In Which Jer And I Go On A Date And Fall In Love With A Sport

So Jer and I went on a date today, and as a result I am now going to the Dockyard Derby Dames Roller Derby Boot Camp. 

Also I might have possibly signed up for the Tacoma Women's Rugby League.  Though I don't think that I can actually do that, because after looking at the website it turns out that their practices would conflict with my sign language class, and also with the aforementioned roller derby boot camp.  So that's probably not going to happen, even though rugby is also very cool and the lady who picked me out of the crowd because I "looked like a rugby player" seemed very nice. 

What does a rugby player look like, anyway? 

At any rate, Jer and I have been looking for creative things to do on our dates recently.  Today Joanna was here from 8:00 in the morning until 10:00 at night, so we needed a lot of creative things to do on our date.  I mean, we love coffee shops and books, but fourteen hours of reading and sipping yummy beverages is a little much even for us. 

So after Joanna arrived I went out and ate a leisurely breakfast by myself while Jeremy completed his chemistry final.  Then I came back home and finished the first coat of stain on the outside of our fence.  Jeremy came out and helped once he was done with his final, and then after that we cleaned up and went out to lunch.  Since it was such a hot day we mixed it up in the afternoon by going to an ice cream store and reading our books.  See how creative we are!

And then it was time to drive down to Lakewood to watch the Rose City Rollers battle The Wave of Mutilation, which was our main entertainment for the evening.  Yep.  Roller derby!

This was the first roller derby game Jeremy and I had ever been to, and we didn't quite know what to expect.  I had been looking up things to do in the area and came across the Dockyard Derby Dames website by accident.  We looked up the rules and watched a few national league jams on YouTube to try and figure out what exactly the sport was about and whether or not it would be something we'd be interested in going to.  It looked pretty cool and it would eat up about three hours of date time, so we figured we'd check out the match.

It was awesome.

Okay, first of all, the game was great.  It had all of the fun parts I remember about soccer (yes, I played soccer for about ten years)-- mainly the teamwork and the body checking-- without the parts I wasn't so good at, like kicking the ball.  Also it was really exciting to watch, and there were many people in the audience and on the track who looked like they would be incredible amounts of fun to hang out with.  I was basing this on their socks.  Most of them had really awesome knee-high socks on.  We're talking fluorescent and rainbow-striped and fishnets and pirate socks.  Vintage T-shirts and hipster glasses abounded.  Some of the women were dressed rockabilly style, or in dresses straight out of the 50's, complete with a string of pearls and kitten heels.  At least one man was wearing a utilikilt.

These were my kind of people.

Everybody seemed to know everybody else.  We plunked ourselves down next to a friendly man named Thurston, who coached for a team in another county and was here to watch the game and get ideas about what his team's strategy needed to be when they played the current competitors.  He kept us informed on what exactly was going on in between chatting with all the people who came up to say hello, and clued us in about the penalties and the rules. 

As fun as it was to watch, it looked like it would be even more fun to play.

I spent plenty of time on roller skates growing up, but it's been a long time since I've spent any substantial amount of time on them; I'm pretty sure the few times Connor and I have gone stroller skating don't really count.  And I certainly haven't done any body checking on roller skates for a long time; I usually got in trouble when I did it to my little brother as a kid, so I've been out of the habit for a while.  I have played enough competitive, relatively high contact sports to know that I enjoy them, though.  Really.  In addition to soccer, which I managed to break my collar bone playing (who knew seventh-graders played so rough?) in the past I've dabbled in judo and krav maga-- both of which are pretty full contact to say the least.  I'm in okay shape right now; while I'm certainly not my best, I'd probably be able to get by.

Well lucky for me, it turns out that there just happens to be a roller derby boot camp starting up next week where you can learn more about the sport.  So I'm signing up!  Something about body checking on roller skates sounds like a lot of fun to me.  And maybe I'll make some new friends doing it.  I think it'll be a blast, even if I don't end up trying out for a team this year.  We'll just have to see.

If I did try out, I'd have to come up with a cool nickname.  And also possibly buy some more socks.

~Jess