Saturday 16th: the Hitditch Cup

Via Skype, we had known that the timing of our visit to Seattle was around a roller derby event known as the Hitditch Cup. We progressively learned or discovered that this is a fundraising party night of the Rat City Rollergirls and is a Harry Potter themed occasion. Derby runs on pseudonym and word play, apart from shoving, and Hitditch, it emerged, is derived from Quidditch, which is a game from Harry Potter. This learning increased my knowledge of Pottery to an infinite degree. From that infinite degree I see no great damage to my Harry Potter virgin status and from the infinite no call to learn more.

But it was a lot of innocent fun and really a great pleasure to see people having such fun.

At the middle of the evening there was a Kidditch match, which seems to pitch wizards and witches into battle.

Otherwise the evening saw the whole Rat City crowd given an outing after selected for teams in three Potterine school houses. And required to do odd things or do dressups by the casting of spells paid for in fundraising. These are photos by Debra Carlsen (dizruptive photography), one of the Rat City photographers.

in which the head referee is obliged to become a jammer and breaks though the blockers very well

in which for once the head referee (son-in-law) and our daughter find themselves together in the melee

In which the head referee explains the technical boundaries
after a spell has been cast (by donation of money) requiring that the blockers only block by tickling

The obligation to be so dressed fell to several, in this case this jammer threw the blockers aside with ease.
Less fortunate was the jammer required to dress thus AND go backwards AND dance

a measure of fun, our 63 lines up to be a jammer

It's good to see such happy. (From here on back to my photos.)

Tuesday Night: Rat City Rollergirls practice night

A little movie, one minute 49 seconds, to introduce the gym routine, the rules and the underlying secret of refereeing Roller Derby, at least as now understood by me.

We had a nice night out with Liz and Mike, in a world where they are known as Betsy Nails and Mike Hammer. Practice night, Rat City Rollergirls.

As everywhere else hereabouts, we were made welcome with warm smiles.

Tuesday night: Roller Derby, Rat City practice

I've never understood how busy people maintain diaries and to blog another item for Tuesday, possible briefly here only because jet lag has laggardly arrived and I'm doing this at 4.30am Thursday..well, for now it has to be brief.

We went in the evening to the practice evening of Rat City where Mikey was head umpire for the first set and Liz did robust gym work. I refer, more correctly, to Mike Hammer and Betsy Nails, as they are pseudonymously known in the roller derby world.

actually when he was head referee he was in the centre offering poor photo opportunity;
in the second set he was the member of the refereeing team working from the outside,
much more impressive action for the camera.
We have some film, but not ready yet!