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!

Glitter everywhere

So, the league has a monthly meeting, in which they recognize a "member of the month". And at this month's meeting, it was me!

Again, getting this was a WAT moment.

I'm not good with stuff like this so I probably wasn't even paying attention when they announced it and then if I hadn't already been sitting on the ground at the meeting, I probably would have fallen off my chair. Apparently I've been improving a lot, and I have a good attitude and am willing to learn. Yay me! (Also, Bettie said that if I shit glitter and rainbows it is with a degree of cynicism. Heh.)

I do feel very humbled by the acknowledgement, though. In previous months the people who win this are people that put tons of time and effort into the league. That said, I feel like I have been learning a lot in the last few months (although knowing when to apply it can sometimes be harder since it's like I KNOW what I should do but my body doesn't know how to do it in time, or I realize like 2 seconds after the fact that I should have done something else, or something dumb like that). This blog helps--it's like I can take notes on the stuff that I am learning to help keep it in my brain.

Everything's coming up Milhouse!

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!

The Lurby Circle

When I started at VDL, Pitts (who was then-President of the league) introduced a new term: lurby. It's supposed to be some portmanteau of "derby love". I'm not a huge fan of the spelling but whatever, the idea is that you have love not just for roller derby itself, but those who play it, and those who enable you to be able to be part of it.

Sometimes we all need a bit more lurby. Every league goes through some drama where there's some internal squabbling over something or another. But in doing so we sometimes lose sight of what matters, and then people get angry and frustrated, and then they cry and walk away.

I've already written a whole giant blog entry about derby drama. I'm not going into that again. But when I was recently back in Australia and skating with VDL, I noticed that they had a new tradition to counteract the problems that came with politics and drama. Basically, at the end of each practice session, all the skaters--regardless of their skill levels or who they were--sat down in a circle while they were taking their gear off, and each went around and said who they had lurby for based on that session. So you might say that you have lurby for a freshie who has just nailed a new skill, or for a coach for an awesome session, or whatever it is. But it was a good way to bring everyone together at the end and just refocus on the important stuff, which is the fact that we are all in it together.

P.S. The awesome Derby Love ring showed above is available at I heart roller derby. Squee!

Now for some art

So one of the ladies I used to skate with back at VDL (Cruel-Roller De'Ville) is also is in the States now, going to cartoon school in Vermont. Roller made a comic about the state of Men's Derby in Vermont. It looks like this:

The merby issue is an interesting one. There are no sports I can think of which are predominantly female oriented that don't also have an element of the athlete doing things that look good-- the "looking good" ones I had in mind were gymnastics, figure skating and cheerleading (hell, there are few sports I can think of which are predominantly female oriented at all). I am totally on the fence about whether or not merby poses a threat to derby as we know it. Recently, the best mens' derby league at the moment (Your Mom) beat Gotham at a private scrimmage, and there was a lot of talk of the men coming in to take our sport away or whatever. I don't think that's the case, but I can see the worry if you're not willing to share the sport or whatever.

On the other side of the fence, I also know some men who think "Merby" is a derogatory term. I'm not sure exactly why but maybe it goes along the line of "moobs" and "murse" as well. To be fair, I don't see it as derogatory but it's not great; you could just call it "derby" for everyone without needing to make that distinction. It's like, why do you need to say "female doctor" or "female parliamentarian" or something when they are just doctors and parliamentarians?

Roller's full comic is here.

Tour de campus!

Last weekend Psycho, Lindy Liu-Who and I went for a bit of a skate around campus. The weather was surprisingly good, what after that stupid random snowstorm that hit and everything.

Note leftover bits of snow. There were puddles we had to
skate around as well so we wouldn't get wet bearings.

I have to say that it took a while for me to get used to outdoor skating. I never did it all that much, and paths that you walk on normally suddenly are bumpier and steeper for some reason when there are wheels on your feet. So a lot of the paths we had planned out had been tested when we were walking around on campus, but skating was totally different and we did ask what we were thinking when we came across things that we had originally thought were nice surfaces to skate on, but turned out to be all seizure-inducing from bumpiness.

Architecture roof: bumpy as fuck.

For safety reasons, I get really nervous about lips or cracks in sidewalks where you can catch your wheels and stack. I did that once or twice; once I just bellyflopped onto the ground and it hurt. Ow. :P (I also have a fear of looking like a douche in public, and that involves also noticeably falling on my face in front of a bunch of people. Luckily that did not happen in the bellyflop case.)

But we skated a bunch around the drillfield, through some quads, and down a random ramp joining two buildings several stories above street level. It got better after we had skated a while.

The ramp was long.

We also saw this sign but you could only
read it if you were close enough (and
therefore already breaking the rules).

I wasn't prepared for the fact that there were so many people on campus on the weekend. Okay, normally I'm not bad with obstacle avoidance. We didn't hit anyone, but there were people with kids and people riding their bikes and people with dogs and it was like WTF.

Also there were some very rude guys on bikes who didn't even stop when we were coming (downhill) towards them; they just looked at us and kept riding their bikes up, while we were trying not to run into them and/or get out of their way. I almost had to bail on the grass, and Lindy had to grab a thorn bush (WTF) to stop from runinng into them. Grrr. I think Psycho had a few words for them after they passed us.

And then we saw these people doing parkour! There were a LOT of them; it was like there was a litle Parkour-land or something in this one quad on campus. And none of them were wearing helmets. I have to say that I get kind of (read: really) uncomfortable when I see people flinging themselves at buildings and not wearing any protective gear at all.

Okay, maybe THIS makes me more uncomfortable: PARKOUR ON SKATES:

When we were done we went and got burritos and jewelery. It was a good day.

Anyway, if the weather keeps up there'll be more outdoor skating, and then I can get over my stupid fear of hills and public stacking. Yay!

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.

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!

Eastern Region Roller Derby Smackdown

I am having the biggest fucking proud right now.

Last weekend it was BAD, and this weekend is all about reppin' VDL and the Dishonour Rollers:

I think I am trying to look fierce but I just
look disgusted and many-chinned.

My time at VDL was relatively short and while it was in its infancy; I never did any bouts (they all happened while I was overseas), and the only thing I did that was remotely representative was be on the DishRollers team for the Cannery Challege interleague scrimmage last year. That was already a big deal. But now VDL has sent a team to a FUCKING TOURNAMENT and are actually doing more bouts than they have EVER done before in one weekend.

The final score was CRDL C 155 to VDL's 151. But that's the closest margin we've EVER had. I bet everyone there is over the moon about it. At this rate they'll probably win their next game! And definitely the afterparty. Oh god I wish I was at the afterparty.

It's taken time but the team has needed it to come together, I guess. I know I'm not part of it anymore, but it is awesome to see people who have been just starting out a few months ago make it onto the rep team and kick some ass. It's like seeing the baby league all grown up and dishing out some awesome smackdown of its own. Dawwww.

Anyway, I am in particular extremely proud of my awesome derby wife, who captained the Rollers this time around. About a year ago, we were just rolling around and being freshies who were shitty about failing white star tests and not getting put in the same cohort as people who we started with but were better than us. But fuck, she's now the freaking captain of the travel team! And she went in as a triple threat. A year ago, Boudi wrote a blog post about how much she wanted to get to the point where she could bout. She said:

I want to be a bouting derby skater. I want to be able to tear up the track as a kickarse jammer. I want to be a great blocker, able to give the kind of hits that silence the crowd. I want to be a pivot who seems to have eyes in the back of her head. I want to be really good at this amazing amazing sport, and I want it so badly I could burst. The idea that I might not be capable of it is heartbreaking.

But now she is all that, and more. So in a way, ERRD's not just like "yay she made it onto the travel team and is the captain", but it is much more "yay, she kicked a lot of ass to get there, and all that effort and learning has paid off, and she is far more than capable of all of this." She is a fucking inspirational superstar.

Look how far you can come in a year of derby. It makes me so proud right now. Okay, I may or may not have something in my eye.

And that goes for everyone on the team. You've come a long way. I am so fucking proud of you all.

Goodbye Team Pie

Last Tuesday I was too munted to skate, but I went afterwards for some hanging out and possible carpark goon and shennanigans. However, it was rainy so we relocated to McShits for one last team pie. Yay!

ALL OF THE FOOD. NOM.

I don't know if Team Pie will still be around after I leave, since at some point we all realised that Team Pie was pretty much us stuffing our faces and tripling our appropriate daily caloric intake. Also, we met a lot of really weird people at Maccas. Like, REALLY weird. There was a guy who claimed to be waiting for a bus and then ranted to us about immigration for an hour, and this other dude who friended Rubi on facebook and had all these guns in his profile picture or something and stalked one of her other friends. I think that's where the term "Roller Derpy" came from, to address those people.

Anyway, so we had one last Team Pie. Maybe if I do Team Pie in the US it won't be so bad, because there are all kinds of crazy ass awesome pies in the US, like cherry and strawberry rhubarb and lemon meringue and key lime and blackberry and whatever, so maybe when I move to Virginia I won't have to Team Pie at McDonalds and people will actually bring pies to training. That would be fucking awesome. But for now this will have to do:

This was the last pie in the pie warmer when we got there.
Then they had to make like 20 more pies or we would have flipped some tables.

Plus the people who are on Team Pie are pretty fucking amazing. Yay.

The Other Side

I don't remember very much about what happened today. And not because I'm concussed or anything. Yes--I'm relatively injury free! Whoo!! Anyway, let's start at the beginning. We started with a team breakfast, where I thought at first I would be too nervous to eat, but then my inner fat kid got the better of me and I ate two poached eggs with fancy weird shaped toast, three hashbrowns and Tori's spinach from her eggs florentine (haha, why the hell would you get eggs florentine if you weren't going to eat the spinach?). Then we headed over to CRDL's HQ on the other side of town.

As I am clearly the goddamn Jesus of Team Munt, I had welts on my feet going into the Cannery. Last night, in a fit of mega-organization, I packed my derby bag, as well as a bag with extra clothes and a blanket (it was supposed to be mega cold today) and still had time to spare so I decided to preemptively tape up my ankles and my knee before tomorrow. I wanted to tape them a bit tightly and then have the tape loosen up overnight to accomodate for movement and stuff. Clever, huh? Well, then in the middle of the night I woke up because my feet had swollen up around the tape and I couldn't get it off and when I did I left big red welts on the sides of my feet (like on the outside of your foot where the bottom of your foot creeps around the side) and then today I had to tape over those. Ugh.

I'm glad I wore my PJ pants. They were warm and looked good.

Anyway, that aside, we got to the Cannery in the morning and filled out our paperwork and whatnot, and had a while to warm up and whatnot. It was pretty chilly in the morning (it dropped down to 0 overnight) so we were all pretty rugged up. I had brought my pyjama pants because I also don't own full-length sweatpants and the only full-length leg things I own are jeans, which I actually wore to breakfast because I thought it'd be weird to turn up at breakfast in pyjamas. But it was cold enough that I could wear my pj pants OVER my jeans, which in turn were worn over my skate pants (which were knee length but then I also wore my gaskets to make them 3/4 length, haha), and those were over my crash pads. By that stage I couldn't actually really move my legs to walk, but I was warm, so meh.

Gear check before Game 1. (photo from Slanders)

And then we started! Well, we did warmups, then a couple of pack drills, and then we were gear checking and sitting on benches and having our lineup done on a whiteboard. I wasn't in the first jam, but I was up as a blocker in Jam 2. When the first jam was going I was on the "next lineup" bench, I remember sitting on the bench next to Roller, and she was like "are you alright?" and I was just like "OH GOD WHAT AM I DOING HERE" kind of thing. Best timing to have an existential crisis or whatever. But yeah, once we were called on, then everything went. Kind of because it had to go, but meh. Either way, it was okay.

I think we had a pretty shaky start. We were nervous and it showed. I guess it didn't help that Slanders got me to jam, and I couldn't get through the fucking pack. I really wanted to jam, and I was excited that he gave me to the opportunity to try for my debut. But wow, that stuff is hard. Actually, this is arguably the most terrifying moment of the entire day:

OH GOD I AM ABOUT TO JAM AND POSSIBLY DIE

I was jamming against Pink Mist, who is on the CRDL VCRs. I think I got off the jammer line faster than her and then just got plowed into by their pack. I fell down a lot there. I don't know how many points they racked up that jam, but I think it was over 20. I really want to be able to jam, but I need to work on getting through the pack. I found prancing around on my toe stops worked, but I can't do that for the entire 2 minutes. At least I got props for being the "energizer bunny" and constantly popping back up after I took a hit. But yeah, that was a hard two minutes! I was pretty bummed I couldn't even score a single point. Gah. :(

I can't remember what was happening when I took this photo.

About halfway through, we picked up our game a little. We communicated more. People listened to their pivots and to the coach more. People worked together better, there was more touching and talking it up on the track. I also got to pivot, but I don't think I was loud enough and then I didn't pivot again after that. :P I think our final score was 130-something (to the Belters) and like 40-something to us, but I could be wrong. I wasn't really keeping track.

Then we had a bit of a break and got to watch the Red Bellied Black Hearts take on Sydney RDL, which was pretty awesome. It was a close game, and I saw some neat things to try out. One thing the teams would do is knock the jammer out of play with their power blocker, and then have another blocker drop back so that the jammer have to get past a wall of two people, one of whom could keep knocking them down while the other one pos blocked them.

After that was a potluck game, with a mix of players from various leagues. Rav and Smack also played with them, but that was right before lunch and I was hungry and got hot dogs instead.

Yay, so we had a bit of a team meeting at lunch, and talked about what worked and what didn't. Then Uzi and Slanders tried a new strategy and split us into two groups and did lineups within those groups. (Of course, if the previous lineup's jammer/blockers were in the bin and got released in your jam, then you still got to play with them.) So we did that in our second game, which was against the Black Hearts.

Unidentified butt

I found the RBBH game more fun than the Belters one. We were friends with some of the skaters, and I think the Rollers as a team were much more cohesive and worked together better. Melee pivoted a lot on my lineup and would literally throw me into the path of the jammer and I would take them out. Ha ha ha. I think my designated role in the team is the Human Cannonball: I did a lot of getting pushed into blocking people, and once I was in position I could pos block them okay until someone hit them. I also managed to do a few hits of my own and also knock a few people out of bounds, which was much more than what I had planned to do. But yeah, you hit the jammer out of bounds, and then back the fuck up, so they have to enter the pack behind you. I tried this a few times but I need to go back much faster. Rav did an awesome one when she made Bebe (on the RBBH) go through the ENTIRE pack. Hahaha. But yeah, I felt much, much better when everything was done. Our final score for this one was 71-38. This is the BEST differential we've ever had as the Rollers, and we were so psyched about it. Our plays were working, and we were actually working as a team, rather than a bunch of individuals with coordinated action. (Um, if that last sentence was just like a WTF, it's probably because I've been spending too much time working on my dissertation and talking about different kinds of collective action. Basically, the idea is, "yay, stuff was working"!)


No injuries either, hooray. But at one point in the first game Jillie hit Dirty Torque, and then she backblocked into me, and I fell and she fell on me and then Jillie went flying over both of us. Also, after the first game when you do your "high five line" thing past the other skaters, Wrecks gave me a big hug and lifted me up. But she was on skates and so was I, so she fell backwards on her skates and I crashed on top of her and we both went sprawling on the track. Ha ha ha. I'm surprised I didn't get hurt. But that's a good thing. I have bruises on my back but that's minor and wasn't on my list, right? :P

It was a great day. I felt really awesome when we were done, and there were hugs and smiles all around. Then I went home and had a shower and nearly passed out in bed even though it was only like 4:30pm.

AND I FORGOT MY SKATES. YES. I LEFT THEM AT THE CANNERY BECAUSE I AM A MORON. Melee very kindly is looking after them for me until training tomorrow night but seriously, who the fuck does that!?! And they're Antiks!! And it was my first bout!! Seriously. Haha, so now I am no longer a bout virgin and I don't have my skates.

These are my peeps.

Also, I somehow managed to eat three hot dogs at lunchtime and then skate without throwing up. Yay me.

Hardly! I got 1 minor in each game. Heh.

The Cannery Challenge, 2012

VDL has a team called the Dishonour Rollers. It's the rep/travel team, although the furthest it's travelled so far is to the other side of Canberra. It's made up of some amazing skaters. They're fast and hit hard. And they're coming out to play tomorrow at CRDL's Cannery Challenge. Basically, the CC is where CRDL hosts a bunch of teams and there's a series of bouts (or half-bouts) so we can meet other teams and whatnot.

I'm not unfamiliar with the Dishonour Rollers. I went to the first Cannery Challenge last year. I had provisionally made the first DR team ever, but then I stupidly wrecked my ankle and couldn't skate and benched instead. And that might have been a good thing because a lot of people got injured. (I wrote about it here.)

Then there was the TGSS team bound for Adelaide, and I was on that but we had to pull the entire team out due to injury and insufficient numbers.

Then there was another CC earlier this year, but I was overseas.

But tomorrow, I am going to be a Dishonour Roller. And I mean, actually skate as a Dishonour Roller. I'm excited, but at the same time, I am fucking terrified.

YES PLEASE.

It's my first bout, or bout-type thing, and I'm on the rep team? WTF. What a place to start. Everyone else on the team has bouted before, so I guess the whole first-bout-ever jitters don't really work for them. But yeah. I sometimes wonder how I got here; I mean, the rest of the team consists of either really fast jammers, really strong giant wall blockers, or pivots that actually understand game strategy and can employ it. I'm not fast (or I can be off the jammer line because I've improved my footwork when I was overseas, but I get held up in the pack. There's a lovely video of me somewhere on the internet where I take off from the jammer line really quick, and skate straight into Rubi Doom's butt and fall down. Ha). I can't really hit hard, although I much prefer positional blocking someone than hitting them and possibly getting majored or injured or whatever. And I have some REALLY minimal conception of derby strategy. I watch the videos and stuff on youtube, but they might as well be speaking French to me. (I actually understand French, but not enough that I can process it as fast as a native speaker, so you get my drift.) For someone almost done with a Ph.D., I can't get my brain to work for derby purposes. So yeah, it's no wonder that I'm just a little bit nervous.

Yes, yes, before you get all "you shouldn't worry about it because you made the team so you must be good and whatever", I guess I'm self-doubting because I've never actually tested my mettle in the field, as it were. Training and scrimmage at VDL is one thing because it's like, hitting your friends and you know how they react to stuff and what their strengths and weaknesses are. Hitting strangers is a different thing. Especially strangers who have frigging represented Australia at Blood and Thunder. In a way, I want to hit someone who meets that description, to say that I did. I'm sure that tomorrow night I'll be all like "WHOO THAT WAS SO AWESOME" but now, I'm just a bit bleh. Stupid nerves. Winning the afterparty might be an option though. I'll probably need a drink or two.

This shouldn't suggest that I plan to lose the bout.
I'm just planning to not lose the after party.

 My goal tomorrow consists of one thing: TRY NOT TO DIE.

(Subsidiary goals: do some good positional blocking, maybe even hit someone, maybe get through the pack and score at least one point if I get to jam)

Also, I have a list of things I would like to not injure, in order of highest preference of "it is crucial that this thing works" to "meh, I guess I can recover from that":

• My brain. If I get any sort of head injury, I can't do my Ph.D.. And I need to do my Ph.D.
• My hands/wrists/arms. How the hell do I type a dissertation if someone's broken all my fingers by skating over them?
• My pretty face. Well, not really, but you know. Also, I would really like to keep all my teeth.
• Ankles. I have TWO cruddy ankles already, and they will be taped up as much as they can. Also, no blisters on my ankles would be nice.
• Knees. That shit hurts, but not as bad as ankles.
• I can deal with bruises. Just no lacerations or shit. It's a bit rude to bleed all over someone else's nice derby track. Also, I will try very hard not to vomit everywhere.

The team's meeting for breakfast tomorrow, and then we're going to do some ass kicking after that. It's an all day event, so I'll try to update on Sunday or Monday or whatever. I will see you on the other side.

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.

SCRD tryout publicity

So remember how I did SCRD tryouts a while back? (There's an entry about it here.) Well, Lindsay (aka Erin Knockabitch) pointed out at training tonight that there was an article in the Press Democrat that had been written about it. And for some reason there's a fucking big picture of me with the article. Ha ha ha.

The article is here. It's awesome; it mentions a couple of the fantastic people I've been skating with (some of whose real names I didn't actually know until I read the article. Or I knew their first name but it'd have some little snippet thingy about their personal lives and I'd be like, "oh really?" kind of thing.) Yeah, it's nice to see that SCRD is getting some publicity. They have a great venue and the people there are amazeballs.

Photos are here. They spelt my name wrong. Fuck! (Haha, it's probably because the photographer guy asked me what my name was and couldn't understand me with my accent. Boo indeed.)

Oh, so you'll be able to see that yellow onesie lycra bodysuit thingy that I was talking about. It's in one of the photos, I'm sure.

A hard copy of the article is framed and on the wall in the Wrecking Yard. It has backing with leopard print. (I bet Sparks did that.) I should get a copy of this article and send it to my mum; I don't think she knows I do derby yet. I'll have to write about that some other time I think.

Making the team, from the other side of the planet

I checked my facebook this morning and found out that I've been provisionally drafted onto my league's away team for The Great Southern Slam in Adelaide in June this year. That's the Dishonour Rollers--last time I was provisionally drafted for the Cannery Challenge, and then I went overseas and came back and munted myself. Now I've been provisionally drafted and I'm overseas... well, let's hope that when I get back, history doesn't repeat itself. Gah. I'm going to really have to bring my game to earn this spot, but I'm excited to have the opportunity to be part of something as big as this.

But anyway. As big as what? Well, the GSS is the biggest roller derby tournament in the entire southern hemisphere, and all these leagues descend on Adelaide to bout it out for three whole days. THREE WHOLE DAYS OF DERBY!! Squeeeee! And afterparties and merch and learning a whole bunch of things and watching some of the best skaters in the Antipodes duke it out. I will probably be sitting in suicides the whole time if I can get in there. Anyway, this is the kind of stuff I'll be seeing: this is a video from the final jam of the final in 2011 with Sun State Roller Girls and Victoria RDL:

Holy crapballs. I'm kind of scared; everyone else who is going has infinitely more bouting experience than I do. But hey, learning curve and all that yeah? I'm certainly learning a whole bunch of stuff while I'm over here, and I'm excited to take it back home. (Also, this is the best reason to upgrade to new skates, yes? Antiks? Yes?)

Milestones.

Today is a big day for my league. It is our FIRST EVER friends and family bout, or really, bout to the public in any sense ever, between the PhDemons and the Cheerbleeders. I'm a little bit bummed to be missing it because I'm on the other side of the world, but this is a big step for a LOT of people in my league and I'm also quite excited on their behalf.

Varsity Bruise is the culmination of about a year of training and hard work, organization and preparation. A year ago none of us had any idea how to bout. Some of us didn't know how to skate. Over half of the people in the league weren't even in the league. And now here we are, kicking ass in front of our loved ones.

I'm really proud of them.<3

VDL's first block to the head

I also had a job interview in December, and because it was a US school the time difference meant that I was skyping with them at 1am. Interview prep is kind of stressful, but to relax I decided to take a break from it and go to training the night of the interview, which also happened to be my last night of training for the year. Of course, I decided to scrimmage (since it was also my first scrimmage back from injury). It felt really good to scrim again.

Sarge split teams for scrimmaging so that the PhDemons and Cheerbleeders could practice for their bout in February. I mostly pivoted and blocked since I'm not going to be at the bout and it'd be kind of unfair to take up time jamming when others could practice that. Anyway, at one point in the scrim I think Malice hit Junky (who was skating for the PhDemons) and she elbowed me IN THE EYE. She got sent off for the first ever block to the head at VDL, and I copped a black eye and a cut (maybe from the velcro on her elbow pad, or maybe from the force of the elbow splitting the skin or something?), and people brought me ice and were really nice about it but still, there it was, right in time for a job interview.

Oh yeah, and the interview was on a HD Webcam so they could see everything.

This is how it looked the day after, when I had iced it a whole bunch and tried to put concealer over it:
 

I like how it kind of looks like a smiley face.

Also, in that scrim we won and got the first-ever score over 100 points. Yay us.

Also, I didn't end up getting the job. Boo.

The prodigal daughter, part two

So, two things happened last night at training:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.