Thursday, April 25, 2013

bout weekend recap

so I left about 12:30 and drove out to my sister's house. I'd forgotten how twisty and turny and OMFG the roads are out near where she lives; nothing like getting up to the top of a very steep hill and looking out at the road ahead and literally yelling JESUS CHRIST at what is in front of you.  I yelled "ROUNDABOUT!* WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!**" at one point***.

So I had a nice evening with my sister and her family.  I don't get to see them that often and we always have a good time when we're together.  We went out to dinner and I hit up the liquor store for the after-after party.

I am very, very glad I went up on Friday, because having a simple hour drive at a reasonable hour is much nicer than a 6 hour slog starting at crazy early in the morning.  I stopped at a yarn store near the hotel, bought some sock yarn that I really didn't need, and then got to the hotel.

The hotel.

Oh dear Lord, the hotel.

 - someone found a pair of men's underpants in their room
- our ironing board may or may not have had bloodstains on it
- the shower in another room started backing up into ANOTHER person's shower

but we were only there for a little while, and it was off to the venue!

It was a pretty nice venue for the most part (our locker room was a 10' square tent).  The floor was QUICKSAND.  Verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry slow.

It took us a while to find our footing - the other team played up at the jammer line and we were like "what? um, okay?"  We got all sorts of stupid penalty calls, and they didn't get any (um, when you hit someone in the arm with your head as you're ducking down and trying to skate under two people's arms, that's usually considered BLOCKING WITH THE HEAD AND YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO GO TO THE BOX FOR THAT, but okay, fine, whatever) and we were a bit discombobulated and losing.

So our coach called a time out, and we took a deep breath, regrouped...

...and started to play OUR game of derby.

At half time we were leading by 50 points.


I've said it before and I'll say it again, our endurance is what makes us awesome.  We could see their players getting tired, slowing down, and we were like "oh, another jam? okay!" all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. 

At one point (and this was the best part of the bout for me), their jammer was *really* getting frustrated, and their coach yelled "SHUT UP AND SKATE" at her.  We'd gotten under their skin.  We were unnerving them.  Frustrated players are sloppy players.  (Plus, their coach yells at them to shut up?  Our coaches would NEVER do that.)

So we play, and play, and pull further away, and we win, 210-85.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY.

________
*I was referring to the traffic phenomenon, not the song by Yes.
**Although that is also an appropriate response to the song by Yes as well.
***Here is where I admit I was alone in the car and yelled this at no one.

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