Good Curling?

We here at 42pounds have been off the grid for a bit.  Some illnesses, injuries, and a move from one end of Halifax to the other on the regularly scheduled curling day has forced us to neglect our regularly scheduled posts.

Our regularly scheduled curling times haven’t been neglected, though. At the end of Week 7 in Learn to Curl at the Mayflower, Team42 is taking it all in, coming out of the hack, getting good lines, hurrying hard, and placing it on the button.  Rarely do we ever hog the rock or burn the stone.  Praise Howard.

This afternoon at the Mayflower, our team was separated into two as the instructors wanted to “shake things up” for the afternoon.  We were cool with that, so I found myself skipping one team, with JohnnyG skipping the other.  The Pineapples was recruited into Team Awesome Alpha by JohnnyG, so I was forced to work with some subsitutes for Team Awesome Beta.  Lucky for me, these substitues were of a Wicked Awesome Calibre, and Beta defeated Alpha.  I could only imagine how we might have reversed the earth’s axis had we have played as a group tonight, because we were all very much on our game.

Something happened in the middle of things that made me wonder if I committed a curling faux-pas, though.   In the second end, my team had the hammer.  With a wee bit of grace under pressure and a whole lotta luck, I managed to curl the shot-rock through a fair number of guards and other debris to knock away JohnnyG’s rock that had been sitting on the button.  This delicate manouvre landed my team 4 points in the end, which was very exciting.  Awesome!  That’s right, Awesome!  The thing is, after curling that last rock, I had run down to the other end of the rink to see how it would all play out.  Seeing the 4 points come down, I yelled a “yes!” and “awesome!” out-loud and high-fived one of my sweepers.  Who couldn’t, really?  Fortune had granted Team Awesome Beta a favour, and we were more than pleased it run with it.

So, what’s the call on this?  Was it out of line to show so much cheer on the ice?  On the one hand it seems to go against the general “good curling” sentiment that goes about rinks.  but on the other hand, it is a game, and games are meant to be won.  and winning makes people happy.  perhaps this is why winners buy losers a round after the fact?  Johnny G, Team Awesome Beta may owe you a round.

week 2 – on the nose

curling is a competitive sport that requires everyone to be friendly to one another. it is also the kind of sport that requires its participants to buy one another drinks. it’s in this regard the best of both worlds. there are no calls that send people to a penalty box for two minutes. but there are calls which will cause a double-knockout in the eighth end, which will in turn cause a round of doubles in the pub after the fact. i’m embellishing that. it’s only second the week so i still don’t have a clue what i’m talking about. but i can at least pick up on some of the finer points of the culture.

take into consideration the fact that this week our team was inadvertently split up (as would happen, since there are five of us) in the first round of competitive play. i had to face off against the dreaded johnnyg, omar lopez montegengro, princess lapin, and the pineapples. on my side were three other curlers who were new to the game, but oblivious to our own curling acumen. while their skills were more than sufficient, they weren’t good enough to let us top the other foursome. And frankly, my ability to invoke the power of various Howards can take a rink only so far. at any rate, the teams wished each other “good curling”, and then we scored a point in the first end, and then watched omar lopez and company absolutely destroy us thereafter. but it was all in good fun, so apparently we all came out winners, because that’s what curling is all about: camaraderie. curling is all about camaraderie, and it also being destroyed on the ice but being man-enough to not complain about it others. it is gentlemanliness, honour, machismo and bravado all spun up into the wool that your curling tuque is made of.

interestingly, we all got to play on the winning team. princess lapin was sadly attacked on the ice by a jittery horse, so my team helped to sweep when the other team curled. this made us all feel a little tired (and perhaps threw us off our game – i would go so far as to suggest that p.lapin’s leaving the game actually put our team at a competitive disadvantage. had that horse not kicked, we might have won). this made us all winners in a weird way, even if four of the eight winners remained losers through and through. but at least we all curled well because we all wished one another good curling at the start of things.

next week, in the third session, we might actually take up the difficult task of having a drink inbetween shots. stay tuned.

get swept up in the fun

johnnyg is from manitoba, which is next door to curling’s second home, saskatchewan. roll on, saskatchewan, roll on.

manitoba is a pretty kicking place, in no small part to this proximity to the grand SK. what it also has going for it is a little something we all know as “production value.” witness the “production value” in action, in this curling promotional commercial from the 1980s.

sadly, as far as we know, none of johnnyg’s relatives were involved in the making of this commercial. not even any of his distant relations that link him to BOTH kevin martin and randy ferbey.

(that’s why johnnyg never goes to Edmonton – he doesn’t know which side of the family to piss off by snubbing the other at thanksgiving.)

week 1 – grippers and sliders and sweaters

grippers and sliders and sweaters, friends.

we walked into the mayflower curling club, not quite knowing what to expect. we knew we’d find panes of glass to look down on four or six sheets of ice. and we knew that on those sheets we’d find some bulls eyes. we also knew we’d find some empties lying around, and sure enough, on a table, were a couple bottles of keith’s and oland’s. i expected to see more oland’s since the mayflower is just down the from the oland’s brewery, and though it’s all the same in the end, there’s something to be said about community, beer, and branding. but there, in the midst of the empties, were nearly twenty other new haligonian curlers ready to hit the ice on behalf of their new tribe. i wasn’t expecting to see almost two dozen novices, initiates young and old, prepared to lay it all down for the mayflower. we were filled with pride and a certain amount of chutzpah. after being lost in the wilderness, we were all led to the promised land.

we went through some perfunctory welcomes and warnings – it’s fun here, but be careful that you don’t slip on the ice, because it will hurt both you and the ice. we were led through some basic calisthenics by some older guys whose beer-bellies were larger than my inflated head. but they were nice fellows all the same, and i think they could still easily kick me in the kneecaps if i acted up, so i stayed quiet.

we hit the ice. some of us had sweats on, some of us had jeans. some of us had polyester on our backs, while others had wool. sadly, no one had any fancy curling sweaters. this was a disappointment. i didn’t think we’d really get to curl this first walk out on the ice, but i did expect to see more club colours out there. curling sweaters are pretty damn neat. imagine if you were Archie from Archie Comics, except that Archie is Canadian, likes to slide around on the ice, and it’s 2008. that’s a curling sweater. these things are as ugly as they are beautiful. wide-necked cardigans with just enough space for a crest from your local club or from the local championship your team had won. all i wanted in the end was the sweater. i don’t need the gripper to keep me up on one side and the slider to push me down on the other. throw away the broom – push or corn, i don’t care – just give me a sweater.

curling sweaters are best when found in duluth

we did get to do some curling. our intrepid coach, Stewart Cameron, who is as old and crotchety as he is funny and warm, spoke to us about safety on the ice and taught us the basic mechanics of the game through long narrative yarns. we learned what a hack was, why a stone curls, the difference between an in-turn and an out-turn, and how to score the real-proper way. we even got to throw some stones and push some brooms. but no sweaters. i’m not disappointed, because we had a blast, but i’m still looking forward to the time i can wear my club colours while i walk down Spring Garden. some one give me a tuque and some polyester knits, because i’m on my way to showing pride for my home and native land on some 140+ feet of pebbled ice. while wearing a sweater.

in-turn draw

42 pounds. that’s how much a curling rock weighs, roughly. a curling rock can weigh anywhere between 40 and 44 pounds, they tell us. but olympic, world championship, and most tournament curling rocks weigh rough about 42 pounds.

actually, such stones weigh about 19.1 kilos. that’s what the internet tells us. but the metric system, as precise as it is, does not offer the same folksy warmth that imperial standards can. hence, this place is called 42 pounds.

after talking about it while watching countless briers, five friends decided to get off their bums, get in the hack, and learn to curl. we are those five friends. we enrolled in the learn-to-curl programme at the mayflower curling club in halifax, nova scotia (home to some awesome curlers). we put on grippers and sliders. and then we threw our rocks. you can read about it here.

this journal records the travails of some (ahem) hack curlers from halifax. we are (in no particular order) mitchellirons, the pineapples, johnnyg, princess lapin, and omar lopez montenegro. some of these names are aliases. some of these names are pseudonyms. some of these names articulate the names actually offered to us at birth.

oh yes, we’re also obsessed* with old-school curling outfits. one day we shall rule the curling world, and the curling world will be envious of our sweaters and tuques.

(* – my friends might actually disagree with me on this matter. but since i’m writing this up, they have no choice but to roll with the punches on this one.)