Some of the extra stuff that wasn’t included last boot camp was:

• Scissor skating: Practising putting one foot in line with the other and then swapping over. rinse and repeat. The boys looked pretty uncomfortable doing this one.. can’t imagine why.
• Transitions: Stepping front to back while moving. While I had picked this up at a class earlier in the year I can’t imagine what I would have done had this been on the last boot camp six months ago. Hmm no wait… I can totally imagine… There would have been tears and maybe something extra in my shorts that wasn’t there earlier.
• Baseball slides with quick get ups: Moving from a one knee fall onto your sidebum(is that even a word?!) to basically help you learn not to fall on your tail bone I’ve done that once..pretty sure if I did it again I would implode or something. So a very valuable skill for me to have. I had learnt this previously at a class but not quite the same. This time you use your core so you don’t fall back onto your elbows and you use a quick kick motion to swap your legs over and get up… wow i didn’t explain that very well. next time i’ll try a diagram.
• Walking on toe stops for 2 laps: Pretty self explanatory. It hurt my tootsies…

We kinda did a game in the form of pushing and pulling a group around the track. I christened our group the “poo posse” much to the other girls dismay, but we rocked it YEAH ! I’m kinda of glad we didn’t get to play “musical cones” (thanks for the proper name harmin’ :D) because I nearly passed out by the end.

After bootcamp it was time for a post bootcamp bbq. It was delicious. It was really nice hanging with the girls ( and guys ) without being at a skating rink (although thats totally rad too). The best part however, was the discovery of a guide to outdoor skating circa 1970.

The black and white photos simply do not communicate the raw awesomeness of the book. The main guy, who no doubt picked up the skills in ‘Nam judging by his 1000 yard stare, had some spectacular and often unorthodox moves but hey, I won’t judge because I wasn’t there man.. I WASN’T THERE! I too hope one day to to able to jump as high as he…but maybe not reveal quite as much of my anatomy.

After chowing down and watching some xanadu, me and the wife headed home to our respective abodes and the night capped off with the duty of airing out my derby wife’s pads along side mine outside. It’s smelly business this derby caper but I wouldn’t change a thing.

Actually I totally would change the smelly part.

Really looking forward to next week.