So once again the roller derby aspect of this blog has been neglected and it’s due to a strange mixture of being flat out and also lazy.

Last I wrote I was trying out for VRDL. Turns out we were all pretty ok so they welcomed us in and threw us into a fairly full on bootcamp that culminated in a test around 3 weeks ago. The group ended up divided between bronze and silver levels, bronze being roughly equivilent to white star, silver around yellow. I made it into silver!

I made it to 2 sessions, one ace fun the other pretty challenging, before my house burnt down and took out my skates with it (dirty bastard). I suspect the aerosol cans in my skate bag removed any fighting chance they may have had and not much was left of them by the time the firies had finished working their magic…

Left skate:

Right skate:

*sob*

As a result there has been no training done, but plenty of cleaning, moving, crying, moving, sifting, crying, spending a lot of money on replacing stuff and a fair bit of misery all round. There have been a lot of jokes flying around that have helped make the situation easier, but at the end of the day it’s shit and I hate it.

However the marvellous silver (or rather black and white) lining of the shit cloud that descended on my life last Tuesday is the fact that I got to go skate shopping yesterday.

My intentions were good, I was going to upgrade from my beloved Sure Grip Rebels to something that was a modest step up. Not revoltingly expensive, just a little more. Knowing I have some cash coming my way from the fund raising efforts of some very amazing ladies, coupled with pay day proved a bad combination. That and the bloke at Bayside Blades speaks derby very well and also has a knack for leading the desperate and skateless astray. Not that I’m complaining mind.

And so, the gaping hole in my bank account presents:

Despite getting numb toes and crampy insteps, I am in love and very amazed at the difference. Training tomorrow night will be interesting. And painful. And I don’t care, I have skates again so screw you house fire!