the funny over the win.

my last post was some time ago and a lot has changed since then. of course. my fitness has improved, i have muscles in my legs, arms, torso. the derby community has become another family, and i have found myself showing off my skating skills in my kitchen.

and i quit fresh meat.

what happened was this: i failed my yellow star assessment. by .4 of a point. i failed because i thought it would be hilarious if someone yelled out 'use the force, darth ada!' during my endurance skate. i had to do 5 laps in 60 seconds. when i heard the words, i lost my shit. i nearly spat out my mouth guard and laughed so hard i almost fell over. i lost two seconds. crucial seconds. i ended up with 5 laps in 62 seconds. fail. it's cool though - it was funny. i hope that i always take to funny over the win.

instead of taking the resit, i decided to drop out. i can't train enough to get good enough. admittedly, i have other interests and a full life and there's nothing i want to give up. so i decided to become a ref. being a ref means that i can continue to go to training, to skate and to be part of the Victorian Roller Derby League. it's an ideal choice. so for the past month or so, that's what i've been doing. reffing. or training to be a ref at least.

so my journey has taken a turn and i'm pretty damn happy about it. there's no pressure to continuously pass tests i'm not ready to take. don't get me wrong - reffing will be highly pressured. calling penalties is terrifying (as are the women i'll be calling the penalties on). i feel like i'm at the beginning of another new challenge, one that can engage my body as well as my brain. i suspect i'll do ok...if i can just get my head around the rules...

Feeling the fear and doing it anyway

Apologies for not posting on this blog before now. It's the night before derby tryouts and I'm facing some fears.

Over the past five years, grief, depression and laziness have turned me into a (larger) shadow of my former self. A gutsy person is still in there, though, surviving, and derby is resurrecting her. Being back on wheels is exhilarating and I'm loving the feeling of long-lost skills (and muscles!) returning. In roller derby, I see a way to get back some things I've lost: fitness, confidence, pride and guts.

When I was nine or ten, I was always on skates – every spare minute of the day not spent at school, eating, sleeping or reading, I was on wheels. And I was fearless. I moved onto blades in my teens and then once I left school, as with too many things, I gave it up. I used to be a writer as well – poems and stories just flowed out of my pen – but I lost confidence along the line and threw in the towel.

Boot camp has been a challenge, especially since the second week in which I injured myself during the first drill. The fearful voice inside me started questioning whether I really could be a derby girl, whether I was too fat, too weak, whether I should just stop wasting everyone's time. All these thoughts were running through my head as I watched the rest of the training session from the sidelines, then limped away from the rink and blinked back tears on the long drive home. But, sitting in the bath at home, soaking my screaming muscles, I felt a hunger to be part of something incredible – that glory I see on the derby track – and I knew I had to keep going. Thinking about the tryouts tomorrow terrifies me, as has the idea of putting the pen to this blank page, but I know this fear is good and I'm ready for more...

Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors

When I was eight or so I put together a picture book called What Good Luck, What Bad Luck based on the idea behind the Fortunately / Unfortunately picture book from the 1960's. It was about a boy who went fishing with his grandfather (because I'm obviously a subject expert on both fishing and being a boy) and each page started with either "What good luck" or "What bad luck" in turn, something like this:

What good luck!
Poppy took me fishing in the boat.
What bad luck!
It started to rain.
What good luck!
Poppy had remembered to bring his raincoat.
What bad luck!
I had forgotten mine.

You get the idea.

I was reminded of this book recently when thinking about a skater who has injured herself and may not be able to attempt the white star test. I hope her story, like the book, ends in good luck.

Bonnie xo

stack it up, skater

this is an old sesame street song pippa and i have sung a few times a week for the past 6 months. it's about all that women can be - astronauts, pilots, poets, wood choppers, roller skaters. in addition to it being educational and entertaining for pips, i use it as a motivational tool for me. i can be a roller skater. i can be a roller skater.

last night's bootcamp was the best one yet. i thought it would be. week one was overwhelmingly exciting, week two was the come down, and last night it all leveled out. i could barely sleep when i went to bed - i was all twitchy with the radness of it. btw, i totally got plow stops. oh yeah. calamity maim, i thank you.

i'm still nervous and worried that i wont be good enough to make it into the league, but all i can do is what i do. i think i'll be an asset to a league that's By the Skaters, For the Skaters. I'm a DIY girl from way back. but will my skating skills stack up??

we'll soon find out.

xx darth ada xx

Weaving? That's like a crafty thing, right?

Session two of bootcamp is over. Halfway there, but so far to go. I can see and feel how I have improved; I'm skating lower and faster, I'm stopping without the aid of a wall and I can even jump things. I know I'm getting better, but will it be enough to get in? Some days I think I might have a chance and other days I have almost accepted that I won't. It's all I think about and my partner is so sick of me asking about my stance (it's lower right?), my strength (can you just count my sit ups for me) and my speed (do YOU think that was faster?). I've also discovered, much to my shock and dismay, that he does not give a shit about wheels, bearings and the art of double lacing.

Maybe I should start asking him how his day was again? :)

I know that those who are invited into the league need to pass the white star test, but due to the huge number of freshies just passing the test alone won't be enough to get in. I guess if it was me making the decisions I would be looking for those who really want it and will commit to turning up to training two or three times a week for the next twelve months at a minimum. But how do you test for that? Imagine passing and not getting in and then hearing about people who did get in dropping out after a few months. How devastating would that be?

This line of thought will do my head in.

I'm going back to one day at a time. I'm going to concentrate on the skating skills and I'm not going to worry about who and how and why and when. I want to know I did my best. I want to follow the philosophy of doing what you can with what you have where you are right now. And if I don't make it then I'll try again next time.

Right after I buy shares in Kleenex.

Bonnie xo

roll with it, baby

i spent several hours with frozen peas strapped to my thighs last night. and today, i'm slathered with deep heat.

last night at bootcamp part 2, i excitedly began doing knee stops when something in each thigh snapped. i sat out for the entire drill chatting to two significantly injured freshies about the glory of pain.

i rejoined my group when they started doing T stops. but i felt weak and the pain in my legs was holding me back. i couldn't jump very high, and the two minute sprint nearly killed me. i sucked at weaving and skating on one leg was tough.

i went to sydney this weekend for a wedding. spent a couple of days there with favourite friends. pippa and my partner stayed home though and i missed them. i was pretty drained when i finally got home, but had to high tail it to bootcamp only two hours later. i was unfocussed, tired, sore and disheartened. i was torn. i wanted to be at home.

like slicer, i left bootcamp last week feeling excited. but this week, i sucked. my body failed me. i don't know what i expected really. i'm not fit, i'm not athletic. i still haven't fully recovered from my pregnancy and as a new mum, i don't get enough rest.

i'm left with a sense of failure and fear. roller skating has taken over my life, it's true. it's all i think about, talk about, read about, do. i'm worried that i want it too much. placing too much emphasis on it. it feels similar to having suffered a broken heart then being faced with the prospect of another relationship. what if it doesn't work out?

ok... so. what i will do is take a couple of days off from skating. look after my legs. do gentle stretches. smile through the pain. it's ok to have ups and downs. this is the roller girl journey.

i need to roll with it. i need to get down and derby.

xx darth ada xx

Life is beautiful when you hold the keys to your own kingdom.

I'm not what one would refer to as sporty, athletic or even semi-coordinated. Up until I had my son I had the blessing of a high metabolism and good genes so I never had to worry about my weight. To me a "fun run" is an oxymoron and a gym is a place where people went to sweat and perform synchronised movements to awful music, so I was never interested. Perhaps this is why, when I decided to express my interest in joining VRDL some months ago, my friends I mentioned it to looked at me like I had suggested I wanted to move to the moon.

So.....why roller derby?

To be honest, I'm not really sure, but I know what it isn't. It isn't boredom. I'm crazy busy all the time with work, study, sole parenting and attempting to have some kind of a life. It isn't a love of exercise, of sweating or of getting a perfect ass. I've accepted my post baby body is never going to look like the before photos and while I'm not deliriously happy about it, most days I can accept it. It isn't a deep desire to beat the living crap out of chicks on wheels either.

Maybe it is about being the me I want to be, or the me I can't express in other areas of my life. When my son's father left unexpectedly after five years of knowing nothing else it wasn't him I missed, but the woman I was before I moved in with him. That woman was brave and confident and opinionated and passionate and full of energy. That woman was tough. That woman was derby.

And maybe I can find that woman again.

Bonnie xo

fuck dancing, put your skates on!

i first saw derby girls when i was walking home past the melbourne museum. i almost tripped over myself watching them. i wasn't sure at first what they were doing, but i was in awe. i stopped and watched them for a minute, amazed at their style - hella tough and hella sexy. once it dawned on me who they were, i knew. i knew that i was a derby girl too.

it was a couple of years later that i started hearing about bouts. a work friend took me along one time cos she'd seen a doco on the roller derby and decided that i couldn't live another minute without witnessing it. and from the second the girls rolled out, i was hooked and felt again that sense of belonging.

i think roller derby is revolutionary. it's powerful, feminist, inspiring, fun, cool, tough. it's all i've been thinking about since i bought my skates.

the problem is, i take pain way too seriously. i've known this for a long time and i've spent a lot of time struggling with it. i have a bunch of tattoos but i hate getting them. i go through hell in the lead up to any appointments and am entirely anxious throughout the whole process. my tattooist thinks i'm hilarious (and lame). i gave birth last year. i felt clear that i wanted to have a normal birth, with no medical interventions so i spent my whole pregnancy thinking about pain and my relationship to it. i succeeded in that i had a 42 hour labour with no pain relief at all. what an amazing accomplishment. the next step for me is to join the roller derby. i don't want the fear of pain to stop me from doing incredible things. i want to show my daughter that we can overcome significant fears by launching right in. i intend to prove to her that fear will not stop me and by doing so my hope is that fear wont stop her.

i've been skating with a bunch of excellent women for a few weeks, all of us hopeful to make the league. we start bootcamp in 3 days and each of us is sick with excitement. partly, i'm nervous, afraid of failure, afraid i'll suck, afraid i'll be afraid. i'm also eager, determined, future focussed and wrapt to have met so many rad ladies.

emma goldman said "if i cant dance to it, it's not my revolution". i say 'fuck dancing, put your skates on!'.

xx darth ada xx

Bootcamp soon... eek!

So, Roller Derby, eh? My friends are mostly in two camps about this adventure I’m embarking on. Some think I am a crazy masochist, and some think its kind of awesome. All I know is that Roller Derby is this awesome sport that until recently, I never really saw myself as being within the realms of possibility – in my life at least.

Since I returned from living overseas I'd been feeling a bit like a fish out of water. My life here in Melbourne was so different to the one I had here before I went away. My relationships with my friends had changed, and I'd broken up with the partner that I'd been living with before I left. I had changed as well. I was looking for something to fill the big montreal-shaped gap that was now in my life. I had thought that a team sport would be a great thing to get involved in - to get fit and to meet new people. I'd thought of Roller Derby, but only fleetingly. I didn’t think I was fit enough, or coordinated enough, and too much of a sook to be involved in a contact sport.

The first time I really thought of roller derby as a possibility for me was about 3 months ago when my buddy Ladykiller came down from Brisbane to play in a bout against the Victorian Roller Derby League. Now, Ladykiller historically has been one of the more uncoordinated people I know...Sorry, Lady!! But stick some skates on her feet and suddenly she is all fast and balanced and can knock people over! Seeing one of my mates be a fearless rollergirl kind of made me think that if she could do it, maybe I could do it too. I got to meet a bunch of the other rollergirls that weekend too and everyone I met couldn’t tell me enough how awesome it was to be involved in derby! After meeting some of the women involved, I saw that there seemed to be a place in derby for women of all different shape and sizes, and most of them hadn’t previously been athletes or played contact sports much. I started to think, why not give it a bash?
So, I asked Ladykiller to pick me up a pair of skates when she went to Las Vegas for Rollercon (huge saving on postage!!!) and I immediately loved them! Being on 8 wheels is so much fun, I feel like I am 10 again, chasing around my friends on skates back at the Rollerama. Although I have not much natural coordination, the sense of accomplishment when I finally learn how to do something I’ve been trying is awesome.

So I got in contact with the VRDL and registered for bootcamp, and I’ve been practising with some girls that I met at the info session in October for the last month or so down at the Melbourne Museum. We’ve been trying to learn all the skills that we need to pass the white-star test, which comes at the end of boot camp – one month’s time.
There’s a bunch of us that go pretty regularly – All the girls that I’ve met so far have been great. We’re all keen to learn, and keen to work on our skills together. Something I’ve loved is that all of a sudden there is a whole new group of women that I’ve been able to be a part of. That Montreal void is beginning to be filled, by endless chatter about where to get the best socks, pads, helmets, what our derby name is going to be (I’ve decided on Slicer Minnelli. Fingers crossed it gets approved!), what boot camp’s going to be like, and how to skate crossovers. Pretty much any day of the week, there is always someone keen to go for a skate.

This weekend is the start of bootcamp. I am a little nervous about it, to be honest. I think my biggest fear is that I will completely suck. Although my skating buddies have reassured me that I'm okay, my stomach is still all fluttery about it. What if I make a fool of myself? What if I get hurt? What if I don't make it through boot camp, and have to keep training till next year? What if I look like a complete idiot out there? What if, what if, what if!! I guess there's not much I can do about any of those what-ifs! Even if I fail miserably, and look like an idiot, I'll have had a lot of fun trying!