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Posts Tagged ‘fitness’

Dear readers, I have had some interesting moments camping at music festivals, and from each one I have definitely learned a few harsh lessons. So if you are going to a music festival this year, here are a few of my suggestions of what you should do and what you definitely should not do.

Be sure that you obtain a half decent WATERPROOF tent, not a inexpensive tent from off of Ebay or from the supermarket. Dirt cheap tents do possess a tendency not to become waterproof, and your bargain pop up tent you bought from Woolies all these years ago is not going to safeguard you or your belongings in the occasion of a hailstorm. Try and pitch your tent in an location exactly where there seems to become a very good balance of nutters and boring people today. Too lots of boring folks camping about you will have you and your mates asleep by 9pm, too lots of nutters around you may most likely imply no sleep in any way and possibly all you own obtaining trashed in the course of some drunken antics.

Pack as light as you possibly can, it may be a long walk to the campsite from the car, and a hernia won’t increase your enjoyment from the weekend. Take lots of toilet roll, as festival food can go in nicely but can come back out like your grandma’s lumpy gravy.

Although low cost tents aren’t a very good idea, taking a seriously pricey one isn’t perfect either. Specifically in case you are too lazy to pack it away afterwards and wind up leaving it behind. Should you be going to purchase an high priced tent then do not pitch it up next to a busy walk way. You can end up returning to camp and locating an enormous image of some male genitalia drawn more than it in permanent marker.

Never share a tent with a mate who tends to urinate himself when asleep immediately after several drinks. You will wake up pondering there continues to be a leak inside the tent, when genuinely the leak was from your mates pants.Don’t try something hilarious like urinating on a mates tent as a prank, specially if they may be a bit of a prankster themselves, they may be likely to look for revenge in an even worse way.When you insist on showering, don’t use the on camp showers if they are porta-showers, a lot of people use them as posh porta-loos, pondering the shower makes an ideal bidet.

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Roller Derby was a staple of the early television era and was similar in its promotional format to its better known “sports entertainment” cousin, professional wrestling. It was frequently seen in the same bad timeslots on the same low powered UHF TV stations, and it was run by the same loose confederation of Runyanesque promoters and businessmen that characterized the regional territory era of pro wrestling. Unfortunately, roller derby didn’t catch on the way professional wrestling did. There was obviously a serious athletic component to it, but the “angles” and storylines surrounding roller derby made pro wrestling seem like Ibsen by comparison. The sport does have its own history–most know that the LA T-Birds were the perennial champions of’70’s, and Ann Calvello and Ralphie Valladares had been in the sport forever and were considered legends–but it never really stuck in the public consciousness like the pre-Hulk Hogan era of pro wrestling.

When the original purveyors of the sport quit promoting in the early’80s most thought it was dead and gone until a ‘new school’ of roller derby surfaced on cable TV via the A&E reality series Roller Girls. It featured a local, all-girl roller derby league in Austin, Texas and followed the lives of the players on and off the track. While much of the show dwelled in Lifetime style drama about binge drinking and bad relationships, it was the first clue that many had that roller derby had risen from the dead. A sport that had faded into the lowest level of obscurity had been rediscovered and embraced by an eclectic group of young women. They had kept the same essential format, thrown in a healthy dose of burlesque camp and Varga pin-up inspired glamour and made it into their own vibrant subculture. They changed the competitive format and renamed the competitions “bouts” a la MMA or boxing. The result was a compelling mixture of glamour, toughness and athleticism driven by a healthy dose of punk rock “do it yourself” mentality.

Today, the same sort of league featured on “Rollergirls” had become a full blown cultural phenomenon. There are now literally hundreds of local “roller girl” leagues in the US, many under the auspices of a national organization called the Womens Flat Track Derby Association. Las Vegas has the ‘Sin City Roller Girls’, Portland, Oregon the ‘Rose City Rollers” and Seattle the ‘Rat City Rollers’. There are now groups in not only the larger and traditionally “hipper” cities but also smaller flyover country environs such as Birmingham, Alabama and Omaha, Nebraska and all over Canada, Europe and Australia. Most of the local groups similarly play up the campy retro pin-up/hot rod iconography and everyone involved sure looks like they’re having a good time. Between teams there’s a vibe of good natured competitiveness and camaraderie.

The young women in roller derby have taken what was cast off TV time filler and revived it into their own distaff ‘action sport’. The community that has sprung up around it bears a striking resemblance to the skateboarding or snowboarding subculture. There’s one big difference–in contrast to more male dominated action sports the roller derby circa 2009 is just the opposite–a living, breathing matriarchal success story.

The new generation rollergirls also pay homage to their sports’ pioneers much in the same way that skateboarders give props to Duane Peters and Tony Alva. Many of the individual group websites have sections devoted to the history of roller derby, and the late Ann Calvello–regarded as the Queen of the original Roller Derby–is revered as something of a patron saint. The Texas Rollergirl group featured in the A&E series has renamed their championship the Calvello Cup.

Ross Everett is a freelance sports writer and highly respected authority on sports betting odds comparison. He writing has appeared on a variety of sports sites including sports news and sportsbook directory sites. He lives in Southern Nevada with three Jack Russell Terriers and a kangaroo. He is currently working on an autobiography of former interior secretary James Watt.

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