Snow-Mageddon!

Well what can I say?

Welsh weather never fails to let us all down, and a Derby Girl's urge to get to training is always inspiring!!

Friday night (26th Nov) we saw our first snow fall of the year, which was about 4 inches at best, and for almost every other country in the world life would have gone on much the same as it had the day before. But oh no, I live in the UK where it is a known fact, that once the white stuff starts falling for the sky, the world IS going to end and anybody over the age of 55 has the overwhelming urge to buy all the bread and milk from the local shop, then trudge 1/2 mile down the road to do the same in that shop too!!

I was out in town with my derby wife Amber (for those of you unfamiliar with this term it basically means your best buddy on the derby circuit) when Snow-mageddon began. We had just finished some retail therapy, who am I kidding it was the weekly shop!! anyway, we where waiting for the bus, one was there but we had bought tickets with another company so to save the pennies we thought we would wait, it was due in about 5 minuets. HA!! snow, snow and then just a little more snow meant 2 hours later I got through my front door, I live 4 miles away from the bus station, I should have walked!!

So for about 6 hours on Friday night it snowed, I woke on Saturday morning and lept from my bed to the window. Not with child-like excitement to see a beautiful blanket of crisp clean snow, and imagine the day ahead going sledging, snow-person building and having a street wide snowball fight! NO WAY MUN!! I wanted to see if I could get off the mountain and into the city for Derby practice!!

This is where I gush a bit, my wonderful husband got up, warmed up the truck, defrosted the windscreen and loaded us all in, he then drove over the mountain and got me to training with 15 minutes to spare!! I usually use the peasant wagon coz its his weekend too and I don't see why I should make him ferry me about at 8am, when he's up and out the front door by 6am weekdays.

So am there, outside the centre, but all the shutters are down! No-one is there, I panic a little, if I can make it in, then surely Cardiffian's can get to work??? there's too much snow and ice to skate outdoors, but I am contemplating doing just that as the centre manager arrives looking a little harassed. So doors are open, but am still the only one here. I skate coz I live it, but it is a little hard to hold a Roller Derby session with just 1, its not really a solo sport. Minute by minute more turn up and by 09:30 there's 5 of us, and so the lowest CRoC turn out to date start to warm-up. Well we defrosted first, then did the warm-up.

Now since we where so few it was a rather good training session, we could really concentrate on where they weaker skaters where struggling, and do a bit of one-to-one training, by the end of it we where all running (at varying speeds) around the corners, and we have decided to search the WFTDA rules to see if it is legal to pick up your Jammer (the point scorer) and throw her over the top of the pack?! I also came to the conclusion that I should not be allowed to whip or push Jinx coz every time I touched her on Saturday, I basically slammed her into the ground, now this is perfectly acceptable in Roller Derby, but not when she is your Jammer, it kindda makes it harder to win if you are helping the opposition!!

And so we left, feeling really good about our session and wondering, apart from 2 girls who where ill before the snow, and the couple who had told us they had work, oh and Lemmy Atom who was in Brum, where were all the Cardiff girls??? Jinx came in from Ebbw Vale, and Ebbw is doing a rather good impression of Siberia right about now, so it leaves the question, What's more important whipping up hot chocolate? or whipping your Jammer?

Answer's on a postcard guys and girls, oh and FYI you can always have the hot choc after practice!!

Keep warm out there guys, :)

Derby Love

Rhayfen
xxx