Rat City Scrimmage, practice, renegade, and too little sleep.

Had a whirlwind of misadventures since the last post, so some summarizing is in order...

Went to Bend, OR and skated in a renegade derby bout with Earl Slick, Speed Dealer, and Han Cholo from LCC and Hurt Vonnegut from CCDG whom I promised I would mention in this blog... so there you go, Hurt. She actually knocked me down for the first time at that bout, but being allowed to scissor kick does make things easier for her. The bout was VERY different that derby as I know and love it and it definitely took some getting used to. The track was about 1/2 the size, the jams only one minute, and the rules virtually non-existant. It was fun once I realized it didn't count as sports by my standards, and I definitely saw potential to pick up some bad habits mixing both styles of play.

Lots of practices between then and this weekend, where I have been slowly making progress improving the horror-show that is my form, and working on my hits. I had the unique joy of having a rib get popped out of place at an LCC practice (where that same rib was pounded 3 more times because someone didn't have sense enough to sit down...), but it got popped back in at practice the next week, and is almost completely back to normal now. So much fun...

On Saturday, Hotboxx, Stitches & Bones (both of STDD), and I drove to Seattle and played in the Rat City open scrimmage. We got there a bit late so the ladies opted to get the USARS day insurance that let them skate with the boys. We got to skate with several Rat City travel team skaters including Anya Heels, ReAnimate-her, and Carmen Getsome. Also, Puget Sound Outcast Derby was there in force, so I finally got to skate with the most established men's derby team on the West coast. Radillac, G. No-Evil, and all the rest of the PSOD crew were awesome skaters and very friendly. I'm definitely looking forward to skating with/against them at the Wild-West Showdown in March and possibly sooner than that for a scrimmage as well. Good times!

Busy weekend and new boots

Wheels of Justice (WoJ) played Rat City this weekend at the Portland expo center in a double header with RCR team good vs team evil. Team evil put the hurt on team good, taking a strong lead early and continuing till the end. Unfortunately, one skater was badly injured and will be out for the rest of the season with a torn ACL. WoJ managed to hold on to a lead for the majority of the bout, taking the win over #5 ranked Rat City, hopefully trading up a spot in the rankings from #6. I was happily manning the Portland Men's Roller Derby booth with Faux Paul throughout both bouts, but managed to get peeks at each bout from time to time. In the picture above taken by Free Will, you can see Demon, myself, and Faux Paul during half time. The team got a deal to rent the booth for the night and despite initial nervousness and some last-minute hiccups in procuring/producing merchandise it was a success. Definitely need to stockpile some merchandise for future endeavors to avoid the panic-sweatshop efforts which lead up to the booth last night. Even without t-shirts or stickers to sell, we made $19 on 2-for-1 buttons Joan of Snark helped get ahold of and nearly filled 3 pages of signup sheets along with handing out dozens of handbills to interested people. Our goal was to get 2 more skating members, and with the positive response we received I would be shocked if we didn't get at least that many. I had lots of fun working with Faux Paul while meeting new interested people and talking with them about joining up. Good times, definitely worth doing again for more exposure and possibly for profitable sales as well with the right items/prices.

Also, in unrelated news, Beki at Oaks Park got the replacement boots for my skates in and had them mounted for me a couple days ago. By some freaky luck, my left boot was trying to secede from the union by separating from where it had been cemented to the sole. Initially I thought that it wasn't an issue, lots of my old shoes have partially torn away from the edge of the sole, but apparently this one was going for the full deal. Sure-grip either no longer makes the old boot in my size or possibly at all, so I got a free upgrade (thx Sure-Grip) to the XL-75 boots, which have a couple features I was curious about now that I have been skating for a while. After picking them up on Saturday afternoon, I was impressed with the new setup. Same plates, trucks, wheels, bearings, and toe-stops as before, but the new boots certainly seem to make a difference. New features include a 'power strap' that helps hold your heel down during tomahawks and toe-stop sprints, a much more cushy ankle/achilles lining, and a more heavily padded tongue with a grippy interior surface so they don't slowly rotate to the outsides of my feet like the previous ones did. Hopefully I'll get to take them out tonight or tomorrow afternoon and see if they feel significantly different.

Since the track was taken over to the expo center, no practice today. We had discussed doing a Portland Parkways event as a team, but several members had conflicts and ultimately the weather didn't want to play along so it didn't happen. Gonna try and get in an extra day of Oaks open skate to make up for it, but it isn't the same. Horse stance has been slow going, kinda boring to just stand there not falling down while your thighs complain. Hopefully it pays off and General Anarchy (who's most recent shirt says Coach Dickwhip, awesome!) gets to find another aspect of my existence to improve upon through creative ridicule and encouragement. We'll see.