![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Since I moved here, I've been half-heartedly trying to join practices with Bear City Roller Derby (partly because dues are expensive, because you also have to join the club they're part of, SV Lurich 02, which has its own dues structure, partly because I'm terrified of strangers). But they opened a newbie course at the end of March, and that felt like a safer way to join.
Obviously I already know how to skate and have experience, so I don't need the newbie class, but there's never any harm in brushing up on the basics, especially when you've been off skates for 2 years because of the panini. Plus I'd be one among many new skaters, so it's less terrifying. But at the end of the first day, the trainers invited me to join regular league practices, because I was skilled enough.
So 2 days later, I went to the league training all by myself and did some of the contact drills but bowed out of the ones that were more scrimmage-like and returned to my natural habitat: the referee lane. I went to both league training and newbie class for all of April, because I like the other newbies. Then the school where we practice closed our room to replace the floor, so we've been outside the last few weeks. They had to restructure a bit and semi-cancelled the newbie class, because the rental gear is stored in the sport hall, and a lot of newbies don't have their own gear yet. (It's expensive!) The newbies can come to league training Tuesdays and scrimmage on Saturdays, where they have their own stuff to work on. I float between the groups, wherever I'm more useful. Saturdays I do more ref stuff, Tuesdays I help the newbies out.
Roller derby outside is not exactly ideal, as you may imagine! Tuesdays we skate on a basketball court, and Saturdays we go to Tempelhof park, where there's a spot of smooth-enough asphalt. It's much grippier than polished wood, gym floor, or the usual skating surfaces. It's about the same as a particularly grippy vinyl floor, but it's rough. It's *asphalt.* There are periodically rocks or other bits of debris. So it's difficult to do a lot of things that are easy on normal floors. Also, it can tear up your wheels and your toe stops, and lord help your knee pads and laces if you fall. (Which reminds me that I really need to order new laces to replace the one I mangled in October when I decided to skate the entire perimeter of Tempelhof, which is something like 3 miles.)
Tempelhof used to be an airport, but they closed it after reunification, because there were 3 airports. (Now there's only 1, and it's a nightmare.) Those of you who are familiar with Cold War history might recognize the name from the Berlin airlift in 1948-49, when the American army organized an airlift of food and other supplies after the Soviet army closed off the land routes to the city from the west. Planes landed at Tempelhof every 3 minutes for nearly a year.
You might know, on an intellectual level, that airports are big. Even if the terminal isn't absurd, like O'Hare or Atlanta, runways and taxiways take a lot of space. You don't really get a gut-level feeling for it until you take a runway on foot.
Anyway, roller derby is back, and I'm stoked.
Obviously I already know how to skate and have experience, so I don't need the newbie class, but there's never any harm in brushing up on the basics, especially when you've been off skates for 2 years because of the panini. Plus I'd be one among many new skaters, so it's less terrifying. But at the end of the first day, the trainers invited me to join regular league practices, because I was skilled enough.
So 2 days later, I went to the league training all by myself and did some of the contact drills but bowed out of the ones that were more scrimmage-like and returned to my natural habitat: the referee lane. I went to both league training and newbie class for all of April, because I like the other newbies. Then the school where we practice closed our room to replace the floor, so we've been outside the last few weeks. They had to restructure a bit and semi-cancelled the newbie class, because the rental gear is stored in the sport hall, and a lot of newbies don't have their own gear yet. (It's expensive!) The newbies can come to league training Tuesdays and scrimmage on Saturdays, where they have their own stuff to work on. I float between the groups, wherever I'm more useful. Saturdays I do more ref stuff, Tuesdays I help the newbies out.
Roller derby outside is not exactly ideal, as you may imagine! Tuesdays we skate on a basketball court, and Saturdays we go to Tempelhof park, where there's a spot of smooth-enough asphalt. It's much grippier than polished wood, gym floor, or the usual skating surfaces. It's about the same as a particularly grippy vinyl floor, but it's rough. It's *asphalt.* There are periodically rocks or other bits of debris. So it's difficult to do a lot of things that are easy on normal floors. Also, it can tear up your wheels and your toe stops, and lord help your knee pads and laces if you fall. (Which reminds me that I really need to order new laces to replace the one I mangled in October when I decided to skate the entire perimeter of Tempelhof, which is something like 3 miles.)
Tempelhof used to be an airport, but they closed it after reunification, because there were 3 airports. (Now there's only 1, and it's a nightmare.) Those of you who are familiar with Cold War history might recognize the name from the Berlin airlift in 1948-49, when the American army organized an airlift of food and other supplies after the Soviet army closed off the land routes to the city from the west. Planes landed at Tempelhof every 3 minutes for nearly a year.
You might know, on an intellectual level, that airports are big. Even if the terminal isn't absurd, like O'Hare or Atlanta, runways and taxiways take a lot of space. You don't really get a gut-level feeling for it until you take a runway on foot.
Anyway, roller derby is back, and I'm stoked.
