Equipment improvement

When you start derby, the first thing they teach you to do is fall, and that seems to be what you spend a majority of your time doing.  Ideally, you fall forward, and naturally the toes of your skates take the brunt of the damage as they are constantly hitting the ground at speed.  One knee falls are killer on your toes as you slide, slide, slide on the poor toes of your precious leather skates.

As a result, one gets toe guards.  It's much cheaper to periodically replace these that the whole skate.  My first ones were very basic - a strip of leather that wraps over the toebox and is secured by the laces.

This is somewhat unsatisfactory as they shift around a lot and don't really provide protection when you need it.  Can you call it protection if it fails in the heat of the moment?  I think not.  Look at my poor violated toe:

 So I discovered you can get ones that wrap over the toe box.  I got mine from www.skatesnouts.etsy.com since I think everything should come from Etsy.  Cool jammer stripes in red.

While unscrewing my toestops, it occurred to me that I should check and see how far out they really should be.  I've just been guessing.  Badly, it turns out.  The starting rule seems to be that when your skates are tipped up on the toestop, there shouldn't be more than 4 finger widths between the ground and the back wheel.  Having only two hands I could not get a picture of this, but when you compare the unadjusted one to the adjusted one, you can really see a difference.  Mine were way to far in, making me tip way too far forward to use them to stop:

I sort of thought the leather was a bit thin but when I discovered I pretty much had to turn them inside out to get the toestop tight, I reconsidered.

Now they're on, my skates are smiling and so am I.  One of the grommets popped out as I was lacing back up but that's just cosmetic.  I wonder how long they'll last, though?  I have a pair from another Etsy shop on order - should take a while.  They have red skulls and crossbones on them.  (No, not everything derby has skull and crossbones on it but lots of stuff does - it's a dog-eat-dog sport) I can't wait!  I just hope these ones last until the next ones arrive.  Gotta love cool stuff that wears out regularly :)

New vs old:

I put them on just to tighten the laces and all I want to do is skate.  They're like magical things that turn you into a different, more coordinated, cool, kickass person.  Man, but I love to skate.  It just feels like weeks ago I was stumbling around the house when I tried to skate her but I felt GOOD today.  I can turn, I can stop, I don't trip over the floor joins.  I AM DERBY.

It's really hard to take a picture of your own foot.
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I'm de-douched.  I unfriended him on facebook.  Miko & Barb will be so proud.  Movin' on, my friends.  Movin' on.