Days of Hands

Last night Mo and I were back at open skate after her two week trip to the Netherlands for New Year’s.  I’ve missed her so much!   She skated one evening with the Amsterdam Derby Dames but otherwise had been off skates the whole time so she was feeling a little out of shape.  It’s amazing how fast that can happen, but luckily it seems to come back with just a little effort.

We worked on a little edging and some falls, and we mostly just skated laps and eased her back into skating again.  She helped me with backward skating, and I’m thrilled to say that that’s coming along!  I’ve been lucky that I’ve been able to keep up my 3-a-week practice schedule for the most part over the holidays, but it wasn’t easy.  A record setting snowstorm pretty much shut down everyone for a week, and we haven’t seen temperatures above freezing in over a week. 

The highlight of the evening was doing the Boot Scoot Boogie on skates.  Mo and I had to take a few minutes to remember how to do it, and we showed a couple other people how but they dropped off and it was just the two of us scootin’.  NOT EASY.  But tremendously fun, and I love a challenge.  I’ll be requesting it again on Saturday when we have the big open skate group.  Tonya, Kerri, Prick, and maybe Mariza will be there, and of course anyone else we can drag along.

I have been getting a lot of compliments on my form and my improvement from the staff at the rink, and from other skater friends.  It’s a good thing that skating and doing drills with the team is keeping me humble!  I’m rather proud (and still kinda shocked) to say that I can keep up with the others when we do laps during practice without having to push myself.  Yes, the team is going slow and warming up and chatting and all that, but I couldn’t even keep up at that speed a month ago!

Best compliment yet:  one person said I’d be an incredible jammer someday because of how strong and quick I am!  And before that I had absolutely no aspirations to be a jammer, but now I think it may be something I want after all…  That’s the scary position, where you are in the spotlight and everyone is watching you…  and you have to be FAST and have the endurance of a true athlete.  It always seemed out of my grasp, but I am seeing firsthand my improvement, and I am getting addicted to speed.  Jammers are the true rockstars of derby, and once you get a taste of rockstardom, it’s hard to give it up.