Derby World Tour

Possibly one of the best added perks of being a rollergirl (like you needed more benefit than the obvious badassedness!) is the amount of travel associated for someone with wanderlust such as myself. What's better than being able to travel city-to-city kickin some serious ass!

As I get to travel quite a bit for work and many of my other exploits, I've now made it my personal goal to go on a Derby World Tour. (and for your added amusement, I'm going to blog about it too!) My tour will include both scheduled away bouts in other cities as well as my random drop-in to a league practice in another city that I may be wandering through. For those that don't know, it seems to be common derby courtesy to allow visiting rollergirls to attend a practice to meet their attendance requirements while traveling. I'm taking full advantage of that courtesy to both boost my skills training and to meet some awesome people and see how derby is done across the world!

Not only are there HUNDREDS of leagues across the US, but there are quite a few across the pond in Europe, Australia, etc. It may take me some time, but I hope to do a skatebag trip to Europe and skate with as many leagues as possible while I'm "Skatebagging" through Europe.

Since I'm a few months behind in this blog in terms of my derby-associated travel, let me catch you up with my to-date travel summaries....

• Sin City Rollergirls -- Las Vegas, NV [April 2009]
  While in town for work, I was able to make it out to a practice with the Sin City Rollergirls. They practice outside (I can't imagine skating in that summer heat!) on a roller hockey court at the local park. Pretty dusty, so next time I'll bring my outdoor wheels/bearings.
• Ohio Rollergirls -- Columbus, OH [April 2009]
  My very first bout. They skate on sport court, which is much different than I'm used to skating on.
• Roller Girls of Southern Indiana -- Evansville, IN [May 2009]
  One of the nicest teams around. They skate on sport court, in the Ice Arena.
• Hard Knox Rollergirls -- Knoxville, TN [June 2009]
Had the pleasure of skating with their B team as a fill-in skater. They skate in the convention center on polished concrete. Perhaps one of the slickest tracks I've been on to date.

• Sintral Florida Derby Demons -- Orlando/De Land, FL [June 2009, July 2009]
  Orlando is home to me, so anytime I go down to visit family I've been dropping into their practice. Very cool team, they skate on a concrete rink floor.
• Nashville Rollergirls -- Nashville, TN [July 2009]
Not only are they just up the road, but they are a great group of skaters. I went up and joined their scrimmage practice and took plenty of notes. They skate on polished concrete at their State Fairgrounds' gamehouse.

• Memphis Roller Derby -- Memphis, TN [August 2009]
I joined a full day of mini-bouts at the Honky Stomp this year, 6 hours straight on their polished concrete. We'll be headed there again in October for our WFTDA game against them.

• Mobile Roller Derby -- Mobile, AL [August 2009]
  Always nice to be able to lay on the beach AND play a mean ass game of derby all in the same day. They skate on a concrete rink surface. Nice team too!

I will be tagging all Derby World Tour stops and compiling a map... look out for future stops! And if you have any "Gotta See It" suggestions on stops I need to make, let hear them in the comments section!