muscles get a workout. I feel like sometimes if I skate really hard then it takes me a day or so to recover or at least stop feeling sore, so I want to improve on that. General conditioning I think will help, and so will stretching after practice (which is what BAD taught me but I've not seen any other league I skate with do that), as well as eating better.

I've generally been a pretty healthy eater. I don't really like candy, and I'm definitely not one of those women who will sit in front of the TV and eat an entire block of chocolate or whatever. But I know I don't eat very much meat and don't get protein from that. I eat mostly carbs, and my favorite foods are pretty much all carbs. Before Beatings I accidentally carbo loaded the whole week before instead of a few hours before. Oops. Yeah, I'm not good with that sort of thing. But I do want to lose a bit of weight so I have less to carry when I'm jamming, and also make it lean muscle so I can take and give a few hard hits.

So I've started drinking these protein shake things:

Fancy science shit in fancy sciency looking packaging!

It's like 500ml, so I drink half on my way to practice, and half immediately after, and then usually I have dinner when I get back home, maybe about 30-40 minutes after practice.

Importantly, it doesn't taste like ass. It doesn't taste like rich dark chocolate either, but we'll see. Anyway, I've been doing this for the past week or so and I don't feel beefier or anything. I guess I need to do this longer and more consistently to see if it's improving my performance. Maybe I will just be super beefcake in the next few months or something. Or maybe this stuff is just going to make me ridiculously flatulent. We'll see.

Now I'm beat, part 2

After my nap I had to go back to the Convention Centre (actually just down the street from the hotel) for the last bout I was in. I think the 6.5 hour break was not a very good idea; I felt sluggish and it took me a while to warm up properly. It took me the entire previous bout (Pirates vs Ninjas) to warm up, and still I felt a bit bleh.

Speed Junkie helping out her jammer in one of the other bouts.

The last bout I was in was Rum Balls vs Fruitcake, and I was on team Fruitcake. (I'm surprised there weren't any jokes about balls that I heard.)

Oh yeah, speaking of balls, I forgot to say that this happened during the day as well:

It was right after the second bout; I have no idea what was going on but it was some kind of giant inflatable ball racing thing. I reckon this would be cool to do in a swimming pool. I didn't get a go though; there was already a huge line and I was still on skates (you had to wear your gear but not skates to have a go in the ball).

Anyway, third bout. It was set up like the second bout, with the benchie just allocating positions for people. I jammed a few times, but I felt pretty tired and I didn't do any big points-scoring laps (also I think by this time people were aware of who was used to jamming and would wall up MUCH more than they did for people just "trying out" and stuff). There was one jam where I didn't even score any points and got pummelled by the opposing team and it took me like 3 laps to get through the pack. Ugh. But yeah, I blocked a bit more there and I did some good, hard hits on people, and then usually got them busted for cutting because I scooted back and brought one of my teammates with me. But yeah, I was pretty happy just to block but not do any fancy shiz.

3/4 of Team Sparklebutt: Slam Gamgee, me, Shirley McSlain.
All our pants are different shades of sparkly yellow.
(Photo credit: Jugglenaut)

It also turned out that three other people on my team had bought gold or yellow derbyskinz during the day, so we made it such that we had a Team Sparklebutt lineup. It was really fun. And it was just hilarious because our strategy was basically just to stick our shiny butts into the opposing team's faces and let the camera flashes do the work. Of course, that wasn't REALLY our strategy, but it was fun anyway.

I also didn't pivot the entire day. The first bout I was more focused on just getting my jamming/blocking skills done, and the second bout I was only ever given the jammer panty when I was in the lineup. The third bout I was given the pivot panty, ONCE. And then on that jam when we went to line up I looked and the pivot was in the bin. FUCK. So then I had to rip the pivot panty off my helmet and throw it off the track, only I ended up throwing it at an opposing blocker, who of course was like WTF is this and then the whistle went and we had to kick the panty off the track. Whoops. But I had to do that because otherwise there'd be two pivots and WTF is that bizzo. Anyway, we lost that bout as well and I was so knackered at the end of it.

Protip for jamming: be fueled by the sheer terror of getting hit.
(Photo credit: Jugglenaut)

But then, afterparty! Only there was a little bit of clusterfuckery and the venue was at capacity so we couldn't even get to our own afterparty. And then they had a buffet but they ran out of food. But we ordered food at the bar and then Shirley brought me a beer which was nice of her. She was on my team and a really good, shouty pivot. Then there was a lot of 90s hip hop, and then some spoken word/rap thing which got weird very quickly (e.g. one of the rappers was talking about how when he was 9 he got raped by his babysitter and then there was another one where basically the entire rap was "fuck the police"). We were all super tired by that point, and just wanted to leave, so it seemed to be a good time to bounce.

The next day we loaded back into the car and drove home. But that was all pretty hard to do; I woke up and my joints were stiff as fuck and I could barely walk. Even now I have to pick up my legs with my hands to cross them or get up stairs because my legs are so sore. But yeah, now I've bouted, had a great time (thanks, RCR!!) and I met a whole bunch of super awesome people, and it's good to be home.

Now I'm beat, part 1

OMFG SO MUCH FUN. I'm super tired now and just got home and my brain, arms and legs don't work properly, but I'll see if I can write this out before I forget.

We drove up to Richmond yesterday at 6am, and we got to the venue around 9:15 or so. The event was hosted my River City Rollergirls, and they were all super fun. My first bout (with Banned Aid) was at 10:30, so we got there, got our gear on and warmed up for a bit. It was at the Richmond Convention Centre in one of their big convention hall/pavillion things. They had set up the room so there were rows of chairs around a bit marked off as the track.

Inside the pavillion, from the corner. It was a big room.

The surface we were skating on was polished concrete. It was just the floor of the room, and outlined with a rope that was duct taped down. Basically, it was slick as fuck, and REALLY hard to fall on. There was no give (unlike the roller rink floor at NRV). Basically if you fell, you just went THUD and then slid for about 20 feet. I had four of my old super Gs on as well as my new yellow bullets, since my pink bullets were 91s. And even then I had trouble slowing down. I tried doing some plow stops on it and it took a LOT of push to try to stop within a reasonable distance. I tried hockey stops and almost fell on my face. It was tough.

SO SLICK. I'm surprised I didn't break my face.

I think the first bout was my favorite one of the day. It was Zombies vs. Vampires, and I skated for team Vamp so I didn't have to bring multiple shirts. Haha. 40 (our benchie) had done the mass email where we all introduced ourselves, so at least we felt like we had known each other a little before we met. Lineups felt pretty organized, even though we'd all only met each other. We were encouraged to try whatever positions and stuff, and it was all for fun and experience, so why not?

I have to admit I was pretty nervous jamming though, but once I got into the hang of it it was fine. On my first go as jammer (I think jam #4 or something), I appparently forearmed someone on the way out of the pack and didn't get lead, but then the other jammer got binned so I had to jam the full two minutes myself. I think I scored like 17 points on that one; it was super awesome and I felt great afterwards when I fell onto the bench. Haha. Also, because of the floor, there were times I came out of a corner and almost just fell on my ass for no reason. I think everyone was skating slower than what they were used to because the floor was so weird. But it was good; once we got the hang of it things picked up.

I need medical assistance and chapstick.

I jammed a few times again after that, and also did some blocking. They were only half hour bouts, so not very long at all. At one point I hit a girl out so my jammer could get through, and as she got through she thanked me by hitting me in the mouth with her elbow. :P Then for the rest of that jam I was skating with blood on my face and in my mouthguard and all over my teeth. Gross. When that jam ended, I had to go to the EMT to get my mouth and mouthguard rinsed out, and stop my mouth from bleeding. But then I was on my 4th minor and binned, so I had to sit in the bin while washing out my mouth and spitting into a cup and icing my lip which ended up getting all fat and bloody. Ugh. I have to say, for team Vamp, I'm not really liking the taste of my own blood. I am however happy to report that that was the extent of my muntings; hooray!

That was pretty much the end of the bout, and we won! Hooray. I was about to jam the next lineup but then we ran out of time. Actually, it turned out that I was always going to jam the next lineup when the bout was over. WTF. Haha. Every time we did the hug/high five line I had a jammer panty on my head. HA. But yeah, I felt really good after that bout; in the hug/H5 line random people from other leagues and in the audience were congratulating me and talking about how I did well and stuff and all these little kids wanted high fives. :D Hahaha. It made me feel less sucky about my skating abilities, and I think I am slowly getting over my fear of jamming and taking hard hits.

Ghetto icepack, and lunch sandwich

Anyway, after that bout the EMTs gave me a towel covering a makeshift icepack, which turned out to be a rubber glove full of ice. It was fine, but then then it was lunchtime so not very good for eating. I stayed and watched the co-ed bout (Hanukkah vs Christmas) and that was fun; Gritz was in that one and she knocked some boys over.

The second bout (sugar plums vs. candy canes) was after the lunch break, and some of the girls on the Vamp team were also on that one, so we had an idea of how each other worked. I don't think our lineups were as organized. Our benchie basically designated people positions, and unless you said something you were put into some position; like she just handed out the jammer/pivot panties instead of like in the first one with 40 when had chairs designated J, P, 1, 2, 3 and you could sit where you wanted to try out that position.

All I did for that bout was jam. I jammed like every 3rd one I think. It was exhausting, but I pulled in some points (although not enough for us to win, boo). I need to work on my conditioning. I think I really like jamming; I like finding holes and pushing through people and I forced a couple of out of plays because I would just come up on someone positionally blocking me and roll right into her butt and push her out of the way. It was fun. I have to admit that I also like that the commentators got to the point when they were like "and it's Chairman Mouse jamming again" and people would cheer. :D

Random wares for sale at Beatings

But yeah, I think our defense was good for that one, but we just didn't score many points because for half the bout the jammer was in the bin. :P So we ended up losing. But it was still a fun game, and then it was time for a massive break! I had over 6 hours until my next bout, so I did a bit of random derby shopping (pink astro-nuts for $6/8, yellow sparkly derbyskinz(!!!) for $20) and checked out some of the other stuff they had. In retrospect I should have probably got some wristguards without the slide-on thing like what mine currently do, but instead the velcro straps, just because right now my fingers are so crooked that it sucks to put those wristguards on. But I forgot to. Whoops.

I ended up going back to the hotel and then doing a bit of work and then passing out. When I woke up, I had a bit of time to get ready for the third bout, but I'll write about it in the next post or something,

It's beatin' time!

Well, it's just after 5:15 am and I'm fully awake for Beatings. We drive up at 6, so I'm doing important things like updating my blog, putting on at least most of my bout stuff and moisturizing my legs. I'm excited to be bouting, like, FINALLY. I'll probably also stay awake for the whole drive up even though I should really sleep--I went to bed last night at 10 and was still awake at 12:30 because I was so excited. :D


Wish me luck!

Derby girl problems

Packing for Season's Beatings is ridiculous. I'm doing three half-bouts in the day, and all I need for that is my gear and maybe some spare clothes to wear the next day (and maybe in between bouts). Normally all my gear (and my water bottle) fits into my backpack, and I just carry my skates. This is what I do for practice.

All this gear (except skates and helmet) fits into this bag.

But for a road trip I have to also take an overnight bag, yeah? So I have to bring my toothbrush, and at least a clean shirt for the trip back. My bouts are at 10:45, 1:30, and then 8:00. So I've got a chunk of time in between, so I was also planning to bring my laptop to do some work--I have to write my classes for next week. And then I decided to buy a bunch of food for energy between bouts and after going to the store, I somehow ended up with:

As if you can't tell that I have an eating problem.

• A bottle of muscle milk (cookies and cream flavored!)
• Nutter butters to eat in the car on the way up to Richmond
• 4 bananas
• A bag of dried cranberries
• Two boxes of granola bars (they were 2 for $5...)
• A fucking huge 64 oz bottle of gatorade bigger than my head

I was going to make peanut butter and banana and chocolate sandwiches from two bananas, and bring the other two up just to eat. But now I have way more shit than can fit in my derby bag because of this stupid bottle of gatorade. Also, that's not to also mention that I am bringing a hoodie to wear in between bouts, a water bottle, and maybe my microfleece blanket because I can't wear pants with my gear on.

I also have a bag of other small skatey things: spare 88A wheels
(in case I need to switch out my new 91As), 3 different skate tools,
spare laces, bandaids, blister bandaids, two kinds of strapping tape,
an ankle brace, and a partridge in a pear tree.

What to do? The obvious solution is to make my overnight bag my derby gear and assorted food bag for things to have at the bout, and my backpack for the measly things I need for overnight. So that's what I ended up doing. This means that all my stuff will stink, derby or not. But now my street clothes will smell like derby stank, and my derby gear will smell like bananas. What the fuck. It is super ridiculous; this is all the stuff I have to bring for the bout (as opposed to the hotel):

And this is all the stuff I have to bring for just staying there overnight:

Fucking ridiculous, I tell you.

This gatorade bottle is so big it makes me tired to hold it up for this picture.