10. You think of distances in terms of the spaces between cones.
9. You think of the people on the sidewalk as human cones.
8. You never travel out of town without your skates, tools, cones, chalk, and a meter.
7. You have had a skate signed by your favorite slalom skater.
6. You got a smartphone so you can watch Youtube trick clips while you are out practicing.
5. Half of your Facebook newsfeed is in a language you don’t understand because of all the international slalomers on your list.
4. When you meet Korean people (non-skaters), you ask them if they’ve ever heard of Kim Sung Jin.
3. You hoard old wheels and rationalize that you’ll use them for slide. You learn slides in order to validate this practice.
2. You are always on the lookout for the Holy Grail: the weather-proof outdoor place with perfect floor where you won’t get kicked out.
1. You’ve saved up for months and traveled a long distance to take part in a slalom competition, even though you know you won’t come close to winning.
Just a silly little list I came up with on the train ride home last night. :)
Off to the World Championships in Geisingen tonight with Tim, Pierre, and Alexandre representing Team Belgium, and myself representing Team Americelgium, or something like that. It will be a tiring weekend, but I hope it's memorable and fun, and that I can learn something new from Asian skaters! Also, I hope I do a good job with my classic routine this time, because I've prepared very carefully and had a good time doing so.
The time has come, dear internet friends, for me to blog. In the past two months, it has often crossed my mind, but only now do I feel truly ready to say something on this internet platform. Every time someone says they read this, it startles me a bit, but people are reading (even if they don't comment), so it's nice to know I have an audience.
So, the Cobra still waits, a recluse in his dank and foul den, but that's not what we are here today to talk about. No, no, we are here today to discuss something else which is equally mysterious in nature. It is a thing from which the sting cuts just as deeply and painfully as that of the dark serpent. It is elusive, unpredictable, and surprises many with its swift, cruel justice. And like its shadowy counterpart, this beast will likely warrant several sessions of Socratic questioning, wringing of the hands, and general melancholy and stomach upsets.
We are, of course, talking about battle judging.
But what about battle judging? We all know about the rules. What's that, you say? You DON'T know the rules of a slalom battle? Oh, well, why don't you go ahead and download them from here. There you go.
Great. Now that you are well-versed in the law of battle, let's take a look at some stuff, now, shall we? And since I am not in the habit of publicly critiquing other people over the internet without their consent, let's just go ahead and look at some video starring little ol' me.
Let's start with Battle Belgium 2009, when I had been slalom skating for about one year, and thought skorts were the greatest thing EVAR:
The reason I chose this video is because, well, Chloe is in it, and I just happened to come across it when looking for the video of this year's women's final.
NOW, take a look at the video from the women's final from this year's edition of Battle Belgium:
Can you please tell me what's wrong with this picture (video)?
Yes, that's right. My freestyle looked better two years ago.
How depressing is that? Sure, I can do some TRICKS now. Oooooh, how we all love TRICKS. I'm stronger. I'm faster. I am smoother. I fall (slightly) less. My fashion is less 1980's-Madonna. There are a lot of things improved about my skating in general, and also specifically my slalom. And when there is no competition in sight, my freestyle is actually very good, sometimes rather awesome, I must admit. But as far as freestyle in competition goes, I was stylin' it out better in '09, because I didn't really care about doing tricks during the battle. Because, well, then I couldn't do any.
Well, I will be the first to go ahead and say that I spent too much time during this final doing screw-type tricks. I did a bunch of toe-toe screws, swans, and toe-heel screws. I have been training these tricks really hard so that I can do 20 of all of them, so doing about half that number of each felt about as ordinary as eating Loops for breakfast. I really enjoyed the power of being able to turn as many as I wanted, without being controlled by my own lack of technique which, in the past, used to dictate how many of each of these things I could do.
And for that, I would like to thank Polish women skaters. :)
I didn't sleep for two nights in a row after judging the battle in Berlin. It was a thoroughly traumatizing experience, because the essence of battle judging is lining up four of your friends, and then telling two of them that they can't play slaloms anymore. And then there are all the gray areas. Which is better --a line of beautiful, playful freestyle; or 20 labored toe shifts? You tell me.
No, really. You TELL me.
After Berlin, I found myself preoccupied with the concepts of rules and justice. I started reading about all kinds of rules, systems, ways that people cope with and eliminate uncertainty. I might have gotten slightly carried away with my learning, but I was looking for answers to help me sleep at night, because after all, I DO take this whole slalom thing rather seriously, even though I try to keep it light.
So what's the answer? Which is better, the freestyle or the toe shifts?
Well, according to the rules, it's the technical difficulty of the skating being presented that must be considered. Technically, we are supposed to leave aesthetics out of it, while still incorporating into the judgment the qualities of speed, continuity, finishing of each trick, integration into other freestyle, and the range of tricks presented. That's a whole lot to see, and judge, during somebody's 30 seconds.
However, this still doesn't give us an answer. Let's say that the toe shifts were executed without fault, that they were clean, but that they just looked like they were a lot of hard work and they weren't pretty to watch. And let's say that the freestyle was gorgeous, it gave you goose bumps, and it was fast and fluid and clean.
Out of these two things, which is more technically difficult to display?
Now, here is where we get to the fact that judges are humans with souls, and that they are very often impassioned skaters themselves. Personally, as a skater with loads of experience practicing one-wheeled tricks with only moderate success, and also with loads of experience simply expressing joy through my feet, I would be tempted to say that the toe shifts are more technically difficult. After all, I seem to have no problem coming up with nice-looking freestyle, right? So it must be easier to do.
Also, it's taken me a long time to train to be able to turn as many screw-type tricks as I want, and to be able to do them consistently in battle as well. The "freestyle" part I have also worked on, to be sure, but I've spent more time gritting my teeth and PRACTICING on the non-freestyle movements. And maybe that's where I'm going wrong.
WAIT. Maybe it is only easier for me. What about this "trick monkey" type skating (Dance, monkey, dance!), where skaters execute their complicated trick sequences like good little robots and then roll on over to their coaches for a Sweet Cookie? (Yum yum.) And, of course, if they fail, they get a Shame Cookie. (Yum yum, but with tears rolling down their faces as they choke on the bitter crumbs that taste of their own ineptitude.) How easy is it for them to bust out a line of gorgeous freestyle?
Of course I'm being completely over the top and sarcastic (and mean no offense to anyone who sees himself in this category of skating) but I'm also not going to pretend that I've never fallen prey to this mentality myself...after all, how many screws did I turn in the battle final? And can I please have a cookie now, hold the shame?
So, how do we define and reward the soul of freestyle? Because I want to. It's very important for me, and I know it is for so many people. This discussion has been on everyone's mind all year. I know the answer lies in the fact that we have to reward both the difficulty and beauty of slalom, but the beauty part is so often perceived as subjective. However, it's only subjective to a degree. As a culture we can define our own standards of beauty, and in fact these standards already exist, which is in part amusingly demonstrated by the huge wrench in the system that the Koreans' dancing has thrown into everything. :)
Well, before I write again, I WILL have revisited my art philosophy books. There must be some applicable thoughts in there somewhere, and if not, I'll just keep questioning til I discover the answers.
Anyway, it's all part of a greater adventure, and I'm very happy to be a part of it.
Until next time, enjoy your slaloms (however you like them served up!) and thanks for reading. :)
xoxoxo
meg
-been to 3 rollerparades
-gone ice skating and tried ice slaloms (!)
-tried out speed skates for the first time
-messed around on quad skates at a rollerdisco
-practiced lots of slides
-enjoyed & practiced lots of slalom in several places
-gone to yoga, of course
Oh yes. We hung around a bit in a skatepark as well, but I'm not really counting that because I was too chicken to drop in on the quarter pipe there, because of the fact that it's more concave than anywhere else I've dropped in before, and also, I didn't have any guidance from Vicky Denissen, who taught me how to do it in the first place and has a good eye for when I'm about to do something dangerously wrong, and a knack for reassuring me to go ahead when I'm doing something right.
But anyway. We went to a "roller disco" night last night, which was really fun even though there weren't a lot of people. I played with some quad skates for awhile, and they are really great for dancing, because of the stability they afford, and also the way your foot is applied to the ground. This was maybe the second or third time I've been on quads (not counting any birthday parties at the roller rink I attended as a small child), and I really got a feel for them last night, even though I didn't keep them on too long. It's brilliant (and a novelty) being able to shift your weight to the outside of your skate while keeping your foot flat on the ground, and vice versa. Instead of outside and inside edges, you have outside and inside wheels. Sitting tricks are ten times easier (in a straight line, anyway!) because of the fact that you have a stable little platform to roll on, and dancing moves look and feel very, very cool. Slalom is much more difficult with quad skates, of course, but it is possible, and I could manage some tricks quite well, but only up until the moment that I would forget I was on quads instead of inlines, and then I would screw up fantastically. :)
Also, here is what I've learned about downhill since my last post, which is actually embarrassingly obvious, but I just didn't think of it myself at the time:
As slalomer on a rockered setup, we are only riding on two wheels. Therefore it's much less stable and more difficult to get speed than if we were on a flat setup going downhill. It's also scarier. :) The solution? Duck down low (duh). The scary feeling is gone, you go faster, and your wheels make more contact with the ground. I should have thought of it last week, because I've done this many times during the rollerparades. Anyway, this time was WHEEEEEEEEE! I'm still not as fast as I'd like, but then again, I'm also not really ever satisfied with anything about my skating, so there you go.
However, the rollerparade in Brussel this time didn't hold a candle to the one the week before. We took a path that didn't include the huge hill from the last time, which was disappointing. :(
One of the coolest parts of the night was at the end of the tour when we kept barreling down the entrance ramp into the parking garage, ducking under the arm of the parking gate (I was doing footguns underneath it), and looping further and further down until the very bottom level, leaning left the whole time and feeling the centrifugal force. We kept taking the elevator back up to the top and doing it over again.
Let's see, in other news, I bruised my tailbone at the first Brussels rollerparade I attended, thanks to going for a parallel slide on a tiled floor and getting my blade caught in the tiny gap between two tiles and suddenly BAM! I was down. I'm still sore, but luckily that's not a fall I've experienced ever before and hope not to again. I think surfaces for sliding are just like for slalom...if you're strong at what you are doing, you can manage almost anywhere, but I'm definitely not good enough at sliding to be pulling off parallel slides where the ground is not forgiving. By the way, they do make such a thing as butt padding, and it would have literally saved my ass had I been wearing it at the time.
Within the same ten minutes of that happening, I also had a head-on collision at a good speed (I was gearing up for another slide) with another skater, who was also getting ready to slide. We had been skating in the same direction but maybe six feet apart, which was probably a little too close. Then he turned unexpectedly and we pretty much ran into each other at full speed. It was like playing a game of chicken where nobody chickened out.
In the moment before impact, though, I realized what was about to happen, so I reached out to absorb the energy rather than try to deflect it, which worked pretty well. Neither of us were knocked to the ground, and I only ended up pinging the bone above my right eye on his helmet (Helmets: Great if you are both wearing one. Not if only one of you is.). At the time I worried that my eye would be black the next day, but it never got beyond pink and a bit puffy, which was fine by me, and it didn't really hurt after the fact, unless I pressed on it.
This other skater was actually really cool to skate with (which was why we were running around sliding in the first place), and he was doing something which I would be tempted to call heel-heel cobra (!) as we were skating along with the tour. There was another guy cruising along seemingly endlessly, and REALLY FAST, doing back toe-wheeling (!), and at one point he also busted out an impressive back-flip from practically a stand-still.
So yeah. A lot of the Brussels guys can already slalom pretty well because they are such good skaters, but they don't seem to prefer the cones, which is too bad for slalom! Because they can really SKATE.
Well, that's all I'll say for today, and the title of this post kinda says it all. However, to be fair, much of the skating I've described here is not really slalom-related. I've been wearing wrist guards and sometimes knee pads when practicing slide, although I have to say, they only place I've fallen down hard is on my butt. I did wipe out rather poorly on ice in a hockey slide and bruise my leg, but that was due to the fact that I was still figuring out the mechanics of sliding on ice again, as opposed to on concrete.
I never thought there would come a day that sliding on asphalt would be easier for me than sliding on ice, but hey, look, here we are.
Thanks again for reading and HAPPY SLIDING!
xoxoxo
meg
