Boudi and Mouse in San Francisco, Part 2

MASSIVE EPIC SKATE DAY TODAY. After a bit of a sleep in, we packed our skates, gear and water (it was pretty warm!) and took the bus up to the Golden Gate Bridge. Yep. Our first skate for the day was on the bridge, and we went from the southern base of the bridge to the North Tower. It's apparently illegal to skate the bridge, but I couldn't find any information on that online. Travis from BAD had told me that she skated it with a couple of other people and was told it was a $10,000 fine (but they didn't get fined) but I didn't see that online, and the only thing I found was something about how officially the law permits skating "on sidewalks in residential areas", which is absurd. You'll see why in a second.

Anyway, bridge skate. We started at the south base, just past the pavilion. I have to admit that was I a bit nervous when we were gearing up, like as if we were doing this and then the cops would come and arrest us or tazer us or something before we even started. But nobody came to tell us off when we were putting our gear on, and a guy tried to not-very-surreptitiously take photos of us. Anyway, then we put our shoes and warm clothes into our packs, and we were off! (Well, we did stop when we got onto the bridge to be like "EEEE We're on the bridge!!!" for a second before we started skating again, but you get the idea.)

We took this picture AFTER our skate.
This is the only sign we saw the whole time
about the impermissibility of skating the GGB.

The bridge has a slight slope at both ends, and we had to also go around pedestrians and tourists. There's also barriers on either side, so we weren't going to fall into the bay (which has a 98% success of death rate) or get hit by cars. Anyway, the first part of the skate was just us getting used to the path, and there were some spaces between the pavers in the sidewalk that were weirdly shaped--like, every third one was slightly wider than the others--and there were also metal gratings and whatnot. If you skated too slowly over them, your wheels would get caught and you'd stack or something. There were a few times when I would get wobbly because I wasn't going fast enough over the cracks, but it was okay. Luckily nobody caught my flailing arms in the mouth.

Then we got to the South Tower! It wasn't very busy so we could stop and take photos and have a water break and whatnot. There was a little bit of getting around tourists taking photos of giant orange metal rivets and whatever, but nothing that couldn't be done by hopping around on toe stops. After that, we kept skating onwards. By this time traffic was picking up a bit (it was about 12:30 or so) but it wasn't giant tour groups or anything, so it wasn't too tricky to negotiate.

It wasn't clear if we were pedestrians or bicycles.

I think after this point we kind of realised that we would be okay skating the bridge and wouldn't stack and die (although I guess getting tazered was still a real possibility). But then we started to enjoy ourselves on the skate, rather than more "oh god let's just hurry up and do this". People were looking at us all in our gear and stuff, and kids would point and smile and one guy on a bike was like "Roller skates! That's awesome!" and everyone was really happy and excited that we were skating the bridge. I think that made us a bit more confident with what we were doing, and we were smiling back and stuff. We got to the halfway point (the dip in the cable) pretty quickly, and then after that the bridge started on a gentle slope downhill towards the northern base. There was a bit more plow stopping that had to happen here, but it wasn't too bad.

Note random Asian tourist umbrella lady
who basically came around the blind corner
and didn't stop staring at us for 5 minutes.

We got to the North Tower and had another break. The slope down from that to the Northern Base is a bit steeper, and it wasn't clear where we could stop afterwards. (Later, it turned out that we could have stopped in a little concrete section near the base, but we couldn't see it from where we were.) Anyway, we then turned around and headed back to the Southern Base. We also stopped for some photos again, and ended our skate at the Southern Base before the blind corner. Basically, at this corner, pedestrians go one way, and cyclists another, but the cycling thing is hella steep and kind of dangerous (since it's a giant steep hairpin with no barriers). So we geared down, did some stretches and put warm clothes on (it was cold and foggy) and hopped on a bus over to Lombard Street.

The only casualty on the bridge skate was a tourist who was leaning against the roadside barrier and then stepped forward without actually looking to see if there were oncoming cyclists and skaters, and I may have run over his foot a little. :P Well, I felt a little ba-bump kind of thing. Boudi was behind me, and when I stopped I said, "I think I ran over that guy's foot", and she said "yeah, then he made some kind of "Arrrggggghhh" noise when I skated past him". Whoops. But he seriously didn't look, so if I had been a bicycle or something he would have been much more run over than just "Arrrrggggghhhh". Also, I think he was wearing socks and sandals as well, so maybe he deserved it. I wonder if that's just traumatised his bridge experience or whatever.

The idea of skating down this part of
Lombard makes us want to cry.

Now, let's speak more about "traumatic". Lombard Street goes over the many hills in San Francisco and has ridiculously hilly bits, like where your driveways are at a 45 degree angle or whatever. We climbed up one of those hills (with our gear and skatey jelly legs) and looked down behind us and it was seriously a death skate. So we didn't do that. However, Lombard is also famous because it has this CRAZY crooked part with zigzags. We joked about skating it. Technically, it's a residential street (i.e. has houses on either side of it), so it's legal to skate on Lombard. I think if we tried to we might (in some possible world) have succeeded, since it'd be like shitlots of slaloms and plow stops. But tons of cars drive down it as a tourist attraction, and it does open out onto a road with more cars, and if that doesn't stop you, the wall of millions of tourists at the bottom taking pictures will. We just walked down it. Then we walked up it again. It's fucking steep and has stupidly shaped steps, plus we were carrying all our derby gear and it was the middle of the day and the sun was blazing hot, so if you can think of a better workout for your ass and legs while also taking in views of the San Francisco Bay Area and photobombing like 20 tourist shots, I'd like to hear it.

*random nod to CRDL*

At the top of Lombard, we caught a cable car down to Fisherman's Wharf. Now, I didn't take any photos on the cable car because it was like how it is in the movies with people hanging off the sides. Specifically, we were hanging off the sides of the cable car, since it was full by the time we caught it. I now have hulk arm from holding onto the cable car with one arm, which also happened to be the arm that my backpack and skates were hanging off (because I didn't have time to put my other arm through my pack strap). And there was one part when our cable car was going downhill and another was coming uphill and we were SO close to the people on the other car we could have high fived them. I had to derby stance the whole way down to not fall out or drop my gear. But then at the bottom we were just north of Fisherman's Wharf, and it was almost on 2pm and we hadn't eaten since breakfast.

We went to Alioto's and ordered from their "Fried foods in a basket" section of the menu. Seriously, that is what it is called. Fried calamari and fried fish and lots of chips, nom. It also came with salad (pfffft) or clam chowder. YES PLEASE. They also gave us half a baguette and like six hundred pats of butter before our food and we pretty much inhaled everything. I even made my own bread bowl for my chowder too because I am classy.

NOMTASTIC.

Boudi and Mouse in San Francisco, Part 1

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

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

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

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

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

Me, Boudi and Francis' Butt.

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

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

Incriminating evidence.

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

Anyway, more skating tomorrow! Yay!!

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.

'MURCA!

As some of you will know, I'm finishing my Ph.D. and then moving to the States to be a grownup. I already checked out where the nearest roller derby league will be to my new city, and I'll see if I can swing by BAD and SCRD on my way in. But yeah, the idea of moving to the States again (I lived in Michigan a few years back) is kind of exciting. I like lots of American things, like drive-through everythings, deep-fried everythings (except chicken), and monster trucks.

These guys also made the list. (Well, Star Trek generally,
but I have a mild preference for TNG.)

For the 4th of July, Fortune made a list of 100 great things it finds awesome about the US&A. I agree with some of them (clam chowder, Stephen Colbert, cheeseburgers, NASA), and some of them are totally "I am an intern who pulled this out of my ass"* to me (Tupac's hologram, snuggies, cheerleading, marshmallow peeps) and COMPLETELY WTF. But okay, so it doesn't say "100 greatest things", and some aren't uniquely American either, but you get the idea.

Anyway, check out #37. Roller Derby made the list, for what it's worth. Huzzah. It's there in between the Triple Crown and Campbell's Soup Cans, so make of that what you will.

*NOTE: I just noticed the article also says:

To compile the list, we tapped the youth and brainpower of a few members of our summer intern class of 2012.

Yep, that explains it.

Defensive blocking (unofficially) with Bambi and Shortstop

(Or: the flip side of Aggressive Jamming with Bambi and Shortstop)

 

What was useful about Bambi's coaching is that she explained what the blockers were doing while the jammer was trying to get through, and then what the blockers should do in respond and how the jammer should change her strategy and stuff, so that was really cool. So technically we were learning this stuff and aggressive jamming at the same time. But I thought it’d be nifty to separate them to get a clearer understanding of what was happening. (I think this entry will be shorter though, since we were supposed to be doing aggressive jamming, and in order to do that there had to be some defensive blocking, etc.)

Blocking and bracing your wall

Blockers 1 and 4 are on the outside, so they will be the
ones to brace the wall made up of 2,3,4 (for blocker 1)
and 1,2,3 (for blocker 4). There are two possible places
to brace for each blocker. They can also push the jammer
out over the line if necessary.

This was the main thing we worked on while the jammers were trying to get past. Basically, you can have your wall of four, and make a wall across the whole track. That's pretty handy, but if a jammer is going to be trying to get past, you will have at least one blocker who is not really doing anything because she's not at the part of the wall that the jammer is pushing at.

If this happens, the blocker furthest away (i.e. one of the line blockers) can swing in front and, facing the three blockers in the wall, use her arms to brace up the wall. Basically it's just to counter the force of the jammer pushing past. You're not supposed to be pushing the jammer back, but rather just holding the wall in place. Outside blockers to be sideways so they can also butt push jammer out of play and over the line if they try to sneak past.

Here's a picture of CRDL applying the bracing thing:

It's technically 1-on-1 bracing, but it's keeping the opposing
jammer from getting past Shorty (as pivot).

As a bracer, there are a couple of important things to note:

• Direction of gameplay: this was a big one. Just because you're facing backwards doesn't mean you can go backwards. You're supposed to be holding up the opposing jammer, not pushing them back. It's REALLY important to make sure you're still rolling in derby direction even if you're pushing on your teammate to counter the jammer.
• Hand placement matters: When you're bracing, you're putting force on your teammate and using her as a wall. Watch where you are actually bracing your teammate. Hands on shoulders/pecs works much better than hands on their sternum. Or their throat.
• Elbows: There'll be other shit going on around you while you are bracing. Keep your elbows in so you don't clock someone and get majored for it.
• Talk to your pack: if you're skating backwards, you will be best able to see where the jammer is. Tell your blockers which side she's coming in on or if she is switching tactics so they will be able to prepare for getting hit (which also makes your job easier).

Helping out your jammer 

Kinda like this. I imagine it's all pixelly too.

Okay, this is obvious, yes? But remember that derby is offensive and defensive at the same time, so while you're doing all this defensive blocking your jammer is still going to be hanging around trying to get past. Bambi said that, as a blocker, you have to do what you can to help your jammer. So, suppose that it's like in a video game and your jammer has an energy bar. Seriously. Every time your jammer has to take a step or a hit the bar goes down.

So as a blocker, you should be helping clear the path so she has to take less steps, or taking hits for her, or whatever. The best thing you can do is open up the inside line for your jammer, and you can do this by getting the blockers out of the way and off the line. 

Aggressive jamming with Bambi and Shortstop

On Tuesday at training we had our first in a series of guest trainers from Canberra Roller Derby League who were going to come and teach us some new tricks. I almost didn’t go because of Ph.D. dramas, but I ended up going and I am so fucking glad I did.

Firstly, Bambi was a great coach; I think she’d give Pain from SCRD a run for her money. She was really good at explaining stuff and what the strategy was for doing things and how to apply it and also just some general stuff about learning in derby, which was useful since obviously she’d been where we were. Shorty didn’t really say much but gave people a lot of one-on-one pointers and did a lot of demo type stuff. She’s pretty damn funny though.

Warmup was dynamic stretching and then some endurance type stuff; we did 15 laps of the track anti-derby, then 30 squat jumps (on skates!) and then 30 “dead bugs” which seemed to be really similar to bicycles but you have the same arm and leg going instead of the opposite ones (see video). Then it was 10 laps derby direction, 20 squat jumps and dead bugs, then 5 laps and 10 squat jumps and dead bugs. Wheeeeeeee.

Our first drill we did was explosive something something. :P I can't remember the name. Basically, you paired up with someone and they put their toe stops down (or plow stop, or whatever) and you had to push them. Running on your toe stops for this was really useful, rather than just on your skates. I’d done some of this at SCRD, and I really like running on my toe stops, so yeah I was excited for this drill.

I was MUCH more excited when people paired off with others of roughly their size and I was the odd one left and got paired up with Shorty. Squee indeed. AND THEN I FOUND OUT SHE IS TALLER THAN ME. DAMMIT. Anyway, yeah so I did a bunch of laps of the track pushing her around, and then she had a go. My weak ankle (the right one) is mega dumb and doesn’t steer very well and I kept going in circles, which was kind of embarrassing. :( It worked much better when I was basically in plow stop position but on my toe stops so my feet were more pigeon toed, than straight. But yeah, I made her push pretty hard, and I have all the marks on my shoulders to prove it from where she was digging her hands into my shoulder meat :P

Then the variation after that was to push someone with your shoulder, so your pec was basically pushing theirs (and you had to keep your head out of the way so you weren’t going to headbutt the other person). I found this harder because when I run on toe stops I swing my arms a lot, and I wouldn’t have been able to do that without punching Shorty in the crotch or something. But yeah, that was a fun drill. :D

A scrum start. White would usually be taking a knee right on the
line and black would be standing but as close to them as
possible without touching. (Also because of my craptastic
paint skills it looks like the outside white blocker is leaving
an opening for the white jammer or something. Yep.)

Next, we worked on using the toe stop push to get through a pack. Bambi said that teams were more likely to do scrum starts now (i.e. have everyone at the jammer line), so once the jammer is released they immediately have to get through the pack, usually if one team knee started at the jammer line. Usually in these cases the blockers would make a wall, such that you'd have all four blockers in a line across the track, covering both inside and outside lines at the same time.

We worked on several techniques for breaking walls. Walls can be made of seriously ANY number of blockers, so we practiced a bunch of different things. Basically, the key thing in all wall-breaking cases was to pick some spot--either between two blockers, or pushing one blocker out of the way to create a gap--and then go for it. We started with a wall of three (with a fourth one bracing) and trying to get a jammer to bust through. I found the running-on-toe-stops thing quite useful for pushing through blockers.

Then we did wall-busting in between two blockers. Importantly, in a game situation your blockers won't be completely stuck shoulder-to-hip together, but might be slightly spaced apart, so there is naturally a gap to get through. We tried a bunch of different things in a "jammer against two blockers" scenario:

• Shoulder charge: basically you use your shoulder like a battering ram and aim for the the back of the blockers' arms, or straight through the gap that is between them.
• Kidney punch: I like this one a lot! You keep your head down and use your shoulders to basically hit the blockers in their kidneys. Seriously. Be careful not to headbutt them or (as I did) get my head stuck in the gap between the blockers. 
• Shark attack: you start low and "pop up" between the blockers. I think you can use the back of your shoulders to push them out of the way.
• Stepping through: If there's a big enough gap between where the blockers have their feet, get down and step through it to get past them. This is hard to do quickly, but it's essential that you actually do it quickly, or else you get stuck. 

Here's Shorty doing the shark thingy at TGSS (although it might have started as a kidney punch):

Photo: Steve Craddock

You can also combine them: for example, you can start low and step through between blockers and then pop up in a shark attack. Or you can do the shoulder charge and when the gap comes up you step through. What's important is that you have the element of surprise. For the record, Rubi and I were the "demo people" for Shorty demonstrating surprise, which was hilarious because obviously we knew she was going to bust between us, but then when she actually did I think her charging into me actually propelled me like 3 metres or something, and I was screaming the whole time.

Finally, we did some juking. For this drill, we paired off and you had to get past your partner who was booty blocking you. There were a couple of things to pay attention to. Juking is a combination of speed and agility--I think Bambi said that Bonnie D. Stroir said that there's some sweet spot where your speed and agility meet, such that you're maximally agile while not plowing into the back of people (and getting called for back blocking). Basically, the idea is that you only juke as fast as you can skate while being agile.

Attempted juking diagram. Basically, the
jammer skates straight up to the PoNR and
then does the 3-step thingy to get around the
blocker (clearly not to scale.)

Bambi described something called the "point of no return" or something--basically you should only juke when the blocker can't see your feet. If they can see your feet, they are likely to know what you are going to do. So you should skate up to them as close as you can before busting out your juke moves. (This is also where the speed/agility thing is important; if you skate too close to them and can't stop, you back block them.) We practiced doing a three-step juke, basically you go left-right-left or right-left-right and then around the blocker. It also helped if you confused your blocker by making them look over both shoulders. Crossing seemed to be quite useful here, although not necessary (if you can also clumsily stomp to either side for the juke).

Another way you could juke is by basically fast feeting (feeting?? WTF) behind the blocker, and then getting past them because they don't know what your footwork is doing. Also, one thing to do is to get your foot in front of theirs and block them with your hip/shoulder. If your foot is in front of your opposing blocker's, when the block you they'll actually be pushing you forward. (I found this kind of hard to do without wheel clipping, but maybe I just need to work on that more.)

And then there was a bit of a strategy chat while we warmed down, and then we were done! It was seriously an awesome session; I probably learned more in those two hours than I have for a very long time. Also, I was a bit of a nerd and got RefDonald to take a picture of me with Shorty at the end. Yeah.

When we were taking this Shorty was like,
"Yeah you have to go Asian style". Heh.
(Also, photobomb by Bambi.)

New Directions

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

WTF. No.

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

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

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

Happy first year of administration, VDL!