One Hot Saturday Night

On a dark wintry Saturday night, Carl and I joined other enthusiasts to watch women in fishnets and spandex bump and grind their sweaty bodies against one another. Music was pumping, dollar bills were flying, and heart rates were up. Get your mind out of the gutter - this was good old fashioned family-friendly roller derby we were watching, and those dollar bills were donations to send fourth graders to camp.

At the season opener for the Southern Oregon Rollergirls, women with code names like Madame Morticia, Udaho, and Piranhasaurus raced laps on roller skates around a track laid out on an auditorium floor, wearing all the regulation protective gear (helmet, mouth guard, wrist pads, elbow pads, knee pads) and governed by a circling flock of referees in official black and white jerseys. Roller derby is a team sport that involves lapping members of the other team to score points, but it's complicated enough that I'm not going to try and explain it here. If you've ever seen the movie "Whip It" you know what I'm talking about.

Needless to say there were time keepers, score keepers, and lots of rabid fans. These girls are passionate about their sport and it was exciting to see the venue so packed (the only other time I've seen that many people gathered together in Medford was at Costco). Oh, and did I mention Carl was there for work? Yup, he got paid to watch those ladies in their spandex duke it out on the floor.

In other news, it snowed! The town of Ashland received a good four or five inches, depending on how far up the hill you live, and was transformed into a veritable winter wonderland. Schools shut down for a day in celebration (not mine, of course). Bubba enjoyed the cold white goodness covering the world.