Sun 28th Dec 2014
Booked a hire car last night only to find out they’re shut on Sundays! So put the word out on Facebook to see if I could scrounge a lift to Huntingdon Beach to play in the OC Roller Girls pre-new year scrimmage. Thankfully a lovely roller girl called Rocksteady Betty said she would take me, phew!
We arrived and I found out that the venue is owned by the Mighty Ducks ice hockey team for their practice venue!
We then got ourselves warmed up and I had thought that I might not scrim with the boys… but when it came down to it, they didn’t look too scary, so just went for it! It was a pick-up-scrimmage so each side had two lines, one of jammers and one of blockers. I initially thought I’d block first to test the level, but then saw that there were only 4 skaters in the jammer que, so joined that.. baptism of fire! Was fun, jammed more than I blocked which was good, plus the other jammers were all lovely. Met lots of new friends from all over California, including an 8 year old junior player (sooo cute!) - gave her a Dolly Rockit Rollers sticker which made her happy 🙂
It was a long day, 4 hours of skating and 2 hours of driving… but Rocky was sweet and because the freeway was chokka, she took me the scenic route home through her neighbourhood of Boyle Heights, a mainly Mexican area, she took me to a haunted hospital which has been used as a set for lots of films… and to a cool little mexican street where musicians hang out to give out their business cards so you can hire them for your event! She stopped off and got me to pose with a couple of them ha ha. It was so cool to see an area of Los Angeles that most wont ever see, shown around by a local. Thank you Rocksteady!
Click here to see a video of the Mexican street musicians.
After she dropped me off and me and Karis headed out for food… Mexican food of course! We went to Sunset Boulvard and to a place called Pink Taco. Had a really cool interior of mexican day of the dead stuff, plus yummy food!
We then went for a walk up the strip and saw some famous venues including The Viper Room and The Rainbow bar, where Karis said our host went on Christmas day and Tommy Lee from Motley Crue was there! We didn’t go in as totally shattered from my day of Roller Derby fun, so back to walk the dogs and crash out. Another exhausting day in L.A.!
