Curling

This post has nothing whatsoever to do with my hairstyle.

There are many rumours where the noble (and some would say gerriatric) sport of curling began. The story is that it started in Scotland, where a wife may have slid her husband an oversized Edam cheese along the driveway for a snack, after the kids had swept the ice. Here's a crash course.

(from Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Curling is a team sport with similarities to bowls and bocce, played on a rectangular sheet of carefully prepared ice by two teams of four players each. Teams alternate turns at sliding heavy, polished granite stones down the ice towards the target area called the house. Two sweepers with brooms accompany each rock and use timing equipment and their best judgement along with direction from their other teammates to help direct the stones to their resting place. The complex nature of stone placement and shot selection has led some to refer to curling as "chess on ice". [1]

My new friend Karen invited me to go curling in April with a group that included her brother. Their cousin worked a a local radio station and being a bit of a character, annually or biannually rented out a curling rink and held a mock competition for all his friends and associates. It was a great Saturday afternoon. We walked through Princes Island Park to the Calgary curling club. I was introduced to at least 20 strangers, handed a broom, ordered to wear a 40 year old cardigan and it was time to learn how to curl.

Curling is played in teams of four people. There is the person who "throws" the rock, a polished granite block which is pushed on it's handle and launched across the ice. Then there are another two players who sweep the ice in front of the oncoming rock to either slow down the rock's progress, or direct it's path right or left. This involves a shuffling run on ice. The sweepers must not touch the rock otherwise the rock is out. The last player stands at the other end, watching the rock and calling out instructions to the sweepers.

I get a queer sense of delight to know that curling is a winter Olympic sport and some of the best players are middle-aged to old. Technically you do not have to be fit to play, but it is incredibly skillful and I challenge anyone to line up arthritic, osteoporosis bones on a sheet of ice and tell them to keep ahead a 100 kg sliding block of granite.

Along with it's "vintage" age group comes curling "fashion". Upon arrival at the rink I was introduced to Chaz, my team captain, who was wearing joke bottle-thick glasses, a woolen hat with a pompom on it and a gigantic cardigan with cloth badges sewn on it from his grandfather's many curling wins. Curling is a game most played in the prairie parts of Canada. Basically in farming communities where there were no mountains to climb or ski off, the curling rink is like the community hall, centre of social and sporting activity for the winter. Quite a lot of people I met at the curling were from Saskatchewan, and proud of their grandparents, who were reportedly all outstanding curlers.

My toque (hat) I was wearing with a tassel, was deemed sufficiently quirky, but I was loaned another grandpa cardigan and I joined my team.

I think our team won our little game. It doesn't matter. I managed to stay upright and ahead of our rocks and do a bit of sweeping too. My throws with the rock lacked any technique but got the rocks close enough to the "button" (the bullseye to aim for). I did better than other first-time curlers who had told me their stories. My friend Tauri apparently slipped and split his chin on his rock whilst throwing the first time he went and Laura was complaining of tailbone pain 3 months after a fall on the ice on her first time.

Drinks and sushi to celebrate at the Sakana grill in Chinatown, which serves outstanding butter-soft BC salmon at reasonable prices.

I have been curling. I will be cheering when I see the Canadian team on TV in the Winter Olympics in 2010, bless their grey hairs and amazing balance. To curl at that standard, you must be one with the ice.