|
|
 |
 |
|
Skated to the health club today. I get a ridiculous charge out of figuring the best routes--smoothest, quietest side streets, best way to get down that hill without sticking a wheel in a chuckhole, passing through route bottlenecks smoothly and quickly.
Fall has set in here in Chicago. We gots 40+ degree nights and 60+ degree days. The sky is an incredible blue, when we can see it. I've been tantalized by crow sightings, a pair here, a trio there, always too far away to call to. Pretty soon, though, the winter crows will start trickling into town in batches of 16 and 25. Wonder what they'll say when they see the high school training fields all plowed up and (in some areas) resodded. Something pithy in Crow, no doubt.
One of the nicest aspects of this fall is that I'm remembering trudging to school during fabulous weather like this, and sighing. Now I can go skating, or drive up to the Botanical Gardens and walk through gorgeous landscapes, or hang out in a coffeeshop and write.
I didn't hate school but I didn't love it. It was a warehouse. I read novels behind my textbooks, and peeked out every five or ten minutes to see that the class, like a daytime drama, had inched one paragraph ahead, so I ducked back into my book-inside-a-book and zoned out. Sometimes a teacher would try to catch me out at that. I still had the answer for her. Because, hello, I'd seen in coming ten minutes ago.
I wonder if school is like that for any kids now. They say that college-bound kids are under "incredible pressure" to perform well, get excellent grades, have extra-curricular activities that make them look good on paper, blah blah. Starting in grade school.
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
|
|
Our team did very well in the walk & roll--thanks to all who sponsored me! Sadly, I didn't get to finish the course. I got just over halfway and then wiped out on concrete where, and this is the dumb part, I tried to stop the ground with my chin. Four ambulances, a dislocated jaw, and four stitches later . . . oh well.
But that last quarter-mile I was flying! The wind was in our faces northbound along the lakefront, brutal uphill scrambling the whole way, and then when we turned around it was at our backs. ZOWEEEE! I have no idea what I did wrong, probably just took my eye off the pavement for one second in a sandy patch. Bam. Over like a tree on my face. If I'd been going slower I might have used some of my derby falling smarts. Never mind. It was fun.
Plus, it took four ambulances to get me to the ER. This is where the comedy sets in. Team #1 wanted a second opinion on the stitches, so they called their backup from down at the start-finish line, five miles away, to look at me.
When they arrived, Team #2 said, Yup, she needs stitches, and then they turned their rig around to answer an emergency call from the start-finish line, and =>crossed the sand to get to the next path. Mistake. I should say they tried to cross. The rig was immediately mired to its axles in sand. I scampered around it in my skates, looking for hope, stuffing cardboard under the wheels. No luck. Finally I realized i was getting sand in my bearings and let them put me inside.
Team #1, urged on by me, said, Here, take our rig and go answer the 911. We'll stay here and try to get the beast out. Team #2 accepted, and roared off with my helmet under their gurney & Team #1 girl's purse.
Many passing runners tried to help push the rig out of the sand. Fat chance. Those things weigh three thousand pounds, and there was no traction, just sand all the way down.
Members of my derby team skated by. Quote from Payne D. Spencer: "Flash, you're always showing off!" Belle & Mr. Belle took pictures of me grinning into the camera with my chin split open and dripping blood into my cleavage. (I won't post those unless a LOT of people ask for it. If you're coming to Wiscon I'll show 'em to you.)
Thirty minutes later, Team #2 had not returned. Team #1 called for backup.
I sat in the back of the ambulance, holding an icepack to my chin, which wasn't bleeding much any more and didn't hurt at all, watching the comedy, laughing my behind off, and wondering if I should just let them butterfly bandage the darned thing so I could skate back.
Team #1 said, Nope, nope, don't do that, Team #3 will be here any minute.
I spent the time trying to sell books to Team #1. That was fun.
Team #2 returned finally, annoyed because their 911 (an asthma sufferer) had accepted a shot of inhaler dope but refused transport. They reluctantly agreed to resume custody of their mired rig--this would get them in dutch with the boss for sure--and returned to the futile extraction effort. Those big plastic boards they keep in the rig to strap people onto and float them out of water trouble? They stuck those under the wheels. Didn't work.
Team #3 arrived at last, about an hour after Team #1 handed me my first ice pack, and said, Yup, stitches. But we can't take her--wait five minutes, Team #4 is right behind us.
Team #4 got there, put me in the back of their rig, and sat around for another ten minutes watching the boys try to dig out their rig with spades, marvelling aloud at the stupidity, and assuring me that "not all our people are dumb."
Then we rolled. Team #4 was very nice also. They let me try to sell them a book. Even more nicely they advised me to let them roll me into the ER. If they rolled me in on their gurney, I had a chance of getting out of there in less than four hours. I jumped at it. Fifteen minutes later I was shot full of novocaine, sewed up, and out. Skated out of the ER under my own power.
So I got some great material out of it, and my first-ever derby scar. Only three bummers--one, I didn't get to finish the course with the wind at my back--that would have been fabulous. Two, I missed the afterparty. Three, apparently I left my helmet and blood-soaked mouthguard in one of those ambulances. Pretty sure it was Team #1's rig. Now to call & see if Dispatch has it together enough to contact the drivers and try to run it down.
9 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
|
|
Rich and I skated about 1/3 of the Walk&Roll course today, under a fabulously blue sky, into a brisk offshore breeze, and over the nasty surfaces and hilly part of the course. Took us about 35 minutes out and 25 minutes back. The place was aswarm with revellers. We each wiped out once, but not badly. Some smartass, noting all my pads, asked me, "Do you plan to fall much?" and I said thickly around my mouthguard, "All the time, I'm in roller derby." Rich was very taken with the pads after his falls. "They totally rock!" He's unscathed, at least so far. See how stiff he is in two days!
I had a classic wipeout Wednesday, probably mentioned it here already--such a braggart--but it was a classic. One knee bent under me, one leg out, one elbow down, lying on my back. Looks terrible, and terribly impressive, and the good part is, you get back up again without a scratch on you. I did go to the chiropractor, but he said nothing was auszerschmucked. So.
Must go swim at the local Y--my health club is renovating the pool area, dammit--and then go eat sushi with one of my old collitch roommates.
Thanks must be made to the following wonderful donors who kicked in yesterday to the Walk&Roll:
Tina Johnston
Patty Copeland
Loretta DeMarino
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
Ooooog, I'm really crippled up now. All the way from Columbus Circle to the north east corner and back, across the park twice. Must find out how m any miles that is. More info tonight. Oooog
3 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
Ouch! Very sore today! I skated about an hour forty-five minutes in Central Park this afternoon. The cherry trees are in bloom, along with redbud and Idunnowhat, but there were big clouds of pink and white blossoms everywhere. Most of the trees are in the process of leafing. Lots of people, most of them on the west side of the park, were out enjoying the day; kids, dogs, skaters, bikes, joggers, the whole boiling. Sightings: A svelte beauty in big swirly turquoise-blue palazzo pants with huge "butterfly wings" that she could open by lifting her arms...on skates. She was being photographed. Very wow. At the same location, but under me in the archway of the underpass, someone singing opera. Haunting and lovely. Before me, viewed off the same bridge, the tree-overhung lagoons, with people messing about in boats. Cherry trees in bloom. Music. A group of people harnessing their tacked-and-blinkered partners up to little one- and two-person sulkies, then driving them off down the bridle path. This was the Pony Rompers In The Park, a pony-play group. I took pix but have no way of uploading them until I get home. You simply can't imagine. They were having such fun. As I told their PR gal, I myself am in roller derby so I don't feel like pointing a finger one way or another. I skated around the southwest corner of the park about four times, then took off across the park to go about 40 blocks north along the east side, then cut across again and return to the southwest corner. May I say right now that this is the hilliest park I've skated so far? I was either zooming downhill way too fast, slaloming and doing all the tricks I know to slow down, or toiling uphill with quick baby steps and feeling warning twinges from my groinal muscles the while. Ow ow ow. Back to the hotel, a loooong sleep in the steam room, then a slow swim in a very warm pool. I'm still not put back together. Hoping to skate tomorrow in the early evening, when, I'm told, they do R&B "dance" skating at around 72d in the center of the park somewhere. I've no idea how far that is, distancewise. Assuming it's roughly the same speed I usually skate outside, i.e. about six miles an hour, I figure I did ten miles, very conservatively speaking. This is good. Grant Park, where our Walk&Roll For Cancer takes place May 18 (www.walkroll.com --sign up to sponsor me!) is flat flat flat. On the other hand, The Central Park skating surfaces are all lovely, and beautifully kept. Wish I could say that for Grant Park. Plus the wind off the lake, if there is one, will add to our fun. All things considered this was a good training day. Let's see if I am physically capable of skating tomorrow--or even walking.
12 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
|
|
|
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}