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Friday, October 20, 2017

[ 004 ] that girl thinks she's the queen of the neighborhood- well i've got news for you- she is!

I HAD MY FIRST DERBY OPEN HOUSE!

Okay. So. In the midst of my butt-covery (heheh.. get it?) I got a notification from a friend about an upcoming derby open house right by where I work. It was 2 weeks away at this particular point, so hell yeah I was going to sign up for that shit. I should be healed by then, right? I've busted my ass before at the skating rink, right?

OH BOY.

So derby open house day comes, I've convinced Ell to go with me because I knew that she would and because Wednesdays we agreed to hang out and it happened to fall on a Wednesday.

My ass still hurt. Guys. Seriously. It sounds so silly to mention it all of the time, but you guys have NO IDEA about how bad this fall was, hahahah. And I knew for a fact freshmeat class was going to have you practice safe ways to fall.. and after watching a Try Guys try Roller Derby video that they posted a few days before (another sign I needed to be doing this!) they were doing falls.. on their butts! Ugh! So by the time this came up, I was having a serious debate with myself about if I thought I could handle any sort of fall on my ass because just walking was hurting, though a tiny bit less day by day. I sucked it up though and went, obviously.. because derby.

I spent all afternoon from 4:30 to 7 after work switching up my wheels, testing out my bearings, changing my tiny toe stops to the most massive and awesome toe stops on the market, making sure my pads were fitting comfortably still.. over analyzing how the night might go. And then Ell showed up and we went.

Got there, were greeted by members of the NTRD Fighting Unicorns and Battling Mermaids. We were some of the first people there by the sign in so we got to talk to them a bit. They thought by my gear that I had already done derby before, so of course I felt over-prepared and was probably red as all can get. It also probably didn't help that by the time they separated the newbies from the people who had better skating skills and had been to the practices before that I was the only person in the group who had my own gear while everyone else had to go get some hand-me-downs. But this was also pretty cool because while I was waiting for everyone to come back I got to talk gear with the 2 girls who were teaching us and got some good insights on my gear.

Overall the open house consisted of a running warm up, some weird 'elephant' warm up, a round of duck-duck-goose, a name introduction of everyone there, and then separation of groups. Group practice for the newbies consisted of learning how to skate forward, fall on one knee, fall completely down onto both knees and cover your head, how to get up without needing to put your hands on the floor for assistance, pivot stops, t-stops, and walking side to side in your skates.

I learned I'm a natural at forward skating, falling, walking side to side, getting up without hand usage, and walking side to side. I COMPLETELY SUCK AT STOPPING. Like. I fell on my butt trying to do t-stops. I wanted to cry because the pain from my previous fall made it 1000x worse. But I didn't cry and I got up and finished the lessons.. cause I ain't no bitch.

I'd also like to note that indoor skating is way easier for me than outdoor skating. I don't know if it's the wheels, the specific flooring, whaaaat it is. Future me's goal is to go to a skate park and waddle around eventually.

Anyway, they finished with 2 jams (derby matches) so we could see how the actual game is played, we took a group photo, and we ended with the newbies getting back together for a question and answer session along with information on their instructional class called Rising Phoenix, which future me will join when I can pay the membership fee.. current me has $17 until next Friday and needs that for gas, hahah.

Overall, it was an awesome experience and just made me want to do this even more. All of the girls were extremely nice and actually joined everyone into a GroupMe to say hello, answer questions, and just to thank us for coming out and to let us know that there's going to be a meet Saturday morning if we wanted to come to another free practice before having to pay dues in order to go. So that's cool and I'll probably end up going if I can wake up before 8:30. We'll see.

I also learned that I'll probably at some point need to sell my beautiful new skates. Apparently you want your skates to be more snug than a brand new pair of shoes because those bitches will expand after a bunch of use. Mine could probably go down a whole entire size.. but that's okay because my skates alone will get more than I paid for the whole derby package and I can get a black pair of skates instead of having stick-out-like-a-sore-thumb white ones, bahahah!

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