WFTDA posts Championship bracket

BAD made it into the championships so they're on their way to Atlanta! Well, not right away, since the championships are in early November. A bunch of people from NRV are driving down from here, but stupidly I have a conference on that weekend. But no socializing for me since I'll probably be watching DNN the whole time.

Here's the bracket:

Click to enlarge

It's a tough bracket, but at least BAD wouldn't have to meet up with Oly until after Philly and TXRG. Anyway, these are all freaking amazeball teams, so it will definitely be one to watch. I'll have to break out my BAD shirts for the whole weekend while everyone else is wearing fancy suits and whatnot at this conference.

If you want to help BAD make it to Atlanta, click here.

BAY AREAAAAA!!!

BAD are playing tonight in the WFTDA western playoffs for the championship! They're seriously the best team I've ever seen play, in terms of having amazing teamwork, and their athleticism and skill is nuts. I remember going to one of their league bouts and spending  most of my time with my mouth hanging open and screaming "OH MY GOD DID THAT JUST FUCKING HAPPEN" when crazy shit was going down on the track. Derby in the US is way faster and harder than what I'm used to in the land of Oz, so seeing the best teams in what's currently undisputedly the best derby country in the world is pretty fucking amazeballs.

Also, Demanda is pretty FUCKING AMAZEBALLS. Sigh...
(photo credit: D.E.sign)

Oh, also, the Oly Rollers are playing in a few hours, and if they beat Rocky Mountain, they'll play BAD next. That'll be interesting, given the amount of shit talk that has been going on about them, especially in, well, the Bay Area. Hellarad did an amazingly hilarious writeup of it here.

Anyway, here's me reppin' down in Virginia, on the other side of the country:

Whoo! I might also have to wear my other BAD shirt to NRV training on Sunday for extra reppin'.

The bracket for the Western Region playoffs:

Or if you want a downloadable .pdf version to print out and fill in, it's here.

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.

A bunch of goodbyes

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

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

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

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

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

Injury roundup, post US

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

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

1. Concussion (snowboarding)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Also, I have tiny biceps muscles. Yay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It also matches my nail polish, yay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Definition Derby

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

Clicky

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

What ones would you add?

Drills with whips (oh my!)

I like whips, I like Indiana Jones and
I like Lego. Everyone wins!!

I really like whips. They're fun, and when they're done right they are so super effective. We did some whip drills the other night--well, except for me, because of my stupid shoulder, but I did learn a lot about whip theory.

(Note that this is about drills with forward arm whips. Backwards whips and leg whips are cool too, but I don't know how much of this translates into backwards or leg whipping, although I guess with backwards whipping your left arm is more important since that would be the arm closest to the outside.)

Firstly, the basics on giving a whip. To properly give a whip, you really have to use as much force/momentum (bleh, I'm not a physicist) as possible. This means that you have your arm back, not sticking out perpendicular to you, and then you really fling them. Try not to dislocate your shoulder doing this one. Also, it really helps to stay low with this, because the force transfer will sometimes knock you on your ass if you're standing tall. (In another story, that's how I fell backwards onto my head and got my concussion...)

Whipping also is most likely going to happen with your outside arm. Why? Well, when you whip with your outside (right) arm, it makes an arc which very conveniently follows the direction of the track. Whipping with your inside (left) arm would usually propel your whippee(??) towards the outside of the track, which isn't usually where you want them to go. However, you can do short inside arm whips coming out of the turn or on the straightaways for quick bursts of speed.

There are two types of whip, according to Mindi: there's the "outside arm whip" and then "across your body" whip. I'm not sure if they have more technical names. The usual kind of whip is the outside arm whip, where you have someone grabbing your outside arm and you fling them forwards. When you whip, try to do a low-to-high movement, like if you were bowling or something like that. Since you can either whip in a straight line (down a straightaway) or in an arc (for the turns), this is handy for getting around other blockers.

The "across your body" whip seems to be where you whip someone from one side of your body to the other. I'm not exactly sure how this works, but Mindi described it kind of like throwing a frisbee. It sounds like you take your right arm and cross it over your body and then whip outwards. I'm not sure 1) how that's (directionally) different from a left/inside arm normal whip and 2) how you do that without spinning around and falling over. Again, here, the low-to-high whip direction thingy helps. Otherwise, you're throwing your whippee pretty much to the outside track and into the ground. Bleh. This is a good one for giving a burst of speed.

Another thing to remember once you've given a whip is to hustle! You'll have expended all your energy in giving the whip, so you'll have to catch back up to the rest of the pack, if you want to do anything else (e.g. help your teammates block or whatever).

And then try not to die.

Receiving a whip also has a technique. I'm not a huge fan of hand holding during whips, partially because people tend to have sweaty, clammy hands, and also because hand holding can lead to whip release at weird/inordinate times if your fingers get stuck together (or the velcro on your wrist guards...). Instead, grab your whipper's wrist with both arms (to help with stability) and then let her do the work propelling you. Note that I said wrist, and not elbows or upper arms or something. Trying to whip someone who is grabbing your elbow takes 100% of the effort with only 50% of the results or something. It's like in physics: the longer the distance between the weight and the base is (think like a long pendulum or a flail or something), the more force you can get.

Also, remember to skate out of the whip. There's no point in your whipper expending all her energy if you're just going to coast once you get whipped. The whole point is for you to gain additional speed, so don't waste it just by relying on that. Of course, if you need to coast a few feet while you keep stability then that's okay.

One way to practice this is the monkey bars drill: ever see a monkey go across monkey bars? They use both their arms and alternate transferring their momentum from one arm to the other. This is pretty similar, although you're getting propelled at each "bar". Basically, you start with a weaving pace line but the person going through does so by receiving whips from the other members of the pace line. You have to keep the pace line going pretty quickly to do this drill, and space people out a bit more than normal (so they don't get thrown into the person in front of them) but it is pretty effective when it is done. Well, at the very least, it looks mega fun. Curse my stupid wrecked shoulder, argh!

The "Jammer Up" Drill

I like this one a lot. I'm pretty sure this is not what it is officially called, but people said this a lot during the drill, so here it is.

Basically, you start with three lines of people. It doesn't matter how you designate it, but make one line (usually the middle one) your line of jammers, and the other two (the inside and outside ones) are your blockers. They should be in pace lines as follows (behold my mad MS Paint Skillz!):

WTF, I have no idea why there's that checkerboard effect. Ignore it.

When you start your drill, have your first two blockers skate out and ahead of the pace lines. Maybe like 10-20 feet will suffice. Then, you have your jammer up: the first jammer has to get past them, while the two blockers have to stop the jammer. The rest of the pack hangs back, still in their pace lines. The jammer has 10-15 seconds to get past the two blockers. (Or, if the blockers are doing well, they hold the jammer for 10-15 seconds and then release).

Once that time has passed or the jammer has gotten past, all three skate around to the end of the pace lines, remembering to rotate so everyone has a turn being the jammer:

This is good for practicing when the jammer has to get through a pack quickly, e.g. if the pack has big gaps in it and only a handful of blockers are in the way. Also, it's good for practicing 2-on-1 positioning. If you're blocking, you really have to communicate with your partner since you both have to cover the entire track.

VARIATION: Jammer + offense: have your two blockers as before, and then have your jammer up as before, but right after they go up, have a second skater come up as offense, to assist the jammer in getting through the blockers. The offense has to skate up between the blockers and basically make a space for the jammer to get past (or through, depending on how you do it).

Again, when the jammer gets through or 15 seconds is up, skate to the end of the pace lines and rotate.

VARIATION II: Have only the people in the jam on the track. Set up cones at the jammer and pivot lines (but in the middle of the track) to mark where skaters line up to do the drill. Rotate to the next cone when you've had your turn.

Bout night, Richmond vs Oakland

WHOO.

This weekend, I went to my first ever non-Australian roller derby bout! BAD's Richmond Wrecking Belles were playing the Oakland Outlaws, and it was their season opener.

This is where the magic happens. Yep.

The first thing I think I should note is that the bout took place in a giant shed. Like, a giant, warehousey shed. When you first got in, there was a little vendor village bit with BAD merch (note: having credit card facilities on the premises would be a really good idea if you have people who are going to buy a lot of merch) and Cruz Skate Shop also had a stand (where I pretty much took all their free stickers) and there were girl scout cookies and cupcakes and a lot of beer. There was some limited stadium seating (think metal bleachers like at kiddie baseball games) but most people were just on the floor, or standing in the back. And even the people on the floor in what we'd think were suicides were behind a two foot tall foam barrier thing that went all around the track. CRDL bouts at Tuggers had better seating, if not more capacity. (The AIS definitely had better seating and heaps more capacity.)

Delicious derby-themed cupcake menu.

We didn't see much of the Oakland warmup, because they were on track first while we were still outside in the cold trying to buy our tickets, or I was buying all of the merch from the merch stand. The Richmond warmup, though, was pretty cool to watch. They started with some laps and then did things like transitions around the entire track (so you're skating around the track and constantly transitioning), hops/juking, sticky skating with your legs crossed, and then some packwork and positional blocking. Oh and then they did their rollout going anti-derby!

I think I was pretty much going for Richmond, with the possible exception of Oakland's Jane Hammer. I really like Hammer; she's a great skater and just a really cool overall person. She's taught me a whole bunch of nifty tricks at training. She did some pretty strong jams, but bout pretty much went Richmond's way from the first jam. Richmond seemed to have four jammers that they rotated: Chiquita Bonanza, Chantilly Mace, Diva Negativa and Cutya Kackoff. Their packwork was pretty good, and Chantilly did some crazy jams where she pretty much sailed through the pack within about two seconds of getting off the jammer line. She also did some awesome apex jumps. Yes, swoon. I think she also did a couple of grand slams. Oakland had a couple of good jams as well, but they seemed to constantly have someone in the bin, which wasn't to their advantage.

Go Hammy! I am a Jane Hammer fangirl.

Actually, there was a LOT of binnage; more than I expected. At one point the bin was pretty much full, and the Oakland jammer (who was supposed to come out when the Richmond one went in) kind of hesitated for a few seconds before going back in and then the benchies had to yell at her to get back onto the track. Also, I think there was one other bit when there were too many blockers in the bin, but I can't remember. One thing I did notice though was that most people tomohawked to the bin, because you could go straight there real quick and then sit down, rather than go there, knee slide and then have to get back up before your butt hit the seat. I guess that kind of timing matters.

Refs, possibly scheming or something.

I also learned a couple of things from watching the bout. Knee starts seemed to be pretty popular, but one thing I noticed was that if the opposing team was doing a knee start, you put your blockers right up against the jammer line so they can block the jammer right away, instead of giving her ten feet to skate into and build up speed before she gets to the pack. That seems obvious now, but I don't think we really did that at VDL. Of course, then the knee starting team can always just drop to their knees right before the whistle, or (I think) after the whistle provided that the pack isn't over the pivot line yet...

Demanda Riot, moments before she took out Sheer Luxe

Another thing I saw was Demanda Riot messing with the other jammer. I was so excited to see Demanda skate. She is pretty fucking badass. She jammed about two or three times, but I don't think she was as good there as she was as a blocker. She did a lot of defensive jamming, I guess. But this one time, when she wasn't lead jammer, she used her blocking skills to just get all in the way of Sheer Luxe, since if she got far enough ahead Luxe would just have called off the jam anyway. So, instead, Demanda skated in front of her just enough to be positionally blocking her but to make it such that Luxe *could* possibly get past, and then... Demanda knocked her on her ass. Hahaha. I guess at that point in the bout it might also just be a stalling tactic, since Richmond were ahead by like 100 points anyway.

Anyway, the final score was 167-71 to Richmond. It's a pretty big margin (such that some people left early to get their cars out of the parking lot before there was a traffic jam... WTF?!?!) but it was totally awesome to watch. And then I wore my new BAD merch to training the next day. Yay.

For some good profesh photos of the bout, click here for LeVar Hurtin's official ones!

Nice things.

I've been offskates the last two weeks, not because of injury (although I think this is the first time I've been offskates for a non-injured reason) but because I had a bunch of grownup job things happening which involved travel (and I couldn't bring my skates). Is it weird that I think that the location of the nearest roller derby league to where I might be moving to is a relevant consideration for how desirable a job is? (Edit: it's PRIMARILY not because of injury; my right wrist, knee and shoulder are all still munted from snowboarding, but anyway...)

You see all the bits where it says "STOP"?
$5 says I wouldn't be able to stop on ANY of those
without getting hit by a car. Blech.

One thing I like about where I'm living in San Francisco is that the area is not ridiculously hilly. This is good for outdoor skating. You know how in the movies you see images of SF and it's all ridiculously hilly and steep? Well, that's not around here. Phew. There's a really *slight* incline but nothing terrible that I can tackle. I like going for walks in my neighbourhood to check out what the hilliness and the quality of the sidewalk are like (nothing like stacking on a chunk of cracked pavement and falling into oncoming traffic), and also how busy it is for vehicular and pedestrian traffic. If it looks good, I can skate that way later.

Today I explored a bit of the neighbourhood, and I can skate to the laundromat or to a really good coffee (and cake!!) shop. Yay. It's awesome to incorporate errands with wheels. Maybe I can skate to the coffee shop and get some cake on a regular basis... that's exercise, right?

I am really torn about who to support for this one.
I think I have a mild preference for Richmond, but I know
more people on the Oakland team, and they're really awsome.
Maybe I should just be unbiased and wear my VDL shirt
to their bout. And then I can buy merch for both teams. Yeah.

Anyway, this is a good week to be back on skates. There's BAD prak (which is what people here shorten "practice" to, although I'm curious as to why it is "prak" with a "k" instead of a "c") on Saturday and Sunday, and then Tuesday it's SCRD training. I'm seeing if I can do their league training as well on Monday and Wednesday as well as their bootcamp skills training on Tuesday. Haha, in theory I could do derby training 5 nights a week (and then BAD also has NSO opportunities on Thursday nights), but I think my personal and social and professional life  might object to that.

Oh! And BAD has their season opener this weekend!! Mega excited. I'd love to volunteer or NSO this, but I might wait until the next one, once I have a proper taste of what US derby leagues are capable of. Also, I've asked pretty much everyone I know in San Francisco to go to it, so I think I have some obligations not to ditch them. Yay.

BAD training this week

BAD HQ, still with the tarp from last week's flooding

BAD has a training regimen where the end of the month has the toughest drills because they do a monthly intake at the beginning of the month and get progressively harder. This weekend, we were trained by Jane Hammer on Saturday and Mindi on Sunday.

I liked saturday's fitness training. We did jump rope and high knees for 20 sec on, then 10 sec off (where you handed the jump rope to the person next to you) for  a total of 5 minutes or so. I like jump rope. It reminds me of being a kid, yay. Then we did lunge crawls across the room and some yoga stretches, so that we were all stretched and warmed up for when we put our skates on.

This week, the theme seemed to be positional blocking and getting all up in someone's face. (Not literally, although that would be fun.) First, we did sprints in 10, 15, 20, 30 sec intervals, and some lateral stepping (to the inside/outside line). Next, there was a quick head swivelling exercise to make sure everyone could skate forwards while looking backwards or sideways, and then it was onto positional blocking with partner. Basically, one person acts as the jammer and skates behind the other person (the blocker), and the jammer just goes inside/outside and the blocker has to mirror them and stay in front of them.

Sometimes we have the stereo on when we train.

Next, we did a positional blocking drill in a pack. There were about 12 of us, so we had 4 jammers and the rest were blockers. The blockers started by just skating and doing the lateral stepping drill so that it was more of an obstacle avoidance drill, and then later got together and moved inside and outside as a pack to stop the jammers. You had to be touching at least two other people, and could move people around as necessary. The jammers went through one at a time. Hammer also explained that there was a X-XXX system, in terms of contact for drills like this. I think it went something like this:

X: no contact, i.e. just positional blocking
XX: light contact, like nudging and holding people for a couple of seconds in a block before letting them go (if they're not going to be able to get out without smashing people)
XXX: full smashy smashy contact.

Not everyone was cleared for scrimmage (boo, and maybe phew), so we just did XX.

The drill was pretty fun. You really needed to communicate, and even though the pack was pretty big (8 blockers for one jammer), the jammers could still get through. I also got thrown into a jammer as a cannonball, hahaha. Actually, that happened to me a few times. It works great for stopping them!

I actually made this for a VDL training session a while ago, but it's still so true.

Then the session was over and we did a warm down with crunches, pushups and these oblique twists where you hold your helmet in front of you like a steering wheel and have to sit up but twist your body so you can touch your helmet to each side of you (next to your thigh) while your feet are facing forwards. Then we did some bicycles (lying on your back, touching opposite elbow to knee) and that was it! Then I went to Ikea and ate a bunch of Swedish meatballs and pork ribs.

Plastic tiles, and the agility ladder.
The plastic tiles take some getting used to.

Sunday was more of the same, only we were trained by Mindi and Edith Shredder. Shred was pretty cool; she gave me some tips on stepping in between people (since I'm little and that's going to have to be my move to get through gaps). We did the pack skating drill again, and this time I got really, really low, much to the chagrin of some of the other girls (some of them are over 6 feet on skates). I seem to cause people a lot of lower back injuries to tall girls. Sorry. :(

We also did agility ladder stuff, and this time I didn't step on my own feet. Yay, progress! We also worked on our ankle and knee strength by hopping in the ladder squares. (This was offskates; I think I would fall and break my face if it was on skates.)

Finally, we finished by splitting up into three groups: super fast people, medium people and people who were beginners (and had spent the session learning how to do crossovers). Basically, each of the groups does one lap sprinting, and then the next group goes, and so on, so that your recovery time is  whatever time it takes for the other groups to do their lap. That was pretty fun, until a stray leaky bit in the roof dripped water onto a spot on the track on the turn and people started falling all over the place. Then, we just did some situps and planks, and that was it.

Sunday training is at night until about 9pm, so afterwards there's usually some hanging out and having beers at BAD HQ. There's a vending machine with beers for a dollar, and then this week one of the girls brought two trays of little gourmet sausage things in, because she worked for a catering company and an order fell through. So it was like I trained really hard, then stuffed myself with beer and food. Actually, this seems to happen a lot. Hooray.

Here are a few more pictures of BAD HQ:

Gear cubbies!! The top left one says "FREE
WHEELS!" (also bearings, bushings, etc.) Surprisingly, this does
not stink as much as you would think it would from the picture.

BAD wins classy prizes.

More stuff next week! Next week is also the first week of February, so there'll be a nice big intake of new skaters for skating with.

Skatey things in San Francisco, part 1

The sign says "Why walk when you can roll?"
GOOD QUESTION.

 This weekend was particularly rainy, and derby training was cancelled because the shed we trained in flooded and everything got wet. The track is pretty slippery already, so trying to skate on wet plastic tiles? No thanks. I was supposed to get a ride to training with some of the BAD ladies, and we were meeting at a local skate shop as our pickup place. Oh well. No harm going to the skate shop anyway, yes? :)

Cruz Skate Shop is in the Mission district in San Francisco. There's a really good BBQ place on the corner too with great pulled pork and mac and cheese, but that's another story. Anyway, I really like brick and mortar skate shops. This one did mostly skateboard stuff, but they had a nice selection of derby skates as well. I didn't get a photo of them this time around because I ended up buying other things and not really perving on skates, but I did get to grope some $700 Antiks. They felt very nice, for the record. Also, most skatey things are cheaper here than they are in Australia, so I might try to stock up on things. Ze Boyfriend, for example, got some safety gear and his wristguards here (Pro-Tecs) were like $14.99 plus tax, while in Australia they're selling on Derbyskates.com.au for something like $27. I wanted to try some of the new Hired Hands that 888 was apparently making in ridiculously small sizes, but they didn't have any. Also, I was REALLY tempted to buy yet more wheels, but I didn't really need them (for now).

I was served by Steffin Razor, who was skating with BAD but transferred from Sillicon Valley Roller Girls. I told her I just started skating there too and she was saying how BAD was mega serious on fitness (so all that crazy stuff I talked about in my last entry is normal fitness training for them!) and how they really step it up and they're much tougher than other leagues. She's been skating for about four years, so I'm sure she knows what she's talking about. We also talked about roller derby in Australia and how the paint came off Atom wheels really quickly (because she saw my Super-Gs and was like "what are those, Atom Whites?") and Blood and Thunder and other fun things. Yeah, she was cool. :)

Steffin at work in the store with my skates. The guy with the mo also
recommended the lunch special at the BBQ place around the corner
from the shop.

I did want to buy some new bushings though because I had been skating on my stock ones which were ridiculously hard. Steffin gave me a bunch of advice on different kinds of bushings (there's round ones and conical ones and then different coloured ones depending on your weight and what position you play and then also what plates you're on) and in the end I got the orange Powerdyne Magic Hop-Up Kit ones. I'll do a product review later. I also had my skates with me, and she offered to actually change the bushings out for me as well, which was mega awesome! So I let her take my skates apart and she went through and gave me a basic lesson in skate anatomy while she replaced the bushings. It was cool having someone who actually knew what they were doing actually putting the bushings on; they're conical so I would have had a 50% chance of fucking it up I think. Steffin also pointed out that the pivot on the stock plates are straight pin ones, but on the higher end plates (like the Powerdyne revenge and reactor plates) they have ball and socket pins, so you get more control in your turns and whatnot. Maybe I'll have to upgrade to those...

Random old skates in the shop that you could roll around in!
(Also, note presence of FiveOnFive in the corner.)

I  also wanted some new toe stops, and they have a whole bunch that are like gumballs but not really. They had gumballs too, and Steffin said that she skated on those and they were great. A lot of people I skate with are on those, so I'm sure they are. They also had these Snyder toe stops which were huge (like bigger than gumballs) and ones that had one pre-flattened end so you ran on a flat toe stop thingy, which was weird. I settled for some Powerdyne Moonwalkers because they were just as light as the gumballs and seemed a bit grippier (apparently on account that they have holes in them?) and also because they came in red. Yep. Product review to come on those too. But Steffin also put those ones in my skates for me, and she said that our tennis ball toe guards were a really good idea. Ha.

Oh, and then she told me "the secret" for toe stops. Ever wonder how much you need to screw your toe stops in? Well, apparently you make a triangle with your toe stop and your front wheels, and then your back wheels should be about three inches off the ground. She showed me on my skates with a tape measure and everything, but because my skates are tiny that basically means screwing the toe stop all the way in. But not actually all the way in; some times the screws are too long so if you do screw them all the way in and stomp on your toe stop you can break the top of the plate on your skate and the screw can go through the fabric into your boot. Apparently that happened to someone at SVRG when Steffin was there. Ouch. So, almost all the way in, but not all.

Anyway, I think I spent like 40 minutes at Cruz, as well as actually making purchases. It was fun, and I liked getting pro tips and talking shop. The only weird thing was that I was in there and then some random homeless person walked by and yelled something about how we were all skaters or something at us and then probably something about Jesus (I didn't understand what she said) and then kept walking. Oh well, it is the Mission, right? Since we meet there to get rides to training, I am sure I will be back. Oh yeah, and you get a discount if you tell them you skate with BAD/RR! Yay.

EDIT: Apparently I thought I spent 40 minutes at Cruz, but ze boyfriend informs me that it was more like two hours. Oh well.