Wikipedia says it's "Chess on Ice".
My definition of curling? Extreme lunging on ice using rocks with handles and your grandma's broom. AKA: ridiculous amounts of fun.
Curling has actually only been a medal sport for the Olympics since the '98 games in Nagano (I did a little research), even though it's been around for centuries. So, some people may not really even know what it is. To me, it just reminds me of shuffleboard on ice, which I was pretty convinced was created by drunk Canadians who sat around one day and wanted to play something else besides hockey.
"What do you wanna do today, eh?" "Play hockey, you hoser!" "Again, eh?" "How's aboot we go oot and slide some rocks around." "That's brilliant, eh. I'll grab my broom!"
Turns out, scholars maintain it was developed in medieval Scotland in the mid 1500s. But, it was transferred to Canada by Scottish emigrants a couple hundred years later. So, I was partially correct. :) Drunk Scotsmen/drunk Canadians...same difference!
This new thing came to be due to a Living Social deal I found online a few months ago. They only have the lessons on Friday nights through the beginning of February, so there wasn't much of a window to get it in. Brenda was my partner in crime tonight, so we headed over to Fairview Heights, IL, a short 20 minute drive east of St. Louis. There is an ice arena over there that offers hockey, ice skating and curling lessons, along with open league play for curling.
We got to the complex early and I got to watch longingly at the kids ice skating with ease. I've attempted to ice skate on numerous occasions, but it's usually just the same thing - me shuffling along the outer ring while all my friends skate circles around me. But, that's another story altogether.
Our curling registration girl had given us our tickets for a free beer that came with our lesson, and told us we were not only allowed to take the beers into the rink, but we could also TAKE THE BEER ONTO THE ICE. God, I love this sport already.
Our home for the next hour.
As we waited, more and more people poured in, and I started to wonder about my outfit. I was wearing ski/snow pants, and Brenda found it funny to point out that with my black wool socks and my tennis shoes, I looked a bit like an old man. In my defense, I was told to wear warm clothes with layers, and something that would be comfortable to move in. I had specifically been told not to wear jeans because they would keep me too cold and would be restrictive. But, I felt like a tool walking around in my swishy snow pants and long underwear. Fortunately, more and more people walked in wearing track pants, and I felt better. I felt even better twenty minutes later when we walked into the rink and my legs didn't immediately freeze off.
I'm sexy and I know it...
Once the lesson began, we split up into 4 groups of 7-9 people, with each group being instructed by two people. Our instructors were Gary and Curt. Curt, who rarely spoke until the last half of the lesson and only when spoken to, and Gary, who was absolutely adorable and possibly a closeted Canadian. Curt assured us Gary was from the US, but his frequent use of the word "oot" belied his heritage. Not from the Great White North, eh? I beg to differ.
Gary quickly dove right in to teach us about the stones and how to throw. First, each stone is 42 pounds of granite with a long handle attached to the top. Good thing we were only sliding these dang things and not trying to shot-put them. Gary also explained that on the actual play surface, he put down little beads of water that froze on top of the rink ice. These little beads of ice would help the stone slide further down the sheet (the curling sheet is the term used to reference the sheet of ice where the game is played. I had to look this one up, since I don't remember Gary ever telling us. But, then again, Gary was so darn cute that sometimes I wasn't exactly paying attention to everything he was saying.)
The hack is a small starting block of sorts that the throwers use for delivery. It reminds me of a starting block at track meets. There are two of them, one meant for right-handed throwers and one for lefties. If you're right-handed, you start with your right foot in the hack and crouch down into a squatting position, while holding the stone handle in your right hand. Then, you push forward with your body and bring your left foot in front, while sliding the stone forward with your momentum. Next, you pull your left foot back behind you while simultaneously bringing the stone back towards you and raising your rear end in the air. The final motion comes from pushing off with your right foot in the hack, sliding your left foot forward along with your body and the stone. It sounds more complicated than it is, although doing all of this on the ice ups the difficulty factor a bit.
The hack (in a photo I stole off the web because I forgot to take my own!)
Brenda went first and wasn't too shabby for only seeing a few quick demonstrations. I went next, and for some reason I was determined to do as close to the full-body lunge as humanly possible. It's what the professionals do, and it's what I think of when I envision curling. I actually didn't do that bad and was pretty proud of myself. The remaining 5 people in our group each got their turn, and the older generation found the flexibility a bit tricky. So, Gary showed us that it's not really all about the lunge. Once you push off from the hack, you can bring your knee back into a one-legged kneeling position and do just as good as a full lunge. Well, dangit, that wasn't nearly as cool as what they do on tv!!
Brenda's first attempt.
Not bad!
Gary showed her that it's perfectly acceptable to bring the right leg back into a kneeling position and sit back on that leg (although, again, not as cool as what they do on tv).
Young grasshopper learning mad curling skills. Take note of this kids. This photo will be worth a lot when I turn pro.
Forward! (Look at the synchronization of Gary and I!)
And slide!!!!!
Taking a beer break. Thanks to the other girl on our team for picking the moment where Gary is bent over showing his booty to the camera to take the photo!
At this point, Brenda and I had both only done one take-off, yet we were having the time of our lives. We could tell already that this was going to be a ridiculously fun hour. The next round involved adding a "slide" to our shoes. It was just a flat piece of plastic with some elastic on top to attach to your tennis shoe. But this little piece of plastic was extra special. Essentially it is placed on your non-dominant foot so you can slide further. I call it a death trap. Imagine, if you will, the scene in Christmas Vacation where Clark sprays the stuff on his little sledding disc so he'll go faster down the hill. Yeah, it's kind of like that. It's also absolutely impossible to walk on ice with this, and I don't recommend it unless you're trying to get Gary's sympathy. (I did consider it for a hot second.) So, Gary's suggestion was to do the grandma shuffle while you're wearing it. I even thought that crawling would be an acceptable solution to getting from one place to another with that thing on too. I have still yet to figure out how I did not fall down. Oh, I came close a time or two, but fortunately, I managed to stay upright.
The slide of death!
The slides may have been killer to try to walk in, but man did they make the delivery so much easier. I slid along that ice like it was made of melted butter. Damn, this was getting to be more and more fun! Brenda and I were nailing this delivery stuff. Talk about prodigies in the making! Of course, we still hadn't been taught how to actually release the stone yet, but we know talent when we see it, and we were dripping in talent.
Brenda's first attempt with the slide.
I assure you she is actually still sliding here, and not about to Tebow.
My first attempt with the slide.
It pays to have long legs sometimes. Check out the lunge!
Our first few attempts had been with using two stones, so we could keep our balance and not plunge face first into the ice. However, you're not actually allowed to do that, but you can use a cheater or a broom for balance. The cheater (okay, I don't really remember the name of it, but it kind of looks like cheating to me, so that's what I'm going to call it) is just a little plastic handle that is the same height as the stone and is also legal for game play. You can also use the broom as leverage, but that seemed like a bit too much to try to control. Another few attempts, and we were finally ready to release the stone.
Using the cheater! (And is it just me, or does it look like I'm sliding ridiculously fast? Maybe it's just the blurred background...)
You don't actually push the stone. You just let go of it whenever you're ready. The momentum for the stone comes from the momentum you create coming out of the hack. And we also learned how important it is to keep your weight behind you. You don't exactly want to release the stone and then go skidding face first down the sheet. Adjusting the direction of the stone is done before you even start. If you want the stone to go left, you turn the stone to the left during the initial run-through, and then turn it back to straight as you release it. This is actually quite a bit harder than you'd think, especially when you've not tried it even once. I was focusing all of my attention on the delivery motion that I didn't really care about where the stupid handle of the stone was.
So, Brenda went through her trial and fared well for a beginner. I got out there and did my little warm up to release the stone. And then... Well, then I ran into the stone with my big fat foot and sent it sailing off to the side. Dangit! This was not the effort of a curling prodigy.
Release the stone!
See? I hit my effing foot. I do give props to the guys in our group though. They still swept the sh*t out of that stone!!
Next time up, I focused a bit more and planned on moving my big clodhopper out of the way. And...SUCCESSSSSSS! This attempt was way prettier than the first and even went straight and all the way to the middle of the sheet where Curt was waiting to stop it. Booyah!
Much better!
Brenda and I were getting pretty good at this. The other girl in our group didn't want to use the slides, so she wasn't sliding as much as we were, but she was still getting some good momentum in. You can release the stone at any time, as long as you do so before you pass the hog line. It's basically a red line about 1/3 of the way down the sheet. You can slide past the hog line, but the stone has to be out of your hands by then. I never even came close to the hog line with the stone still in my hands. Gary told us to release it pretty quickly when we had the most momentum or it would kind of fizzle out before making it to the end.
Eventually, the girls wrapped up our delivery practice and switched with the boys to do the sweeping. And, we pretty much sucked at it. So, here's the thing. There are four people on a team. Each person throws a stone, and you just rotate. Two people always sweep, and then the fourth person is known as a Skip. This person just stands at the end and directs the thrower on which direction to throw the stone. Like I said, it's like shuffleboard, so your goal is to get your stone closest to the center ring, and to knock your opponent's stones away. The Skip never sweeps. Ever. When it's his/her turn to throw, the Vice Skip tells the direction, and the other two people sweep. I've decided I want to be the Skip forever. Because I hate sweeping and it's stupid. (It's not really stupid, I just wasn't very good at it.)
Another bootleg photo I "borrowed" from Wikipedia.
Prepping for the stone. (One of the guys didn't release the stone on his attempt, but instead kind of fell onto it. He couldn't extract his body from it, so it just kept sliding down the ice with him on top. I didn't want to laugh because it shouldn't be funny, but I thought to myself, should I sweep just to see if he keeps sliding?! I'm such a terrible person. ;-)
The purpose of sweeping is to reduce the friction so the stone will go further, and to negate any curl in it if you want it to go straighter. So, if your stone is slowing down and you don't want it to, you sweep. If your stone is going too fast and you want to slow it down, you do nothing. The two people who sweep stand on opposite sides and one person is closer to the stone than the other. You essentially have to stay with the stone the entire length of the sheet until it hits its mark. So, you literally have to be ready to run down the ice. I'm not really a fan of this. I had already spent 30 minutes trying not to fall on my ass walking 3 feet with plastic on my foot; now they expected us to RUN down the ice, all while sweeping the ice like we were hopped up on meth. You have got to be kidding me. Brenda and I went first, and it is quite possibly the funniest thing you will see all day. We watched the video back later, and I swear I peed a little, I was laughing so hard.
Enjoy!
Prepping for another sweep.
The hardest part about sweeping was trying to figure out how to move down the ice quickly without tripping, slipping or diving headfirst into Curt's outstretched hands. I never did figure out something that would work.
It is freaking exhausting and hard as hell to stay in front of that little stone without skidding down the ice. If you touch the stone, it's a dead stone and you can't use it for scoring. I also felt ridiculous because Curt kept saying "Sweep harder!" What the?! NOW he decides to start talking? Can you not see that I'm sweeping AS FAST AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE, CURT? We took turns with the other girl, and I just couldn't stop laughing. I kept thinking to myself that it's a Friday night and I'm standing in an ice rink with 30 other people, and I'm sweeping the ice with a tiny broom like it's my job. Utterly ridiculous. :)
We eventually tired out and our hour was quickly coming to an end. Gary took a few minutes to explain the scoring. It's actually pretty easy. Whoever is closest to the inner ring gets a point. If your team has two stones closest to the center before an opponent's, you get 2 points. And so on. It's not like skee ball where you get points for ending up in an outer ring. Therefore, I don't think they're really high-scoring games. Unless one team really sucks and never gets anything close to the inner circle.
Our hour was finally up, and I didn't want to leave. True, my feet were freezing (my legs were not though...snow pants are AWESOME, Brenda!), but we had just started to get the hang of it, and I didn't want it to end. An hour just really isn't enough time to really spend learning this magnificent sport. I do use the term magnificent loosely. We didn't even get to see if our stones would make it to the scoring circle. There was another group down there practicing, so our stones only made it to the half-way line. I wanted to try, just once, to see if I could get a stone to go all the way to the other end on it's own.
Before we parted ways, Gary told us it was customary to walk around and shake everyone's hands and say "Good Curling", like you would say "Good game" in any other sport. Brenda and I immediately decided it should be said with a snobby British accent, and continued to say that for the rest of the night.
I have to say that this was one of the best activities I've done in a long time, and one of the most fun adventures I've done in my whole 3 years of blogging adventures. I can't describe enough how fun it was try this out. Will I do it again? I hope so, but unfortunately, they don't offer these lessons year round. However, I think that if we can find two other willing participants, we can put our bid in to represent Team USA in Russia for the 2014 Olympics. Hey, it could happen!
Don't mess with Brenda! She will sweep your face RIGHT OFF!
We just need two more teammates. Any takers?
But wait, the night doesn't end here. After an hour of throwing stones and ferocious sweeping, we had worked up quite the appetite, so we were looking for a place to grab a bite to eat. Brenda recommended a Thai restaurant close to where we were, but I've never eaten Thai food before. I've been wanting to try it for awhile, but it's not something I want to do with another person who's never tried it. Lucky for me, Brenda is no longer a Thai newbie, and she assured me I'd like it. So, I agreed, and now you get a bonus new thing.
We headed over to Aroy Thai Cuisine in O'Fallon, and it fortunately wasn't full. We started with crab rangoon, which is not at all Thai in origin, but still magnificently delicious. I ended up getting the Pad Garlic dish with chicken. It had carrots, mushrooms and broccoli in a garlic sauce, and was paired with a side of white rice. With Thai food, you apparently tell them how many stars you want, and the higher the star, the spicier the food. I'm getting to be more adventurous with my food choices, but there was no way in hell I was going above one star for my first try. Brenda's dish has a pretty unfortunate name: Pad See-Eew, but it's a noodle dish with broccoli. 2 stars for her! Danger is her middle name.
Crab Rangoon!
Pad Garlic
Gotta love rice!
Sorry, it's blurry, but here is Brenda's Pad See-Eew
My initial reaction to the food was that it was really good. It wasn't until I had finished a full mouthful when I noticed the spice. Fortunately, it wasn't overpowering and it wasn't so bad that I couldn't finish my meal. I did however notice it, and I was glad to have the rice to temper the spice a bit. I'm kind of a weenie when it comes to spicy food, so I was a bit surprised I still ate it. It was pretty tasty, and I pretty much ate all of the chicken and mushrooms off the plate. I even tried Brenda's, and it seemed less spicy than mine did. But, maybe I just couldn't tell at that point because my taste buds had gone on lockdown. It didn't rank up as highly as my Peruvian food from last month, but I liked it enough to want to go back and try new dishes. I consider that a good start!
My initial reaction to the food was that it was really good. It wasn't until I had finished a full mouthful when I noticed the spice. Fortunately, it wasn't overpowering and it wasn't so bad that I couldn't finish my meal. I did however notice it, and I was glad to have the rice to temper the spice a bit. I'm kind of a weenie when it comes to spicy food, so I was a bit surprised I still ate it. It was pretty tasty, and I pretty much ate all of the chicken and mushrooms off the plate. I even tried Brenda's, and it seemed less spicy than mine did. But, maybe I just couldn't tell at that point because my taste buds had gone on lockdown. It didn't rank up as highly as my Peruvian food from last month, but I liked it enough to want to go back and try new dishes. I consider that a good start!
Thanks go to Brenda for being open-minded about curling and trying it out with me, and also getting me to try a new food. Curling was flipping awesome, and I may have to ice down my slip 'n slide sometime this winter and practice in my back yard!
