man i’m hot. spending 2+ hours in a freezer makes even a slightly-warm room feel burning hot.

so! i learned the great awesome sport of CURLING. it’s more fun than you’d expect, and tougher than you’d imagine! i mean, sure it’s an olympic sport, so it MUST be tough. but then again, there are a lot more bizarre “olympic” sports, like aerobatics, bridge, chess, “korfball”, life saving, and orienteering, just to name a few.

i showed up just before 6 pm and was the first one there – i talked with two of the people that were there who were going to lead the training for people who decided to drop in while we waited for more people to show up. eventually six or seven guys all showed up at once and said they wanted to learn, and then johnhr11 showed up just before we all went out on to the ice.

first we had to get a “slider” for our shoe; a slider is like a cross between a flip-flop and a sandal – it’s a piece of teflon that straps to your shoe so that you can glide. if you’re right-handed you put it on your left shoe, and if you’re left-handed you put it on your right shoe. they got each of us a broom to sweep with (it’s actually more similar to a mop than an actual broom with bristles), and demonstrated how to deliver the stones:

each team has 8 stones, and four people: one person directs where to put the stone, two people sweep as it travels down the rink, and one person “throws” the stone. people take turns in each position, however. the person in charge (the “skip”) goes down to the other end of the rink and indicates where the target is, and where to aim… once they’ve shown where they want the stone to end up, they stand off to the side to show where to aim and put an arm out to the left or right to show how they want the stone to spin or “curl”. if they’re facing you and they put an arm out to YOUR right, you start with the stone turned slightly to the right, and vice-versa. they have a thing like a starting-block for runners at each end, and you put your gripping shoe in the starting block, push off with that foot and use the shoe with the slider to glide forwards, turning the stone in the opposite direction that you had it angled.

for example: one person is down at the end of the rink and shows where to aim with the stone and what kind of spin to put on it. i’m right handed, so i have my left foot be the glide foot. i have my right foot in the starting block, and push forward to throw the stone, giving it a slight turn or “curl” as i glide forward with the stone. i let go of the stone and slide forward on my right knee (my right foot is under/behind me and i’m bracing myself with my broom in my left hand for balance), as my left (glide) foot slides along in front of me for more balance. once i let go of the stone the guy at the end of the rink says whether or not the people with the brooms should sweep; sweeping creates friction, heats up the ice and melts it slightly, and the stone sort of hydroplanes across the ice and can get an additional 10-15′ of distance with good sweeping. there’s a bullseye at each end called the… forget all that, just go read the wikipedia article for an explanation. 😛 in any case, the big science behind curling is that sweeping in front of a stone causes friction -> ice melts -> stone hydroplanes -> stone goes 10-15′ further.

after learning how to push out of the hack we got to try delivering a few stones and learned how to sweep. it’s a lot of work to keep up with the stone when it’s trucking down to the end of the ice and not fall over while you’re trying to sweep in front of it and not trip over any other stones in play!

one of the awesome things about this curling club is they’ve got a “suggested donation” beer cooler in the rink, so john treated me to some boozes.

we split up into teams with some of the regular members of the club (john and i were on a team with two members, and there were two other beginners on the opposing team with two other members); overall we did pretty well for our first time (our team won 5-0), but i’d like more practice with throwing the stone… my first few throws were pretty good (i even had a take-out with one of my first throws!), then i kind of did not so well (my throws either went completely past the house or didn’t even cross the hog line and get into play), and then i started to improve a little bit more. now that i actually know what’s going on and have tried it first hand i definitely want to play more. i think once i’ve got the money available i’ll sign up as a beginner since it’s a reduced price.

is it just me, or does this seem like a david letterman late show skit?

anyway, so we won and john and i were surprised at how much fun we were having, and also at how long the game actually took! we started instruction around 6:30, game started around 7:45-8:00, and then we finished with our drinks and were out by 10:30 pm. very exciting! the whole thing is like a cross between shuffleboard, bocce, chess, and connect four.

and tomorrow is friday! even more exciting!! 😀 😀