Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Traumas Adventures in Curling

To those who have wondered: No, I have not repressed the curling lesson as some sort of life-altering trauma and thus not blogged about it. I just got busy. Really busy.

Okay, I spent part of two days at a curling tournament. But that's busy, isn't it?

To be honest, the Saturday Learn to Curl session, while embarrassing, was not traumatic. At least not to me. I think the glazed look on Michael's face at the bonspiel (which is curler for "tournament") on Saturday morning was probably a vestige of trying to teach me on the previous Saturday. The poor man (dubbed, by me, Michael of the Superhuman Patience) may never recover.

As a recap, I spent Saturday, October 14 flailing around an ice surface trying desperately to prove the people who named it Learn to Curl liars. I did many things that day. I'm not sure how much of it was learning ... or curling.

To be fair, all of the instructors did a very good job.

The day started with the obligatory "watch as we put TEFLON on one foot and try desperately not to laugh at you" segment. While I have not attended the Instructor Clinics offered by the Club (through the auspices of The United State Curling Association, I am convinced that the first test you must pass before they let you torment instruct beginning curlers is not to laugh as people stand on one leg while the other performs some complicated sliding maneuver that has nothing to do with curling (or grace, or balance, or anything other than providing entertainment to those who have managed, somehow, to conquer this utter cancellation of friction).

My great fear at this point was that the Learn to Curl would turn out to be nothing more than an extended version of the Open House session from two days before.

Hah! If only.

On the good side, they did give a great explanation on how to make the rock curl (in case your curiosity is getting the better of you, you point the handle at the rock to either "2" or "10" o'clock and move it to noon in a gradual motion as you release it -- there, don't you feel better knowing that?). This made me happy.

Happy. Remember happy. Happy is a good place. Remember getting the rock to curl "just so."

Then we started the whole delivery process.

As a refresher, the delivery is done by placing your one stable (aka, foot without TEFLON) into a rubber starting block type of device and pushing off from there, while your other foot (the one with TEFLON on the bottom) slides down the ice. Oh, and you're crouching at this point. It should look like this. *sigh* Mine doesn't. Mine doesn't even look close. I have no balance over my right foot (I'm a leftie, so reverse the image I just showed you -- the right foot is the slippy one for me). I don't have a lot of balance over my right foot while crouching just on bare floor and with no TEFLON. You can imagine just how little ice and TEFLON improve matters.

During the open house, we got to practice the push off using two stones and without letting go.

Remember when I said the Learn to Curl was different than the Open House? We didn't do the two stones bit. We didn't even do the one stone and the broom without letting go of the rock.

We just did the "see that bull's eye 90 feet from here? do what Michael just did and aim the stone for those rings" bit instead.

Yeah. It worked just about as well as you think it did. In fact, it probably failed even more spectacularly than your well-developed imagination can picture.

The fall I took on Thursday an act of grace that would have earned 6.0s from the judges (except the Russian judge, who would have given me a 4.3) compared to what I did on Saturday. I teetered to the left. I teetered to the right. I managed to get my left foot in front of me. (Go back and read my description of what the delivery is. If you can figure out how I got my left leg in front of me, please comment immediately because I still don't know.)

A few throws in, a number of people (including me) wondered aloud and in Michael's general direction about the efficacy of my using a stabilizer. It helps. Perhaps it helps more than sponge helps in drying up Niagara Falls. Perhaps not.

No, to be honest, through the constant encouragement of Michael, Steph and Jeff (who were a couple and every bit as cute as the rhyming names suggest) and Pat (a high schooler with more patience than someone of his tender years should have), I persevered. I even curled in the short game at the end.

You know, I could leave it there and let you think that I actually made a contribution to the team by placing some rocks in useful positions. My contribution to the team was giving the guys sweeping practice (not that sweeping would help ... sweeping -- by the best in the business -- only adds five to ten feet). They swear I was getting better. Jeff even swore that I got one stone past West Germany. (It's complicated ... there are a number of flags along one wall of the club. West Germany's flag is a bit more than halfway down the ice.)

Oh, I swept well. Well, if the rock wasn't travelling too fast. If the rock was travelling too fast, I put safety first (which is what they teach you) and waved bye-bye.

So, have I given up? No.

I attended the bonspiel last weekend as a spectator (but then I knew I could watch curling ... I've been doing that for quite awhile now). But I'm going back. Tomorrow. To play in an actual game.

Oh, there is a lesson beforehand, too. Something tells me Michael will be as far as he possibly can be from the club tomorrow night. I don't blame him.

No comments: