Tomorrow is Easter, one of the official starts to spring. After six months of winter, we are in desperate need of some real spring. So in honor of spring officially being here I realized that I better post about one of our great winter outings. Did I say spring enough? SPRING!
Bob loves to watch curling. Every 4 years he gets really excited for the Winter Olympics and tapes (or has me find and tape) all the awesome curling action that plays on random channels in the middle of the night. Then we watch them. PS - they are not short.
Bob knows the rules, understands the strategy and gets angry when the network plays commercials and he misses an end or two. The thing is, he has never actually played. The Olympics were over his birthday this year and so I got the idea to google "curling". Turns out there is a curling club, Broomstones, and it is not far from us that was hosting an Olympics open house. Awesome.
I organized a babysitter and signed us up early, good thing because the event quickly sold out. I kept it all a secret until Bob's birthday, he needed a little cheering up and something to look forward to during his long busy season. I also was lucky that I picked the last time slot, which had fewer people and so we got extra ice time.
Stuff I learned about curling:
1. The stones are super heavy (40 lbs). I fell a lot trying to push the stone. That is because they give you one super slippery shoe so you can slide. We had to use a stabilizer so we didn't fall.
2. The lanes are LONG. It takes a lot of power to try to get the stone across the ice. I couldn't even push the stone a fourth of the way.
3. The ice has little beads of water sprayed on it before each game, which makes the ice bumpy. The Broomstones Curling Club was founded from the area country club curling clubs that were pushed out back 40+ years ago. They have a great facility with a viewing box, lounge and bar with TVs showing all the awesome curling action.
4. Sweeping is super hard. Like very very exhausting. It is hard to keep ahead of the stone. It is hard to push down and sweep at the same time. The "broom" doesn't have bristles just some mesh over something like styrofoam. Does sweeping really help? They say it does yet the Canadian Olympic team had some physicists do research and the theories to why it works didn't hold up. But they say it works so, we sweep. I was bad at that too.
5. Finally, I learned that the ice is cold (duh) and you should wear shoes with thick soles while curling. Gloves are also a plus.
All in all, we had a good time. We had to wait a little at the beginning but it was nice to have the extra time on the ice. Will we be curling in the future? Possibly. Bob is already looking forward to 2018.
Why does Bob like curling so much? I think it may be because curling was first introduced to the Olympics while we were in college and I'm sure the sport seemed awesome in the middle of the night. Also, it is a sport where it seems anyone can play and be in the Olympics. Especially from America. We aren't as organized as a lot of the other countries and any of the club members from the clubs around the country have the potential. I will say to anyone who thinks curling isn't a "sport" that I'd love to see you out on the ice. It isn't as easy as it looks!
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