Saturday night's alright for fightin'...

Well, a roller derby bout isn't exactly a fight, but derby's definitely a contact sport...

At some point around the turn of the Millennium, roller derby somehow exchanged the trailer park for a loft in the arts district, and swapped PBR for IPA (unless you're drinking the PBR ironically.)

My hosts here in New Mexico are both heavily involved, Stingray as a referee and LabRat skating for the local Los Alamos team. The latter had its final bout of the season Saturday night, an away game against Albuquerque at Expo New Mexico, which I gather is the state fairgrounds. I have an affinity for fairgrounds, so I tagged along.

The lighting indoors was...let's go with "suboptimal", and I almost went and locked the camera bag in the truck, but I decided to keep it with me rather than risk window breakage on the Nerds' vehicle. Besides, I'd hate for a thief to be embarrassed by trying to pawn the contents of my Lowepro.

I had the D1X and the D200 with me, but the usual zoom lenses I keep on them for travel are painfully slow for the lighting conditions in the exhibit hall, and especially when attempting to do action photography. Oh, well, I dialed up the ISO and opened wide...

Los Alamos was ahead at the half, but they were short a few skaters and the home team blew it wide open in the second period in front of a wildly enthusiastic all-ages home audience that filled the bleachers, the chairs, and the floor in front of my seat. After the buzzer, the fans all crowded the track to exchange high fives with the circling skaters, home team and visitors alike.

After the bout, we repaired to the local Rudy's for some well-earned postgame chow: baby back ribs and prime rib and a Shiner Bock to wash it down.

And then it was time to drive back up to the ranch, listening to Wolf 359 podcasts on the truck's stereo.

It was a pretty good Saturday night, all-in-all, even if it did ensure that I'm going to have to save money for some faster glass.
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