curling

once upon a time, there was a girl who moved from the south to the north.
in the south, she had lots of fun playing her rec league sports...so, when she got invited to play a rec league sport in the north she thought, "sure! it'll be fun!"

well, let's just say this hasn't been the sport of her dreams by any stretch of the imagination. poor girl didn't even know what it was before she moved up to canada! i would describe it as shuffle board on ice. it's called curling. basically, you slide big rocks back and forth down the ice, trying to get your rock closer than their rocks to the middle. i don't actually know the legit name for the rocks, i just know they're big and heavy.

i won't be real technical about the details of the sport because they are still pretty blurry in my mind, but each team has 4 players. 1 person is at the far end directing the person who's turn it is to slide the rock, and the other 2 players use brooms to sweep the ice, directing the rock. Each team takes turns sliding 6 rocks down the ice.

i have mentioned the ice part, right? because this sport is absolutely frigid!!!! it's not like you're ice skating around and constantly moving. no. you do a lot of standing in this game...kinda like shuffle board :) AND you are standing in your tennis shoes, on ice... believe me, it doesn't take long for every appendage in your body to go numb.
has anyone guessed why it has not won a place in my heart?

o yes, and for any of you are as oblivious about curling as i was, curling is called curling because depending on which direction you spin your rock when you slide it, it will "curl" that direction once it begins to slow down

anyways, enough words, here are some pics and a video :)

dave and i w/ our brooms :)

getting ready to "throw" my rock

for any of you who do know something about curling, you can probably tell from this picture that i have absolutely no idea what i'm doing...really bad technique

i think it's supposed to look more like this...none of this falling down on your knee business. and i tend to shove my rock across the ice. from what i can tell from watching the professionals, you are supossed to let your body's momentum push the rock forward and then you just kind of let go of it. o well :)
(pic taken from: http://www.amba.ca/Default.aspx?tabid=267)

to wrap it all up here, i have a little video of us curling :) the other team absolutely kicked our butt!
in this video, the opposing team throws first, and then we throw.
at this point in time our team only had one sweeper (dave) because the other sweeper (myself) was videoing and watching from inside while trying to dethaw :)



o yes, and curling is an olympic sport...crazy, huh? who knew?