roller derby

Yes folks, we witnessed the awesomeness of roller derby while we lived in Providence. How could we turn down an opportunity to watch women pummelling each other right here in our own, new town of Davis??

For those of you not fortunate enough to already have experienced the subculture of roller derby, the following is for you, paraphrased (plagiarized) from Wikipedia:

Roller derbies take place on a circuit track. The two teams playing send five players each onto the track--three blockers (defense), one pivot (last line of defense) and jammer (scorer). Helmet covers are used to display the players' positions: a striped cover is used for pivots, a cover with two stars is used for jammers, and no cover is used for blockers.

Pivots/blockers from both teams start the game by forming into a single pack. You can see the two teams' pivots in the below photo. The home team (Sac City Rollers) are in black, the away team (Port City Roller Derby Girls) are in white/green. The pivots are wearing caps on their helmets with a stripe down the center.


In a pack, all players face counterclockwise. The pivots line up next to each other, followed by a layer of four blockers, followed by a layer of two blockers. The two jammers, who are not considered to be part of the pack, are positioned 20 feet behind the pack. The referee signals the start of jam formation by blowing a whistle. During jam formation, the entire pack moves counterclockwise. Jammers remain stationary during jam formation. When the last person in the pack has passed where the front of the pack was initially lined up, the referee blows the whistle again, and play begins in earnest with a jam. A jam is a 2-minute countdown period during which teams attempt to score points. Points can only be scored by the jammers, who, moving counter-clockwise, attempt to pass the pack and lap around as many times as possible. (In the below picture, a jammer from the Sac City Rollers has passed the pack and is trying to lap the jam.)

After passing the pack the first time, jammers earn one point each time they pass an opposing blocker/pivot. During a jam, all pivots/blockers must remain in the pack. If a pivot/blocker falls or otherwise becomes separated from the pack, she is out of play (i.e., cannot block or assist the jammers) until she catches up to the pack. The first jammer to pass all pivots and blockers once the jam begins wins the status of lead jammer for the remainder of the jam. (Below, you can see a teammate helping out a jammer by pulling her forward to pass the pack.)

The lead jammer can decide to end the jam at any time before the 2 minutes are up. She does this by placing her hands on her hips, which signals the referee to officially call off the jam. After a lead jammer has been established, both jammers have the option of passing their positions to their teams' respective pivots (passing the star). This is done by removing the 2-star helmet cover and handing it to the pivot. The pivot then becomes the jammer, and the jammer becomes the pivot for the remainder of the jam. If the original jammer was the lead jammer, the position of lead jammer is not passed on; the position is forfieted for the remainder of the jam. Each game consists of three 20-minute periods. At the end of each jam, players re-form the pack and continue play.

This is where things get hairy: to impede the progress of the opposing team's jammer, players may block using body parts above the hips, excluding forearms, hands, and head. Elbows may be used in blocking, but cannot be swung at other players or used to hook an opponent's arm. (Click here for a video we filmed.) Penalties are given to skaters who block illegally, fight or behave in an unsportsmanlike manner, or otherwise break the rules. Blocking manifests in women being tripped, checked, and thrown out of the way. So far, we haven't seen a woman break a bone, but it's bound to happen. In Providence, the roller derby took place on a concrete track.

Enough rules for everyone?

Bottom line - silly counterculture, entertaining to watch women beat each other, and surely fun to watch male cheerleaders in skirts. There you have it folks. Will Saturday nights ever be the same again?

One hot Saturday...

We are starting to understand the heat here. It is still Spring, but today, the weather hit 90 degrees F; we are quite scared for the Summer.

Today, we decided to bike to the Causeway that drives over the Yolo Bypass Floodway. (According to Wikipedia: "A causeway is a road or railway elevated by a bank, usually across a broad body of water or wetland.") The Causeway is located about 4 miles East of our house, linking Davis and Sacramento. Our destination was the Vic Fazio Yolo Wildlife Area. This Wildlife Area was the largest restoration project west of the Florida Everglades.

A history lesson (and warning) from the Davis Wiki:
The Yolo Causeway was completed in May 1916 and spanning the Yolo Bypass, this stretch of the 1928 Lincoln Highway allows passage during rainy months when swollen creeks and rivers are diverted into the bypass. Should flooding ever result in a massive evacuation from either side of the causeway, be forewarned that Yolo County has a contractor ready to send forklifts to both sides of the causeway to keep traffic flowing. Their sole mission is to lift up any stalled car and drop it off Interstate 80 into the waters below. Before the causeway was constructed and the Yolo Bypass was simply a natural seasonal basin, it was nearly impossible to travel between Sacramento and the Bay Area... crossed by narrow roads that flooded seasonally, travelers generally made the trip on riverboats, until a raised railroad track was built through the Yolo Basin.

We biked 2.5 miles and Andrew's back tire blew. I rode home, got the car, and picked Andrew (and his bike) up before continuing out to the wetland area - so much for our gas-free day. As we arrived, five official-looking men were leaving. We found out that they are with a non-profit education group that runs programs about the ecology of the Yolo Bypass.
One guy helped us to understand the above map. He informed us that hunting season is in January and February. He also told us where the good fishing areas are (Lot F). It was then that Andrew got into the car and returned to our house to retrieve our fishing supplies and licenses. (They will now be permanently stored in the car.)

I started walked through the reserve while Andrew drove home. We were given a birding crib-sheet from the education dude. At first, all I could see were hundreds of American Coots and a few Great Egrets.
The American Coots made me laugh because as I walked down the road, they would get scared and "fly" away. BUT, their flying consisted of a loud and sloppy combination of running on the water and flapping their wings. (Click here to see my video.)

Despite the silly American Coots, the Yolo Bypass Floodway is just gorgeous. One can see the Coastal Range looking West (about 25 miles beyond Davis):
If you look about five miles East, you can see the city of Sacramento:
Andrew returned with the fishing gear, and we drove a few miles deeper (South) into the floodway. We headed out to the good fishing area. There were a bunch of people fishing for a variety of things - one guy had caught two beautiful 2ft carp, another had caught 8 small catfish, etc. The water was quite turbid, so we realized that our lures were not going to do us much good. Andrew tried for a few minutes, but we quickly gave up and walked a few miles along the water.




In the end, we saw over fifteen bird species: American Coots, Great Egrets, Black-necked Stilts, Snowy Egrets, Great Blue Herons, American Avocets, Killdeer, American Bittern, Black-crowned Night Herons, Northern Harrier, Red-winged Blackbirds, Yellow-headed Blackbird, Western Meadowlark, Double-crested Cormorants, Mallards, some kind of swallows, and Cinnamon Teals (male and female in picture above). Not bad for a hot, mid-afternoon walk in the wetlands...

Happy....

World Laboratory Animal Liberation Week!

We have our eyes peeled this week (April 22-28, 2007) for those who celebrate WLALW.

Do YOU know anyone who observes?

an (exciting) update on our apartment

YES! We received them today - our Climbing Lights from Black+Blum, a London design store that we visited a few years back while on vacation.
We can now read while sitting on The Beast.

Many days ago, Rachel requested some demonstration photos of the banana chairs...

MS Walk

Today was the MS walk in Sacramento. There were over a thousand people out. We raised a bunch of money thanks to all of our friends and family who supported the walk. It was quite a terrific time. Here's the cheer of the day (started by a woman with MS from the Met Sacramento): "Give me an M, give me an S, what's that spell? MS!"

The Met Sacramento principal, Beth, and Andrew's fellow advisor and carpooler, Vince:
a Met Sacramento advisor and some students:

the NRA and I... we are like 2...

hi everyone,

in light of the gun issues we've witnessed recently, i decided it was a terrific time to become an NRA member. i thought maybe i could convince you as well?

just kidding, sort of.

i went on the NRA website and signed up for their e-newsletter. it's fascinating! they are quite informative about the debated legislation in your state of residence - they even tell you who to call to convince to vote one way or another. on their website, there is a handy link to simply contact your representatives.

the NRA website is actually very interesting and well-put-together. so no matter how you feel about gun legislation, i strongly recommend signing up to be fully informed of the current gun issues in our states.

happy weekend,
Leigh (and Andrew)


PS. This is a link to our Op-Ed sent to the student-run newspaper at UC Davis, the California Aggie.

ooooh yes... UC Davis IS an Ag. School

UC Davis puts on an event called Picnic Day which draws an average of 50,000 people. We have heard about this day since we first stepped foot in Davis in February. Our understanding is that this is UCD's P.R. day with alumni, parents, and the town. They do a very, very good job of it. Unfortunately, it poured rain today which kept many people away. But, we donned our foul-weather gear and went to campus. This picture shows the newly built Mondavi Center and the soon-to-be-built Food and Wine Center. The wine maker, Mondavi, donated $32M and Budweiser donated $10M to UCD. The Mondavi Center is the local place to see music - so far we have seen Gilberto Gil (Brasil) and the Sowetto Gospel Choir (South Africa). We are not sure what the exact intentions are for the Food and Wine Center, but it sure sounds enticing...

For a long time now, we have desired to milk a cow. Today was our chance. Here was our victim:

Milking was surprisingly easy - pinch with your thumb and forefinger, then squeeze with the middle, ring, and pinky (in this order), and presto - milk is squirted. This cow could not care less that hundreds of people were pulling on its teats attempting to milk it. . .

In addition to mammals, reptiles were exhibited in another building on campus. I was able to play with a cute lizard from Southern Asia. . .

Andrew particularly liked the exhibitions on invertebrates. Here, he is celebrating the entire cockroach species.
Here, we demonstrate the lifecycles of a fly.
A graduate student in entomology here at UCD has become a local celebrity with her maggot art. We have some bigger plans in store for maggot art - stay tuned...

The students provided some invertebrate costumes and we could not resist trying them on. . .
I think that Stef's may be a grasshopper - what am I?! AND, what is Andrew (above)???
We also were enlightened to the UC Davis heroes:
As a finale, we watched the Doxie Durby. Locals bring their Dachshunds which they have been training for the past year to race other weiners across a basketball court. As serious as the owners were, the dogs and the audience were not. Many Dachshunds got out of the chutes and turned around and ran into the audience to meet and greet the audience. Often the dogs just played with the others. And, every once-in-awhile, a Dachshund would run towards its owner across the court. As you can imagine, the audience (about 2000 of us) thought this was hysterical. [Between laughs, we wondered what alternate universe we had entered...]


for video click here

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 1922-2007

Sonoma Valley

Our friends Caitlin and Wes now live in Santa Cruz. We have been meaning to meet up somewhere midway and yesterday we were supposed to meet them in Sonoma Valley. Unfortunately, they weren't feeling well, so Andrew, Stef (from Liverpool and the lab) and I drove to the Valley with very little idea of what to do there. First we stopped at the visitor's center and found out that on Easter Sunday a limited number of vineyards were open to visitors - eight of about a hundred. The visitor's center had a lovely garden in which we spent a few minutes; there was a tree dropping cotton-like seeds all around us, resembling snow.


We then went to the Sonoma town square. Apparently the mission, Mission San Francisco Solano, located in the town square, is the furthest north that the Mexican missions reached. It was founded in 1823. The settlers in this mission monitored the activities of the Russians at their settlement of Fort Ross. "The Fathers at this mission grew grapes and produced sacramental wine from the first vineyard in the Sonoma Valley."

Us at the first vineyard we visited...the Larson Family Vineyard:
Their grape vines were just getting going for the season:


We also visited an olive oil and a chocolate producer:
Finally, we went to the Cohn vineyard. We laughed that this vineyard was open on Easter Sunday, but he last laugh was on us. As we walked in the front door, we faced this (gold records and photos of a band). What band?
Well, Cohn was the band manager for the Doobie Brothers!



In all, we visited 4 vineyards, an olive oil producer, and a chocolates producer. We wandered around the Sonoma town square and drove through the hilly countryside. Quite a nice outing indeed.