Boudi and Mouse in San Francisco, Part 1

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

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

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

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

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

Me, Boudi and Francis' Butt.

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

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

Incriminating evidence.

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

Anyway, more skating tomorrow! Yay!!

New Directions

(No, not as in the name of the stupid club on Glee.)

WTF. No.

On Tuesday we had our Annual General Meeting. I've always been adamant that the administrative side of running a league is something that is necessary, but not a necessary evil as it might otherwise be seen. But yeah, my administration is over, and now the reins have been handed off to a new and dynamic new executive committee (on which my wife is Vice President, fuck yeah).

I'm excited for VDL's second year. We certainly faced a lot of challenges as a league this year, what with stupid dramas and not having our own venue and not actually knowing what we were doing and having only a handful of bouting skaters and being in the same city as an existing league and having to carve out our own identity, but I think we did pretty well for ourselves. We made a bouting team, increased our membership to over 100 people and got our name out there. And there are already some pretty big plans in the works for the coming year, which is exciting.

It's been good seeing this league grow from the ground up. Because I'm finishing a Ph.D. and moving overseas in three weeks, my time left with VDL is short, but I feel better knowing it's in safe hands for next year. I feel like a mother who's just seen her child take its first steps or something or go on a bike or something by herself or something.

Happy first year of administration, VDL!

The Greater of Two Evils

In our league we have people who have been skating on their derby names for a year or so, and have recently found out their names have been rejected from the TwoEvils site. But they've bouted under those names, had uniforms and helmets done up with those names, and are just finding out that that was all worth shit.

I talked about TwoEvils here in this entry, but I think there’s increasing frustration with how the site is run. While I certainly appreciate that someone out there has gone to the effort of keeping a site like 2E, derby has grown exponentially, and the system that 2E uses is clunky and can’t really keep up with the volume of names that one can only imagine they get registered. At the time of writing this, there are something like 36,144 names on 2E. That's THIRTY SIX THOUSAND names that you can't copy.

Honestly, I think the time will come very soon when one of the following will happen:

1. Nobody cares about 2E anymore and will actually seek to register their name formally as intellectual property or on regional associations (like RDAU) instead, 
2. Nobody will care about having unique names in the derby world (come on, there’s really only SO many combinations of words you can do that aren’t above some degree of similarity) or
3.  2E will have to evolve its registration system to make it easier for people to actually get onto their site. 

Waiting for 9-10 months is kind of ridiculous. Half the names of the people we registered with VDL are obsolete or don’t even skate with VDL anymore, so that was a waste of time for the 2E people to have to process them. I can’t imagine that a considerable proportion of names on the 2E list are actually currently being used. 

Vague concepts = opportunity to trundle in
Sorites paradox! (Yes, I'm a nerd.)

Also, at the time, if your name is rejected you have no idea if it is or isn’t, except for the fact that your teammates all have their names up and you don’t. TBut today, we received an email from 2E listing the names that were rejected, but with no explanation why they were. I can imagine how frustrating this would be to some people, especially if their names were only remotely smiilar to other names there.

The best indicator of a name rejection is when you type a name in and it tells you the likelihood of a match (from very high to low). But terms like “very high” and “low” are vague, and it’s not clear exactly what that means for rejection. Since the system is automated, changing a letter sometimes does the trick, even if phonetically the names would still be the same. What’s the point of that?

Presumably 2E works something like this (although, of course, I am open to correction): There’s this online spreadsheet (in effect) with everyone’s names on it, and when you submit names they are checked off against the spreadsheet for similarity. Those that don’t match anything are admitted, and those that match things are rejected, and then there’s some additional checking that goes on for the in-between ones. I don’t know if the additional checking is manual, but I’d assume that it is, given how long it takes.

Ironically, THERE IS NOBODY CALLED JOHN DOE ON 2E.

Many people are already moving away from 2E. In Australia, RDAU has its own list for roller derby names for Australian leagues. It's not like I'm ever going to have to bout against someone called MadMouse from some random place like Bumblefuck USA or anything, so why the hell would I need something that is internationally original? (Of course, yes, my name IS on 2E, but the principle still stands.)

Okay, tons of people have already ranted about 2E. (See here for probably the most scathing and hilarious attack, but also here, where a Canadian skater had the same name as a mascot and it was rejected--a MASCOT*! WTF! and also here, for another Australian story.) But suppose now that we DO need to have 2E for whatever the hell reason. How do we fix the machine that is broken, instead of just abandoning it?

Obviously, we need to make sure that people aren't waiting 9-12 months for their names to clear. How do we fix that? Well, how about this: there’s already an automated checking thingy that exists on the 2E website. Why not use that to let people add names to the list themselves? Like, suppose I have a list of names. Maybe I can just copy/paste them into the name submitter thing, and it runs through the names and automatically adds the ones that are unique to the site. The in-between ones can be confirmed by looking at what the search throws up as being the most similar, and then maybe there can be a section for people to provide evidence if they’ve got permission from a skater to use their name. That would considerably reduce the workload that the 2E admins have to do, since there’s less manual labor involved, and let people get instant gratification almost right away.

This is who I'd want to be checking my name
on the website. Of course, that just means less
manual checking, not no manual checking
whatsoever.

Now I’m not a mega computer nerd, but I’m sure there’s a pretty basic program you could write that would let that happen. But that said, I’m not sure how much longer unique names will be sustainable in the derby world. Of course, there are already trends for people to skate under their actual names (which you’d think would be necessary if roller derby becomes an Olympic sport or something) and hey, if someone just happens to have the same (actual) name as you, then what are you going to do?

But so far as having a program for registering names on 2E goes, I’m not sure why this hasn’t happened yet. So consider this a plea to the 2E peeps: Nice work so far, but you don't need to have this burden all by yourself. Please consider updating your system to be able to deal with the number of submissions you're getting for this sport that we have all come to love. We want our names, because the derby side of us is, well, a real part of us, and it is really shit when you are denying that we can have that.

(Postscript: my MS Word spellcheck is dumb and doesn’t recognise the word “Pow”, or the word “spellcheck” for that matter.)

*Speaking of mascots and skates, I imagine that this post will have possibly enraged some. Here, lighten it up with some mascot skating fail. (This is also why I don't support the Raptors, heh.)

Freshie Seshie

Ahhh, freshies. One of the things that I love about Freshie Seshie is the fact that we get all these bright, shining, eager faces of people who want to learn how to do derby because they think it rocks. It’s like when you have a pack of puppies and they’re all so excited about everything because everything is new and awesome and let’s all do everything all the time!

Herding new skaters is like herding puppies,
which is slightly easier than herding cats.

 Heh. VDL does a thing where we do a “Freshie Seshie” where we have a session specifically for newbies, who can come and learn the basics of skating for free and borrow gear from league members. Then we have four fresh meat intake sessions after that, where they can try out actual league training before deciding whether or not to commit. We used to do rolling intakes, but that got WAY too hard to manage, so now we have a quarterly intake. It makes administration way easier, because there’s only four times in a year when we have to do batches of insurance and registration stuff. Yep. Streamlining admin is important.

Oh, adorable entry-level skates. Eeeee.

 Anyway, we had our first of the four fresh meat intakes on Tuesday. We had about 20 newbies, which was really exciting. Some had obviously skated before, and some were doing that shuffly thing on wheels that everyone starts out doing. There were enough of us at training such that we could each coach one of the newbies one on one, which was really cool. I got a uni student called E (well, I won’t put her real name here for obvious lack-of-consent and whatever reasons) and she was pretty cool. She went to the Freshie Seshie on Sunday and had been looking at doing derby for over a year, so she was definitely enthusiastic. I took her through basic derby stance, and also falls and stops. We chatted a bit as well, so she knows I’m doing a Ph.D. and I learnt that she really likes Japanese and is going to Japan for a year or something. Also Sarge got me to be his demonstrator for the falls, ha ha ha. Too bad I fucked up the four-pointer because I forgot to keep my head up. Whoops. But otherwise it was good I think. We did basic drills and slaloms, and then there was a free skate at the end.

This is sometimes how I feel around
new skaters. I'm an old fogey.

Admittedly, since I’ve been back at VDL the standard for what freshies have is kind of stupidly impressive. There are whities who can do backwards crossovers (both directions) and people who can do like 30/5 and stuff. It’s crazy. In a kind of self-absorbed way, I’m glad I grew with the league when I did, because I’ve sometimes got a tendency to ragequit when I don’t think that I’m improving enough, or when shitloads of people are better than me at something. :P I think overall it’ll be great for the league to have all these skilled people in it of course, but maybe this is just me being intimidated by newbies or something…

Of course, I didn't really learn much from the training session overall, but there was enough room so I could practice sideways skating, and I need to work more on power slides and tomahawks (I'm still overturning for them). But yeah, it was really cool to see all these new faces rolling around on the track while the more senior skaters all zoomed around them and whatnot. I really like their enthusiasm and the fact that they're so crazy about derby. Yeah, so now I kind of feel like a jaded old fogey (at a whole, what, one year into my skating career) but I like that it reminds me of how I used to be, and the fact that their enthusiasm is kind of infectious.

I found a fantastic "how to" for nooblets here. This is pretty much the stuff we covered at the Freshie Intake. I hope they come back on Sunday. Yay.

D.I.S.C.O.!

Okay, I'm more of an Avengers lady than a Justice league
one, but this will have to do for pretty badass art.

Being part of a budding league means that there's a lot of financial stuff that has to go on to keep the league afloat. It's hard sometimes, but you do what you have to do. Things like venue hire, insurance, getting spare kit and running bouts can really suck out a lot of money, and our day to day funding is just from our league members when they show up to training and pay their dues. So making sure the league is financially afloat is a big thing that I don't think people are usually aware of as going on behind the scenes.

Anyway, hopefully we can boost that this weekend. My league is having a roller disco on Saturday, complete with a fundraising auction (with some REALLY nifty prizes donated by people in the league and our league sponsors). We've got the fantastic Sydney Derby Skates donating a brand new pair of Riedell R3s for the auction, and free dinners from local restaurants, a fancypants new skateboard worth $200, sports massage sessions and all these handmade artsy things from the people in the league. For my part, I've thrown in a new SCRD shirt and some nifty things from the Californian skate culture, like an issue of Hellarad(!!) and some stickers and whatnot from Cruz Skate Shop and BAD. (I miss those guys...) It's great to see all these different people showing support for our league and wanting to see it grow. A lot of the organization for this took place while I was overseas, and I'm really proud of how the league is pulling together to make sure that this goes off without a hitch. Remember a lot of these kids didn't even know how to skate a few months back, and now they're throwing all this effort into our fledgling league.

So yeah! People of the Interwebs, if you are in Canberra this Saturday and you want a bit of badassery to spice up your fine evening, come support the roller disco. Tickets are available here.

Photos will be posted up here soon enough next week, but I'm a little bit torn about what to go as at the moment. I've got Batman undies, and an Iron Man T-shirt but neither of those alone will make a costume. Also, being crunched for time doing a Ph.D. means I can't make anything really elaborate, and I think at least three people are going as Hit Girl (who would have been one of my top picks). Maybe I should just paint myself green and go as the tiniest Hulk in the world. Suggestions are welcome!

The prodigal daughter, part one

So yesterday we had our end-of-year league BBQ by the skate park. It was pretty awesome. It was sunny and people got drunk and/or skated and I seriously made the worst "Bad Santa" present in the history of shit presents. (I'm really sorry, Bev!) Pictures to come.

This is how I feel my level of skating will be.

And [insert fanfare] today is my return to onskates! Yay!! I am going to be back from the wilderness. After being away in late October for 2 weeks and then basically getting on skates and then wrecking my ankle, I haven't had a proper skate since the time I had a concussion. (Yes, and THAT turned out well...) But yes. I have both my ankles and my knee taped up, and I am mega excited.

Also, no scrimmaging yet; my ankles need to get used to the weight of my skates first, before the weight of my skates AND several derby girls piling up on top of it. But yay. Being able to roll around is a welcome first step.

Oh, except I have to do the remainder of my orange star test. From memory, I have to do booty blocking, agility (jumping over cones), and obstacle avoidance. I have two more sessions before the end of the year and we break for the summer (I miss the last session because I'll be overseas, boo), so if I want to orange before then, it's tonight and Tuesday. I thought I'd do it Tuesday, and spend tonight kind of getting used to being on wheels.

But no. Sarge has other plans for me. Hilariously enough, this is how I found out:

WAT.

I REALLY want my orange, but I'm kind of scared I won't remember how to skate and I will fail the test or munt myself more. In particular, I'm worried that my muscles will have atrophied or something or that I won't have stability (not that I had much to start with) or that my derby stance will be shithouse. Ergh. For some reason this is much more nerve-wracking than when Boudica and I did our yellow star, maybe because last time we did ours together and now I am flying solo (she got hers when she smashed the test a few weeks ago).

 But I'll report back on how I went later tonight.

The Cannery Challenge Post Mortem

So, today was the big day. Team breakfast at 8am (where I ate my own breakfast and part of Sarge's and half of Diazeslam's raisin toast and some extra hash browns and grilled tomatoes--I fucking love hash browns). The team was obviously pretty nervous; of all the teams at the challenge ours was the only one with no bouting experience. Anyway, preparation for the challenge also involved going to the supermarket and buying the following:

• One slab of 60 bottles of water
• 30 bottles of gatorade
• 1 box of oreos
• 6 bags of candy
• 2 boxes of those nutri-grain cereal bars
• A fuckload of bananas

After that it was on to the Cannery. Basically, the Cannery is this giant shed that CRDL has which is taken up mostly by a giant concrete derby track. Anyway, there was a quick team meeting, then gearing up and getting ready for our first bout aginst a CRDL team. Whambulance was also nice enough to tape up my ankle so it didn't look all fucked up. It was a better job than I did, so yeah.

Excellent strapping job, Whambo.

Anyway, then we set up our bench. But boo, early on crapballs: I got sacked from benching because you were only allowed one benchie and the designated alternate (who was Sarge). So Bubbles had to do lineups and panty bitching and give people water and write their numbers on and everything. On the other hand, this meant that I had a free ticket to watch the bout!

I don't actually remember that much about that bout except I was yelling a lot. I think VDL was psyching itself out and it showed. One thing I noticed happened a lot was that the blockers weren't really helping out their jammer, so the jammer would be pinned behind a whole row of CRDL blockers and our blockers would be skating ahead. And there was too much bossing around and shouting and getting aggro at people from the bench which made it kind of hard for the skaters to hear actual instructions from Sarge.

Lineup sheet, Bout 2, 1st half.

Marie was the first casualty of the day by copping a shoulder (I think?) to the face and almost breaking her nose. I didn't see what happened (Boudica and I got sent on a mission to get a big fat permanent marker to write people's numbers on their sweaty arms) but we got back just in time to see her fall. Then she got up and had a towel over her nose and was icing it a whole bunch and stuff. That was kind of scary. Anyway, I don't really remember that much as I said, but the final score was 21-180-something or something like that.

Clearly people were rattled after the first bout. I guess that is to be expected; if this is a baptism by fire, then it really was a fucking good one. Marie was still out, and Sarge had a serious talking-to with everyone to make sure that they listened to him when he was yelling out instructions from the bench and stuff. Bubbles and I were frantically redoing the lineups since we had to take Marie (injury) and Rubi (exam) out of it. Also, note to self: remember that there are two halves of the bout; so you need about 40 lineups, not 20. :P Oh yeah and there was some general VDL/CRDL interesting interactions; most of them were really nice, and I guess it was weird to expect anything from how that was going to go. But I did wish I got a photo of me standing next to Bo-Rap; she was on skates (so taller than ever) and I had jandals on. I think the top of my head reached her boob. Ha.

Anyway, then suddenly it was time for the second bout. This time it was "Team Potluck", which was a combination of people from a bunch of other leagues. I was benching this one, and holy shit I was hoping that everything would go well. The first half was awesome! NO MAJORS FROM ANYONE!! That made doing lineups SO much easier. I feel that I need to yell more sometimes and be a bit more assertive, but for most part I think it went well. Plus scorewise we were doing pretty good: we were like 30-something in the first half (which was more than tht total score for the previous bout) and the margin was HEAPS smaller.

And then there were like 4 injuries in the second half! Legz fell and fucked up her ankle or something, and Diazeslam might have broken her wrist. Tank got shouldered in the neck (WTF??? And nobody called anyone on a major for that) and Junk got smashed in the knee. I was frantically amending the lineup every couple of minutes or so; originally Bubbles and I had the plan to have two lineups that we could rotate, but then we just ran out of people. I felt kind of bad making people do like 3 jams in a row or something but we just didn't have enough skaters for that. :/

There were also a few dodgy calls. There was one when Jillie was jamming and BOTH the jam refs were calling no lead jammer... wtf? And a lot of hitting out of target zones happened, and cutting, and not much seemed to be called. I understand that everyone's still learning though, so yeah. Early days for all of us. Sarge did put in a formal complaint I think though.

2nd half lineup sheet. You will note that shit got crazy around Jam 8-9.

We didn't have enough people to continue the bout (we were down to a full lineup and maybe 2-3 on the bench), so we called it. The final score was 57-81, which I reckon was fucking awesome. I think I ended up doing an okay job for seriously having seconds to make decisions about the lineup as people got taken out of it due to injury, and we didn't have too terrible a time. Plus afterwards I got to hobble around the track and high five the random PotLuck people, not that I had any idea who they were. But yeah, overall, I think we did a really good job in the second bout and recovered a lot to pull the score as close as it was. So, hooray. :)

Oh yeah and I met ShortStop! Like about fucking time. Brad was running the BBQ and I wanted to get some food in me before the second bout (which was the one that I was benching) so I went to get a vegie burger and she was there! And Brad was all like "Shorty have you met Mouse, she is like your evil twin who is following you. She had a party on the weekend and all the derby girls were at your party first and you both have pikachu costumes although hers is sexier" or something. Hahahaha. And then there was no tomato sauce because someone put out like 4L of BBQ sauce or something instead so she got some and put some on my burger for me. Hahahaha.

And league drinks tonight! FUCK YEAH DRINKS.

Off the beaten track

So here I am in week one of injury. Bleh.

In other news, VDL is doing its FIRST EVER IN THE ENTIRE WHOLE WORLD bout on Saturday! This is extremely exciting news, since this is the kind of thing we have been working towards. A while back, I was listed on the roster but needed to get my orange star before I could. But then everything went to shit and because I was overseas and I am now injured there is no way I was going to be able to bout. Boo.

Bubbles' lineup list

But here's the silver lining. I can't bout, but I can still be on the team (technically speaking), because they need bench bitches! Bubbles (who was also injured) and I are officially the team benchies, which means that we are in charge of making sure the skaters line up in the right order for the upcoming jams and seeing who can go on in what position and making sure people get enough breaks and there are enough people on the track and whatever. Specifically, she's doing lineups and I'm panty bitch, which means I make sure people have the right helmet panties and also track penalties so we don't send a jammer in on their third minor or something stupid like that. Sarge and Marie (as captain) will also be in charge of strategy.

Homemade penalty tracking list, v. 1 I can't find a blank one on the internet, WTF??

Bubbles and I had a practice go at doing our benching jobs yesterday. Holy crap, benching is fucking hard and also frustrating! Seriously, we set up about 20 lineups in advance, and only the first one actually turned out the way that we wanted. It's really hard to do a lineup because you might have someone in it but then they are already in the bin, in which case you have a split second decision to put someone else in. And you have to take into consideration things like jammer positions are much more brutal and exhausting (so it seems) than blocking, so you can put a jammer in for one jam, but not for multiple jams in a row, whereas you can for someone who is a blocker. And then you also need to think about the fitness levels and individual skills of the skaters; some of them will be able to do multiple jams, then have one jam off, and then go back in. Some will need more than one. Sometimes you will have a really good combo that will work against particular people on another team. And you need to factor ALL of this stuff in in less than 2 minutes, while keeping in check who is in the box and how many minors/majors they have!

Homemde penalty tracking list, v.2. I don't *technically* need that last "minor" column, since that many minors and you're ejected. But oh well. For the sake of completeness, why the hell not? (Also, anal retentiveness compelled me to list skaters in alphanetical order.)

Seriously. It's challenging in this really interesting way, and I think I can grow to like it. Of course, it's not as awesome as being able to actually skate in the jams, but it is something I think I might like doing. I like putting things into different combinations, and making sure that official shit goes down as it should. It's pretty administrative in a way, but benching is an important role and probably one that would be just as important to master the skills of, as well as skating.

I still want my ankle to get better though. But yay, new skills.

Almost famous!

So about a week and a half ago Rubi, Boudica and I got interviewed by a local magazine about roller derby and our impending roller disco fundraiser. I have a suspicion that the reporter was secretly interested in doing derby herself, and that's why she got that project.

But yeah, the interview was fun, and getting to gear up and talk about derby and then also pose for a bunch of photos while we were all in our derby gear and looking badass and everything was kind of awesome. It's my first interview in regards to being an athlete! Hahaha. I should have flexed my (beefy T-rex) arms for the camera more.

You can read all about it here.

Haha, I come off as being so administrative in the interview. She did ask me a lot about the numbers of members and stuff, and it was weird and nerdy that I could just rattle those off from memory. Heh.