Intermission: San Francisco is set to break a world skatey record

Yeah, so I haven't updated this recently, mostly because of real life stuff. Long story short, I'm moving to Seattle for a whole bunch of new adventures! But if anyone is going to be in San Francisco next week, here's something fun that you can do: strap on some skates and break a world record!

Deets are: Sunday, June 8 at 11am. And it will be in Golden Gate Park on the Great Highway (the road running through GGP), which is super close to the skate place in the park. I think the old guy dancing on skates in this blog entry is going to be there, which is AWESOME because he has some mad skills.

Roller-Thriller in the park. This is what everyone needs.

Some of my friends from Sonoma County are going to be there, and it looks like all you have to do is do some kind of pace line but actually touching the person in front, and slaloming, which doesn't look too hard. Plus it's not every weekend that you get to go break some world records and get to do super awesome skatey fun stuff!

Return to SCRD

I skated with SCRD as a visiting skater last year, and they are an amazing bunch of ladies. I wrote a lot about them in earlier entries here.

Right now, I'm back on the West Coast visiting Ze Boyfriend. Last week, I went back there since (relatively speaking) I'm in the area. I like what they've done with the place. They took out the middle wall so now there's more room for the track, as well as a few little ramps on the side. Also, as a side note, they DID end up doing the OCD floor tile thing with the sport court that I got shit for last time. HA!

Junior derby in action. They are so tiny!

 They also have a whole new batch of recruits, which is great. I met this super cute couple whose derby names are (get this) Ashes to Ashes and Dust to Dust. Now that's like a whole new metalevel of derby naming when you coordinate your name with someone else. I also was reunited with a lot of the old guard, which was also lovely. There were a lot of hugs. Yay.

Anyway, we started with some crossover technique practice. Now there's some sense in which I can do crossovers, but there's another sense in which I don't, because I don't push with my inside leg. Psycho calls it a "squirrelly thing I do with my legs" when I cross. So we did a bit of just grapevining across the room, focusing first on getting a big step over with your front leg, and then on the "flick" thing you do with your back foot, and then getting as low as possible while doing it, and the putting it all together.

We did some other drills, which I'll write up separately. And there was scrimmage! The teams are basically the A and B teams split evenly (so they sort all the A team players first, and then the B teams). I normally just get put with the B team, and that's fine by me. And D said that EVERYONE had to jam, so that was good. I managed to avoid a few hard hits but when I got knocked off the track, I tried tomahawking on their floor at speed to turn back and I fell on my ass because the floor was so much slicker than what I'm used to. It was like I put my toe stops down and my feet just went from under me.

But one thing I really like about SCRD (which I've not seen done at other leagues) is that everyone warms up together, and then everyone sits in a circle to stretch at the beginning of the session. This is a good time for introductions or to go through announcements (from committee chais) and whatever. I really like how they do that. Plus they also spend a few minutes doing that at the end of each session, as a cooldown and also to remind people of upcoming events (e.g. they have a bout coming up, so everyone please sell your bout tickets, or be here on a particular day to pack up the floor to take to the venue, or whatever).

So we did that, and then D made everyone go around and introduce themselves again (since some people came late to the session) and then also promise something they were going to do, and people said things like they would wash their pads or drink more water or whatever. I didn't know what to say so then I said while I was visiting, I would bring cake at some point. Ha.

So that was last week.

And then yesterday, CAKE! Yes, I am a lady of my word.

Lemon raspberry mini cupcakes. NOM!

Actually Tila also brought cupcakes because (unbeknownst to me) it was Karen's birthday. But that meant there was multiple cake, so hooray!

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.

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.

Tonight's offskates training: manual labor!

Yesterday we went to SCRD to scrim and train, and when we got there, the floor looked like this:

 NOOOOO! They were covering up their lovely concrete tile floor with plastic tiles. Mega sadface. SCRD had acquired a plastic tile floor, kind of like the one they use at BAD. I really liked their old floor; it was a bit dusty (and made your wheels grubby) but it was so nice and smooth and flat. Plastic tiles sometimes have a tendency to bubble (like if they don't get snapped down properly) and also cracks, since there's about an inch between them and the concrete floor. To be fair, the concrete floor was pretty hard to fall on and the plastic stuff is a bit more springy and gives a bit, but I'm still a bit bummed that the nice concrete floor was covered up. I would have been much happier if they just sealed it and we could skate on that. Oh well.

I think it's a second hand floor, because they also had to powerwash a bunch of tape off it. So the tiles were wet and slippery. And assembling these bastards is hard! There are little plastic things on two sides (like one on the length and one on the width) that interlock with the loops on the other two sides. That also meant that if you started at the wrong end you would have to put the plastic loops under plastic tiles that were already down, which resulted in squashed fingers and a lot more work. We started at the wrong end. Boo.

I moved like a thousand of these bad boys.

So then we tiled to the right end, and then started from there! We broke/assembled the tiles into 5x5 squares (which were light enough and not ridiculously bulky to move--I could carry a 3x5x5 without too much trouble) and then laid them down so that we could assemble them when they were in place.

Basically, the brown/gold pieces were outside the track, and the blue ones were inside. The one at BAD isn't colour coordinated; it's basically that white/grey marbly looking stuff with random fluroescent yellow or pink tiles, and they just taped off the track with bright pink tape, but the contrast on this one was more obvious:

Shape fail, or that is a really weird apex to jump.

Luckily, the old track tape was still down so we could use them as a guideline. I wanted to get the tiles as accurately as possible, so it would look nice and accurate, so I was doing this sort of thing:

Pretty handiwork, if I say so myself.

D called me out on being "a bit crazy OCD" because I was being a perfectionist. Ha ha ha.

But that meant that I had to reassemble the 5x5 squares, boo. And then the track was much more pixelly than it had to be. It ended up looking like this on one of the corners:

And this is the outside of the track, looking in:

We had to leave at about 9:30pm or so to go home, and I think people were still there until 1am, so I don't think there was any skates on. But this is what it looked like when it was 3/4 done! Nice 8-bit track, if I say so myself.

I'd still prefer the other floor to skate on, but let's see how this one goes on Wednesday.

SCRD training, for realz yo!

Sparks uses this as the junior derby logo.

So, I went to a full SCRD training yesterday. Full training is like their league training, and league members have to attend 66% of trainings per month (or 50% if you live over 50 miles away). We live over 50 miles away. Actually, it's a pretty big time sink going to SCRD--yesterday I left home at 5:30pm for a 7pm training, and I was STILL late because the traffic out of the city is mega ridiculous. Argh. At least they have offskates training from 7-8, and then onskates 8-10, so it wasn't like I was super super late. Also, they have junior derby until 7:30, so offskates takes place on the side of the track. When we got there, people were doing stretches and whatnot, but nothing really substantial seemed to have taken place yet. We did a lot of hops and agility stuff (jumping side to side, forwards/backwards etc.) until the jr.derby kids were done, and then we did a bunch of side runs and grapevines up and down the length of the room. It was a good warmup; people were already sweaty after it.

Then it was skates on time. D. Enforcer and Roxxxy took us through warmup stuff, which was a 25 in 5. Apparently up in Mendo they do a 25 in 4, and that's what I really want to work towards. D was timing us (in groups really) and I managed to finish in a bit over 4:30, so that was good. Then Felony Assault took us through some stretching, and then it was pace lines! D made us do pace lines where your hand had to be on the back of the person in front of you, and the person who was weaving through the pace line had to go UNDER your arm. Actually, D said that she was talking to someone about me and said that I was "small and could fit through all kinds of holes", haha. I am goddamn famous.

I didn't have much trouble doing the drill (except I kept being really dumb and going on the outside on corners, WTF?). Okay, but my stumpy arms made it pretty hard for everyone else who had to go under mine, because it's short and an "arm's length" for me is not very much at all. I got headbutted a whole bunch of times, and I hit someone in the face with my arm. Whoops. Also the person behind me grabbed the back of my shirt and almost undid my bra as we were skating. Awks. We did that drill a bunch of times, and then backwards weaving too. The only thing was that my left hip flexor thingy was a bit sore, and my right ankle was angry at me after all the pace lines. At least when we had water breaks, I could stretch it out a bit.

Then we did the boomerang drill again; 2 minutes derby direction, 1 minute break, 2 minutes anti-derby. We did that a whole heap of times, at least for 20 minutes. Then we did shopping carts with the same time limites (2/1/2) but switching with your partner every two laps.

Overall training wasn't too bad, and I really liked the level it was pitched at.  But then Rizzo had us all go offskates at the end and we did more strength and agility work! I really like agility drills. But first we had to flip tires. Like, for reals. I've never seen giant monster truck tires before, but holy crap. They were fat enough to come up to my thigh, and I could EASILY have fit in it, twice. But Rizzo got us to flip them down the length of the room and back, and then the second time you had to jump into the tire hole and then out, then run around the tire, and THEN flip it. ARGH. Seriously. It was kind of hard for me to flip the tire because I'm so short, so I could lift it and then I would have to get under it to push it over, and I couldn't steer it to save my life. I flipped it into the wall, into the person next to me and somehow onto its side so it rolled, hahaha.

It sure goddamn is, hahaha. But the tires were bigger for us.

Then we did a bunch of agility ladder things. I love agility ladders, thanks to offskates VDL training and more agility ladder stuff with BAD. They're so fun. I want to be able to do all the stuff we do with agility ladders offskates but with my skates on (probably on my toe stops; having the wheels down might get caught on the rope bits of the ladder). But yeah, that's something to work towards. Next training is on Monday! Scrimmage!! Yay!

Making the team, SCRD style

This week has been good for skating. I had BAD training on Sunday, then on Monday ze boyfriend and I went down to that Skate Area at Golden Gate Park (that I mentioned here--and the same old guy dancing around with the boombox was there). We brought beer cans and used them as cones to do weaving stuff and jumps. And yesterday SCRD had their newbie tryouts (which was part of the reason why we went to the skate area in the first place, to run through the WFTDA minimum skills test and whatnot). Technically I'm visiting/transferring and don't need to do the tryouts, but hey, it was on at regular training time and half of the normal SCRD team were there as well, plus a photographer and a couple of other new faces.

One of the weirdest things was that there was a girl there wearing a full body lycra bodysuit thing. And skates. Well, she didn't have the head bit zipped up, but yeah, it was something like this:

And then she also had her underwear on the outside. WTF? I was curious and wanted to ask, but I didn't. Oh well.


So, the test consisted of:

• 25 in 5 warmup
• Stops (T, Plow)
• Falls (1 point, 2 point, baseballs, 180* 1 points, 4 points)
• 5 in 1 (twice, with a 1-2 min break in between)
• 1-minute planks
• Cutting (going from inside line to outside and back)
• Balancing on one leg on the straightaways (with each leg)
• Another 25 in 5 (which I did in about 4:40, yay)
• The boomerang drill (two skaters skate next to each other on inside line, the insidemost one pushes the other one out to the outside line, and then calls for them to come back in to the inside line. The returning skater comes in behind the other skater and then pushes them out, etc. I totally fucked this one up because I came back in in front of the other skater, and then swore a lot and laughed probably too much for the assessors' liking.)

No jumps, hops, hits, pushes, pace lines with weaving, or whips. A bit sadface, but that's understandable since it's the newbie tyrouts I guess. I guess things like swivel head, posture, crossovers, obstacle avoidance etc. become apparent when you do enough laps with enough people on the track.

But yeah, I qualify. Yay me. And that means tonight there's grownup league training to go to too. I will be onskates four nights this week, and that makes me happy. And because I don't really have photos for this entry, here, have a picture of some baby otters.

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.

I like to hipcheck children.

I'm on the SCRD Newbies Board! Haha. I am fucking famous.

SCRD training this week was similar to last week. We brought our friend Dan as well, who borrowed some of the SCRD gear and fell on his butt a few times. I hope he had fun though! There was also another Australian (Anne) there, which was kind of crazy because that's like 1/4 of the people at training were Australian, and Santa Rosa is not even a big city!

We did the same drills as last time, so the warmup was the 25 in 5 (which I finished in less than 5, hooray!!!) and then anti-derby 20 in 5. I need to work on my anti-derby crossovers I think, because I have a tendency to coast through the turn and maybe attempt like 2-3 steps. Blah.

Pyramids tonight were good. We went 1-5 this time, instead of 4. I think I totally qualified for team munted though. When I finish my turn, I usually plow stop, and there's a pretty big space for being able to do that. So that works well. But on one of my turns I think I was standing up too straight and didn't have enough push in my plow stops, so I ended up crashing into this bench:

The bench that I skated into, and possibly broke.

I tried to baseball slide to stop myself from smashing into it (on the assumption that if I did I could slide under the bench seat) but then I somehow managed to smash my shoulder into the bench, and then also move it like a foot until it was pressed up against that wall. The legs are iron or something, and it made a really big noise. Then I fell on the ground on my side and sprawled all over the dusty floor. The legs are now at a slightly weird angle, but later in training there was a guy sitting on it, so clearly it's still functional. Ha. I also am getting a big bruise on my shoulder from that crash. How's that for a souvenir? Pictures to come.

Oh we also did hipchecks! Offskates though, but nonetheless hipchecks. Due to height issues I was paired with one of the junior derby kids (hahahaha) and we practiced hipchecks on both sides. I got my first taste of derby fandom though when junior derby kid was like "are you a real derby player?" and I said "yes, I skate with a league in Australia" and she was all like "Oooooh" (and then she said "please don't hurt me", but anyway). So, hipchecks with a little kid. The trick is to get your foot in front of theirs (and over) and then check them, rather than check them when you're just next to them. You get more push that way. And then to defend that you lean into the check so the person who is checking you has to not just knock you so you are facing straight but then also sideways. Yeah. I managed to hipcheck said junior derby kid so hard that she fell over. Hahaha. She did hit me back pretty hard though, so yeah. I also taught her how to also dodge a hipcheck by leaning the other way. Haha. She was so cute. Then I gave her fist bumps.

UPDATE: Here are the bruises I got from crashing into the bench!

The square bruise on my arm is just the impact with the bench. It was only purple for like half a day, and then started turning yellow already, boo:

I have absolutely no idea where these ones came from, but it looks like I've been bashed in the shins. I thought at first it was a bad baseball slide where the wheels hit me in the shin but that can't be right because the bruises don't line up with my wheels:

Up in wine country

So, there are at least four roller derby leagues in this area. Hooray. League tourism is the best kind of tourism. Last night I drove up to train with Sonoma County Roller Derby. I contacted them a few weeks back and did the "Hey can I skate with you?" thing and they were really awesome about it and were all like "Sure! Come along, and check us out and here are all our training times" which sounded really friendly and awesome.

SCRD have been around since 2007 and got their WFTDA affiliation last year. They are a smaller league than BAD, but they have a travel team (the Wine Country Homewreckers... how is that for a name?!!) and also junior derby! Like, for reals. Little kids on skates. I don't know if they hit each other as much though. I don't know much about junior derby generally for that matter.

Anyway, SCRD have an open skate/newbie night on Tuesday, so I thought I would check it out first to gauge what their training levels are like. Plus, I wanted to get some skate on during the week and just work on some of my basic skills. So yeah, their ground is called The Wrecking Yard, and it's a relatively new venue. It's also on a main street in downtown Santa Rosa, so how's that for having a skating venue right in your face? Also, they have an AMAZING floor, which looks tiled but it so smooth and flat and fantastic to skate on. It's not sealed yet though so you're not allowed to bring drinks onto the trainng track. But yeah. Even walking across it to get to the locker room was awesome. I was excited to skate on it.

I went to their locker room and introduced myself to some of their skaters. Their social skate is open to everyone but mostly it's league people getting more training in, as well as a couple of newbies and junior skaters. One of them had the derby name "San Franpsycho" which I thought was mega cute. After I filled in their paperwork I handed it in and went to pay and found out something really awesome: Training is normally $5 but it's free to skaters who are visiting from another league! Hooray! How's that for being welcoming and awesome!

They have lockers in their locker room! I wish we had lockers.
Or a locker room, for that matter.

That night they also had a TV show crew or something recording a doco on their league, and apparently now I might be on some doco about roller derby. It apparently is showing in Australia and New Zealand later this year. Hahaha. But the host of the show (Bree) and the producer (Bob) were also putting skates on to have a roll around. Anyway, I might be famous. Ha ha.

Anyway, to training. I was mega excited to be skating on that super nice surface there, so I did a couple of laps before everyone else was on track just to get a feel for it. It was a really smooth surface and not stupidly slippery, but it was hard if you fell on it because there wasn't much give. But it wasn't terrible, and I felt good skating on it after a couple of pre-warmup warmup laps. And then it was warmup time, and the warmup was TWENTY-FIVE IN FIVE. Hahahaha. The last time I did that was... geez, I think it was before we even used the star system, like way back in July or something when we were still training on one court at ANU and I got like 22 or 23. But yeah, it was good. And I nailed it. :D

Oh, but then warmup wasn't over yet. Everyone sat down and did stretches (and introductions, and also went through league matters, which I found really interesting) and then there was more warmup. It was another 25 in 5. But this time it was ANTI-DERBY. Holy shit. I think I managed all 25 but just barely a split second before the whistle went to stop. Also, I need to get better at crossing on my anti-derby side.

OMG. SUCH A NICE FLOOR.

Then it was time for drills. The coach tonight was Pain, who's on their travel team. We did a booty blocking drill in groups of three. Basically, you started lying on your front on the jammer line (and so did 2 other people), and then when the whistle went you had to get to the front of the pack. When you were at the front, you had to booty block to stop the other people getting ahead of you. If you got ahead, then you booty blocked the other people. It was a good drill, and I was pretty quick getting up off the ground and to the front, but 1) I need to work on doing a really tight block (like when the other girls did it, it was like a derby sandwich) and 2) I almost elbowed someone when I did sprint elbows. Whoops. But it was a great learning experience. You basically did this for two laps, and then another three people would have a go. Those that weren't cleared for hitting just did the lying down bit and then they raced for two laps.

Then we did some lateral stepping drills. Basically, you walked sideways down to the end of the track and back. I still find this kind of hard, I don't know why. I can do it for a bit, but then I roll. Or because I have stupidly short legs I have to take twice as many steps as everyone so I look mega slow doing it. Hahaha. Lame sauce. But it was good, and then we did lateral stepping across the track. Like, you started on the inside line and then lateral stepped to the outside line, then you had to touch the outside line with your hand (so you had to stay low) and then move back to the inside line. Then, after doing that a few times, half the people kept doing it while the other half skated and did laps, using the people who were lateral moving as obstacles they needed to avoid. If you went over the track lines, you did pushups.

Actually, they're generally quite strict with stuff like listening when Pain is talking. Basically if you talk when she's talking, you do pushups. It worked, although the junior derby kids did quite a few pushups because they kept wanting to talk to the TV people...

What your feet are doing when you duck walk

Then, we did the duck walk. Basically you put your feet out sideways and walk so the insteps of your feet are pointing forwards and your wheels are perpendicular to where you are walking to. It helps if you bend your knees for that (although you do end up kinda bow legged ) but this helps with running starts when you aren't up on toe stops, and also for transitioning. So we did those a bit. Again, short legs = too many steps = mega slow at this. Haha.

And then after that we practiced stops. We only did Ts and Plows this time, but basically we put cones all down the room, and you just stopped at each cone. However, once you had come to a complete stop, you had to pick up speed before heading to the next cone, and you did this by running on your toe stops on the spot for a bit before skating up to the next cone and then stopping. Running on your toe stops is a big thing here. I think I did okay on that, but need to work on more toe stop work.

We also did 1 and 2-knee falls. But to make sure that we were falling properly and not doing "smashy-smashy" on our knees (as Pain called it), we practiced knee taps first. Basically, this is like doing lunges on skates. Not bad as a workout component, and it made sure you were careful with how you put your knees down. We did regular 1-knee falls, then 1-knee 180s (interestingly, people seemed to turn the same way regardless of which knee they were falling on??) and then 2-knees. I fucking love two knee slides. Sadly, my felted pads smeared lines of black and yellow melted felt and duct tape all over their nice floor, ha ha. But they didn't seem to mind too much.

Blue leopard print bleachers? MEGA CUTE.

Finally, we paired up and did pyramid laps. You skate one lap, then your partner does one. Then you skate two, and then your partner does two. And so on, going up to four laps per person and then coming back down. I liked this drill a lot. Your partner helps you count your laps, and then you count theirs and/or yell encouragement/abuse as they skate.

And then we were done! There wasn't any warmdown or anything, and people seemed to just want to take their skates off and go home or whatever. If you have jelly legs, they have these adorable bleachers with blue leopard print fabric and SCRD cushions (made out of old SCRD merch!) that you can lounge around on. I did a few warmdown laps because I liked their floor so much, and while I was doing that Pain and some of the other ladies were being interviewed for this roller derby documentary thing. Oh, and SCRD also has a newbies wall where they take your picture up next to their banner and then they print it out and it goes on their wall. Lady Sparks took my picture for the wall so it'll be there next week when I go again to training, whoo.