Diary of Derby Fresh Flesh

(This post is the first in a series about being a roller derby n00b by our new contributor, Anne Frankenstein.  Enjoy!)


This is the diary of a rinky fresh baby dink meat doll. As in, I've been skating with my league for mere weeks. The story goes, I went to a bout, fell in love & got on my first pair of quad speed skates this summer, did a derby boot camp and skated along the trails of my city as often as possible this desk-busy summer. At the end of the summer, through the whiskey aches from the Friday before and on two hours of restless sleep, I somehow, miraculously, made it through tryouts. Now I skate in the pool trying to prove my dedication and devotion to this phenomena known as the roller derby to the teams and to myself.

The rinky meat rotates through the league’s three home teams–and today, my group of fresh dolls skated with the home team with a wrecker reputation. We began a paceline, hitting the apexes of the track, cutting a diamond into it. I struggled to keep up, huffing and puffing, stomp-skating, the pace feeling more like a sprint than a casual jaunt. Weaving through the line cut the last bit of oxygen to my brain, so when I got to the front, I began skating in a vague lateral motion around the track, cluttering up the line.

There’s an art installation on the stairwells of my school, called “It doesn’t matter how slow you go, as long as you don’t stop.” I like to slowly meander and look around me as I decline or ascend the staircase—this week its about health care, with photos of mid-century hospitals, creative demonstrators in costumes, and lots of charts. Its graphics remind me of the vintage-mechanical potential of roller derby and the demonstrators, with some slight modifications to signs and costume color, would fit right in rinkside at a bout.

I excused myself, red in the face from mortification and exertion, and skated in circles as fast as I could without cutting off brain circulation around the outside of the track. "Roller derby is a metaphor in life,” the pack, the movement, the flirting with danger, the challenge, the control, the fleshy-shell dramas and politicking. This metaphor has been joined with the platitude “It doesn’t matter how slow you go, as long as you don’t stop," echoing through my helmet in practice. I've been picking up speed, and sometimes I slow down, but I won't stop.

I Need Approximately 32 More Hours Added To Each Day

So wow. I am exhausted. I went back to college in August, 5 years after graduating from college the first time. Before then my schedule was work --> roller derby --> video games + drinking --> sleep --> repeat. Now it's school --> work --> homework --> roller derby --> not enough sleep --> repeat. How am I going to keep this up for the next 5 years while I get another degree and not become any more insane than I am right now? (any mechanical engineers out there?? hit me up at jessticularfortitude AT gmail DOT com and let's talk about awesome things like robots and remote controlled bowling balls!!)

I think I may have found the key: Super Duper Time Management Skills.

Everyday we are bombarded with what I like to call Shit That Absolutely Needs To Get Done, or STANTGD. If we took our time and did everything totally right and perfect, we'd still be working on our Monday list Wednesday of the week after. It always seems like you find one thing you need to do, like vacuum the floor, but before then you need to pick up everything off the floor, but you can't do that because your tables are cluttered with dirty dishes but the dishwasher is already full of dishes etc. ad infinitum. Throw in roller derby, and you're adding in more than just skating time: you're adding in extra loads of laundry (hosiery, pads, swamp socks), travel time, packing for the road...

So. My life requires time for school and school work, actual work that pays the bills, and leisure time so I can keep myself and the people/animals I love happy. I chose to keep roller derby going because let's face it: it's fun, good exercise, and all my friends are involved with it. Unfortunately, I can't be as thoroughly involved as I once was. Previously, I was going out of town at least every 2 weeks reffing other people's games. No more. I have cut that down drastically. As much as I hate to say it, school is more important than roller derby right now. I didn't go back to not make A's, you know?

The key is to prioritize your life, and figure out ways to get things done simultaneously if possible. At my paying job, I have a lot of down time as I wait for PCR to run, or agarose to set, so during that time I read for my World Lit class, or work on drawings for my Graphics class, or work Statics problems. I'm taking 9 hours of school, and then I work for about 31-32 hours per week. By the time I get home around 7pm, feed myself and my pets, and get set up for my homework my brain is kinda fried. Having work-free weekends helps, which is why I'm not going out of town so much anymore- I need those hours to finally run errands and catch up on homework I couldn't finish during the week because I fell asleep at my desk at 9. I'm fortunate that my job isn't really really busy so that I have time to do homework there. I'm also very active on derby forums, and use that time between centrifuge spins to catch up on posts.

To make your life easier, I have modestly devised a very clever and brilliant flowchart to help you plan your day so that you get as much STANTGD accomplished as possible.

You're welcome.

The Derby Pukes

Derby Helper is proud to present to you: our first advice column! If you or someone you know has a derby-related problem and you'd like our advice, please email us at derbyhelper@gmail.com and if we can figure out what the hell you're asking us, we'll post it in an upcoming blog! Please let us know if you'd like us to use your real name, otherwise there will be a lot of XXXXXXXXXXXXs out there. Just sayin'. And without further ado...



Hey Derby Helper,

Last night I ate a week old piece of anchovy and olive pizza a few hours before practice. Boy was it terrible. I was really hungry. I took a couple big hits during practice and it came right up. Thankfully I made it to the bathroom before unleashing the half digested stinking mess onto the track. I would love to blame the worst slice of pizza ever for this but I can't rightfully do that. It's happened before without eating anything. I recently cut the back ends of my mouthguards out which is what usually gives me the derby voms initially. Is this a pretty common thing among skaters? It's pretty distracting to have to throw up in the middle of a scrimmage. What advice might you have for skaters prone to throwing up?

-XXXXXXXXXXXXX

________________________________________

Dear XXXXXXXXXXXXX,

What a fabulous question to answer after having just eaten appromixately 2 pounds of cheese and olive oil. I do love me some feta-covered pizza.

Well I would like to start off asking: what's so bad about puking? If you're not still choking on your own mouthguard and/or spit, then that's probably your body's way of telling you that you ate something it doesn't like, and it'd like to return it for a full refund. I hope you're either a momma bird or you have a bathroom nearby when it happens though, because mopping in the middle of practice isn't so fun.

If you refuse to puke and can digest the food baby that is kicking you in the nuts, you will have yourself some serious concentrated evil coming out the back of you that will probably melt your teammates but will also do a number on your opponents. And by number, I mean a Number 2. Anything to win, right?


But I guess the real question here is: why do you feel so bad? Why can't you skate without feeling sick? Are you just a big, hopeless weenie whose name is "Whomp Whomp," or can you do something about it?

I did some research on the causes of nausea, and the results are astounding. Well, not really, but maybe one of these categories rings a bell for you?

The Causes of Nausea
- infections
- reactions to medication (for this reason I stay far, far away from Vicodin)
- overeating/ food poisoning or intolerance/ intoxication
- anxiety or stress
- fatigue
- brain injury
- vertigo/ motion sickness
- carbon monoxide poisoning
- pregnancy
- mechanical obstruction of the bowel (perhaps that elbow you took to the gut is still there?)
- ulcers
- dehydration

The treatment for many of these should hopefully be fairly obvious. Don't drink copious amounts of alcohol before you hit the track. Get more rest. Hurry up and have that baby already. Remove that elbow pad from your small intestine.

The others are a bit more tricky. I got the following information from www.webmd.com:

How Can I Prevent Nausea?

There are several ways to try and prevent nausea from developing:

* Eat small meals throughout the day instead of three large meals.
* Eat slowly.
* Avoid hard-to-digest foods.
* Consume foods that are cold or room temperature to avoid nausea from the smell of hot or warm foods.
* Rest after eating with your head elevated about 12 inches above your feet.
* Drink liquids between meals instead of during meals and drink at least six to eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day to prevent dehydration (unless fluid restricted for another medical condition).
* Try to eat when you feel less nauseated.

How Do I Prevent Vomiting Once I Feel Nauseated?

When you begin to feel nauseated, you may be able to prevent vomiting by:

* Drink small amounts of clear, sweetened liquids such as soda or fruit juices (except orange and grapefruit juices because these are too acidic).
* Rest either in a sitting position or in a propped lying position. Activity may worsen nausea and may lead to vomiting.


You may also have an electrolyte imbalance from dehydration. From emedicinehealth.com:

* Initially, adults should eat ice chips and clear, noncaffeinated, nondairy liquids such as Gatorade, ginger ale, fruit juices, and Kool-Aid or other commercial drink mixes.

* After 24 hours of fluid diet without vomiting, begin a soft-bland solid diet such as the BRAT diet: bananas, rice, applesauce without sugar, toast, pasta, and potatoes.


If you have frequent nausea, this could be a sign of something serious, and you should definitely consult your doctor. But if you think it just happened because you were eating moldy anchovies or you went the opposite way and hadn't eaten a thing all day, then maybe all you need to do is get your diet under control, get some more rest, and take your stress out on the track. Where it belongs. Also, you may want to tell your teammates to stop with the kidney shots. That shit ain't cool.


Good luck to you!

Love from Derby Helper,
Jessticles

Rollerderby Roadtrips: A Survival Manual

So there you are on a Thursday evening, looking at a wide-open weekend before you and craving a dose of the red-hot derby action that you've grown so addicted to. But alas, your local league has no game scheduled this weekend. The hunger within you for bone-jarring impacts and fishnet stockings grows stronger by the hour. How will you feed it before it consumes you? By hitting the highway on your very own rollerderby roadtrip!

(Remember, seatbelts are for pussies.)

Here are some great ways to plan your trip and to maximize the fun therein:

• Research the bouts happening in your region. Finding a neighboring league to drive to watch may sound daunting but fortunately for you, it turns out that the internet actually does help you find things other than tentacle porn. You can get a listing of derby leagues by state or country over at http://www.derbyroster.com/ They have a map of leagues available there too but if you're looking for something to actually help you plan your route and in some cases show you a picture of the venue, try the league map at http://www.nashvillerollergirls.com/map.php Both sites contain links to league websites where you can find out when and where they will be playing. If you already know which leagues are nearby, you can look for them in the schedule listing located at http://www.derbynewsnetwork.com/bouts
  
  

• Pick a Saturday night bout if possible. Friday bouts limit you to a range that can be driven to in the time between when you get off of work and when the bout stops. Sunday nights are tougher than Fridays in a way because most people are limited to a range that they are willing to drive back home starting after the bout ends. A Saturday bout date allows you the luxury of driving there on Friday night, seeing the local sites, a leisurely drive back on Sunday and time to recover from your hangover before work on Monday. Which leads us to...
  
  
• Find out the alcohol constraints of the venue. Bouts at skating rinks will almost never have booze available due to insurance restrictions. They do however sell Coke, Sprite, Pepsi and a variety of other things that I like to refer to as "mixers". (It would be irresponsible of me to point out how easily a person can sneak a flask in via a purse or pocket and it would be doubly irresponsible for me to point out the fine selections at http://www.flaskshop.com and http://www.drinkingstuff.com/drinkingstuff_flasks.htm so I definitely won't do that.) Locations that sell beer or liquor onsite are better in terms of ease of access but the downside is that you can expect to pay double the average bar price for each drink. The holy grail for the derby/booze fan is a venue that allows you to BYOB. I attended a doubleheader at the Shrine Hall in Atlanta where they allow the audience to bring anything they want as long as it is contained in plastic. The first bout was a blast but I don't remember much from the second bout except that a drunken member of my group started yelling "FU** JESUS" and I woke up the next day with bible-shaped welts on my face and neck.
  
  
• Get the location of the afterparty before you book your lodging. If you are fortunate enough to be able to stay at a hotel or bed+breakfast that is within walking distance of the afterparty, you have booked yourself one nights stay in the land of awesomeness. My local league once played a travel bout where the hotel we stayed in was about 100 yards from the bar where the afterparty was held. This facilitated a night of massive rounds of shots, wrestling matches in gravel, geeky girls swinging on a stripper pole, firetrucks, teethmarks, a group of puzzled migrant workers, a licenseplate bra, skater hotel room booze raids and my wife having a rollergirl hickey contest on her cleavage.
  
  
  

  (Your results may vary.)
  
  
• Buy tickets in advance. Many leagues use http://www.brownpapertickets.com which allows you to buy online without doubling the price thanks to a string of made-up mysterious fees. (I'm looking at YOU TicketMaster.) Other leagues will allow you to have tickets left at Will Call if you contact them in advance. If either of those options are available, trust me, its worth it to pay whatever the extra may be and do it. We had people drive 3.5 hours to watch their team play my local team only to discover that the bout had sold out before they even walked up to the doors. I think we can assume that this sucked the air out of that trip.

So there you have it, derbylover. The highway beckons you. Now call your friends, hotwire your grandma's 1939 DeSoto and hit the road!