Thursday, March 16, 2006

My husband: So, what do they do at the practices?
Me: I don't know, I haven't been yet.

10 minutes later

My husband: What do they do at these practices again? Just skate around in circles?
Me: I still don't know - tonight is my first practice

10 minutes later

My husband: What do they do at these practices? Skate around in circles...
Me (trying to locate something heavy enough to throw at him):...
My husband: topless?
Me: I'm sure that's only after the hot whipped cream wrestling.

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So, I had asked the Roller Chick I've been emailing how people dress for the practices and she told me that nobody really dresses up, it's really casual, but that there's something to be said about getting used to skating in fishnets.

This should have been my first clue.

But, no, I just wore something I'd wear to the gym - a t-shirt and sweat shorts*. The first couple of girls I saw were wearing jeans and tank tops or workout-ish clothes. Then a couple of girls came in looking like they were going to a club and there were a couple of girls wearing skirts and a couple of girls wearing short shorts and fishnets.

Then, as I'm strapping on enough padding to be a Storm Trooper in the original Star Wars trilogy, she walks in - the face of Savanah Roller Derby - I'd seen her on their website and I'd seen her MySpace page and knew that she was an adorable little thing who looked like a 60s Playboy model (big blonde hair, heavy eyeliner, super cute) but her pictures didn't even come close to doing her justice - she walked in, all smiles, wearing a long black coat with a faux fur collar, fishnets, knee-high black socks with skulls on them and stilletto heels - holy shit - do people actually look like that in real life? So it would seem.

She looked kind of like Kate Hudson in "Almost Famous" - very pretty, the type you could easily hate... if she weren't so freaking nice.

Then we got onto the rink and started skating - several of the girls were pretty much olympic-level skaters, but some of them were... not super great (not as bad as me, but not super great).

After having not skated in... 20 years, maybe, I was surprised to find that I still sort of remembered how. As it turned out, though, I also remembered that I was never that good of a skater to begin with. So I wasn't quite able to keep up with the team, and had to spend most of the evening in remedial skate camp, but they were nice to me and tried to help me work on the things I wasn't so great with - like skating... and stopping.

I was actually excited to hear that one of the drills we'd be working on was falling - w00t - finally something I was good at -

trainer lady: "We're going to work on the single knee fall"
me: "I don't know that one - I'm good with the double cheek fall, though"

So, yeah, it was the longest hour of my life, and I fell once, and this morning have a sore butt, legs so tired that I'm considering buying one of those old-people motorized carts and bruised fingers from the wrist guards. But I did it - and I'll do it again next Monday... and next Wednesday... and... I'm kind of feeling like a roller chick.

* I'd like to state for the record that it was extremely difficult to leave the house in sweats, but it was dark, so I was okay.