Boise, Politics, Surprising Weekend.

This weekend Jet City Rollergirls went to Boise to play Treasure Valley Rollergirls. I flew out Friday after work, taking a 20 minute bus ride to the airport. Most of my teammates took vans - which I was going to do but we had a woman's caucus event that I was going to be at for work so I flew to make it back in time. It was a pretty uneventful Friday - Arson Annie joining me at the hotel later - we chatted and watch 3 episodes of "What Not to Wear" on The Learning Channel before heading to bed.

On Saturday we headed over to the fairgrounds where we met the Treasure Valley Rollergirls, tested out the rumored slippery, polished cement floor (not bad at all!), ate pulled pork sandwiches with the other skates (I hung out with "Violet" who also originally hailed from Cleveland), and skated around, smacking around some of the new skaters who had joined us to help fill in our rosters. It was a great warm up. We stopped by the costume shop back to our hotel - as is mandatory with any group of roller girls - you're always on the lookout for great fishnets, boots, tights, and other fabulous accessories.

The game was fantastic! It was broken up into 3 - 20 minute periods. We were up by 20 some points at the end of the first 20 minutes. We had a pretty good start - I scored some points as jammer and rocked the B3 position. The reffing was frustrating as there were various interpretations of 3.1 WFTDA rules (which regulate our game). The second period we seemingly lost our edge, lost most of our lead and had way too many penalties. But we pulled it together for the third period and everyone stepped it up. It was a thrilling and fantastic game with 1.40 minutes left, Molly Python managed to pull us ahead from our tie and our blockers held their jammer to no points. It was a thrilling and exhilarating game. Audience members came over and thanked us for such a good game. We cleaned up and headed to the after party which was more fun times, playing drinking games and dancing.

Treasure Valley does an incredible job of entertaining their audience in-between the periods and have been the most hospitable host team to-date. We learned plenty of things from them. They were great hosts and I can't wait to have them in Everett.

I pulled myself out of bed in plenty of time to catch an airport shuttle and head home. I made an earlier connecting flight in Portland - thankfully. I needed lunch and a nap so badly before the women's caucus event. I headed off to that and was looking around at the usual suspects. I was slightly disappointed thinking it was going to be preaching to the choir but ended up not being that at all. It was about women in politics: how do we more women elected to office, how do we run for more offices; what resources are out there; what does it mean to have Palin and Clinton in the forefront. It was a very good, though small, meeting of organizers, women who are interested in getting more involved and women who want to make sure their voices are heard. I left very excited and we'll see what comes of it. I volunteered to help make some things happen.

What a fantastic weekend. I was pleasantly surprise by our bout and by the event today. I like surpises like that.