Curling

So on Saturday night Erin, Oliver, and I joined around 25 others to try out curling.  If you don't know, curling is one of those sports that you can watch at the olympics and find yourself saying out loud "I can do this".  It's one of those "sports" that has really risen in popularity the last few winter Olympics and has spawned the rise of curling clubs throughout the US.  Being Italian, I've always considered curling bocce on ice.  If you don't know how to play think of a mixture of shuffleboard and bocce, but on ice and with 42 pound granite rocks that you need to hurtle (I mean place very slowly) within a target around a 100 feet away.  In an attempt to make your rock go straighter or faster two "sweepers" need to do what the title says.  Sweep ahead of the rock in an attempt to make the ice melt fast enough and create a smoother and straighter passage towards the goal.  The women of the group loved to watch the zeal and strength we used in sweeping the ice in front of the rock.  And of course you can bang your rock into the other teams rocks in an attempt to gain more points, just like bocce.

Of course, there is a lot more too the game and a lot of other fancy words to describe each member of the 4-person team.  It is a very gentlemanly game after all.  As such, rather than using a beer to balance your other arm when throwing the rock we used some PVC device (I don't think that the original Scotsman used PVC pipes perhaps they used mangled golf clubs).  And because it's on ice and throwing requires using an extra slippery base for your shoe many people decided that studying the ice was best done as close as possible. 

After spending much too long humiliating ourselves trying to learn all of the proper techniques we gave a game a shot.  Of course, by that time our lesson was fast approaching the end and I was left with the feeling that I might not be able to learn fast enough for Olympic qualifying for the 2010 winter games.  Then again I can always visit Vancouver on my own.

I hope to get back sometime soon to continue developing my skills on the ice.  Learning how to curl allows me to keep the dream of being in the Olympics for many years to come.  How many other sports give you the opportunity to not be past your peak at 25 (archery? fencing? Dana Torres still competed at age 41 but I'm nowhere near a freak of nature and I really don't like to be in the water)

So for now  I'll continue to dream the dream and wait for the day the Olympic curling events are shown on TV at 6 in the morning on some obscure NBC channel.