Last Thursday, I finally got Thursday nights off at the library to join the curling team I'd promised to be a part of a couple of months ago. The Thursday league schedule still referred to us as team Quigley, so in my absence my teammates started calling themselves Team Shattered Dreams. Having never curled before, I got a crash course in curling this weekend during the Frobisher Bay Curling Club Bonspiel - during which I played 4 games, or about 8-9 hours of curling in a 24 hour period.I'm a bit overwhelmed by such an insane amount of curling, but I think I like it. After losing our first game badly, our second game was a tight match which we only lost due to a "burned" rock (one of our players touched a curling stone with their broom, which meant it had to be removed), and a 5mm difference in distance from the centre-circle thing (I'm still working on the lingo). Then, we finally won a game properly, to move us to the Group C final - where we lost, largely due to being kinda tired from so much curling in such a short time. Not that, as a curler with a week's experience, I can really be credited with our team's success - that can mostly go to our skip, Stephanie. But I did go from throwing my rocks wildly and having no idea about judging how fast they were going, to being able to throw them in the vicinity of where I was supposed to. And I think I swept okay, as long as someone told me when to start and stop sweeping.
To top it off, my teammate Curtis along with local blogger Townie Bastard won the grand prize airline tickets.
Stay tuned for more curling adventures.
4 comments:
Glad you had fun at the bonspiel. And if you want a crash course in curling wait until the Furspiel, when you curl four or five 10 end games in about three days.
Oh, and it's not a real bonspiel if you don't wake up the day after it's over and wish you were dead, either from drinking or curling too much.
So I was hurting yesterday, but the plane ticket did ease the pain...
I didn't quite wish I was dead yesterday, but I was useless to do anything other than watch episodes of "House" and "Lost" on DVD.
Why is it called the Furspiel? Is it because of the 3 days growth of beard one likely has at the end of such an unhealthy amount of curling? Or do I have to wear a mink coat on the rink?
No, I think years ago when it first started there was actually fur given away as prizes. This was when southern Canada teams were invited up, would inevitably win all the prizes and then scamp back down south.
Now we just offer up cash - $2,000. Which sounds impressive until you divide it by four and then have to pay off a multi-day bar bill. But it's still fun...
I love this picture! Where and when was it taken?
Post a Comment