Adult Skate Night

It's been awhile since I was at open skate, but my usual Monday night class was cancelled, as was speed skating so this evening I found myself rocking it amongst disco balls and loud music.  Several months ago I wrote this article about stuff to do at open skate.  I wrote it because it annoys me that so many derby people go to open skate 'to work on stuff' but actually use it as a social hour.  I personally would rather socialize over a beer.  It costs about as much and tastes better.
I often use open skate time to work on transitions.  Every time I see a bout it's the standout thing that I think could use more work.  I can do 500 transitions in 45 minutes.  It's boring but effective.
Tonight I spent a lot of time sideways skating.   I started to teach myself sideways skating mostly because it seemed kind of impossible but I kept working on it because it's been SO useful in terms of increasing my comfort level on transitions and moving forward while keeping my body sideways.  You have to be able to do that, even if both skates aren't on the ground.  I should add the caveat here that while it was moderately useful to learn on my strong side, the true value here was learning to do it on my weak side.
Also, after watching this video I MUST learn some jam skating:

I chose one thing that I really want to do from it.  The woman is constantly spinning in circles balancing on just her back wheels in a Mohawk.  So tonight I asked a jam skater how.  He recommended I start by skating forward on just my back wheels.  Then he thought I should balance myself up against a wall and practice sliding my heels in and out balancing on just the back wheels as a strength exercise.  After trying that once or twice it because clear that should I succeed in ever actually doing this, I will have the most epic ass on the planet.
<originally posted on 2.13.12>