Sat, Mar 15 2008 - Curling (NOT a Hairstyling event) (View Original Event Details)
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As a pampered princess from Los Angeles, I was delighted to find out that in my new country of residence, Canadians love to curl and that 1.2 of the 1.5 million curlers in the world are found in Canada. In fact, Canada is home to some of the finest curlers of the world and regularly brings home the gold medal. This was the country for me.
Or so I thought.
Apparently, curling is a sport and not a hairstyling technique here. I was crushed when I found out. I had imagined a country that was fully dedicated to the importance of good grooming and imagined Brad Gushue doing his magic with a hot iron. I wept copious tears.
In order to prevent this misunderstanding from ever happening again, I decided to organize a curling event (and very clearly stated in the the event title that it had nothing to do with hairstyling). Curling is a very old sport. All I knew about it was that you chucked rocks onto the ice and yelled, "Hurry hard!" on top of your lungs, while other people frantically swept the ice in front of the rock that you just chucked. At the event, this is essentially what happened.
Even though curling is an important part of Candian culture (along with peameal bacon, butter tarts, poutine, and tuques) many have not ever tried curling before, so this event was eagerly anticipated by several TOCers. On the morning of the event, I changed into the most Canadian outfit I owned - jeans and a white t-shirt that had a red Canadian maple leaf on it with "Eh?" printed inside the red maple leaf in white block letters. I didn't wear a tuque because finally the weather was too warm for it. I was sure that in this outfit, I would pass for a native Canadian.
The Leaside Curling Club provided us with everything that we needed -- brooms, sliders, rocks, and sheets of ice and most importantly, Dorothy who gave us a lesson on how to curl. Emily was a curler and helped out a lot.
Even though the sheets of ice are sprayed with droplets of water to create little bumps, we were still standing and walking on ice, so lots of spills took place. Luckily no one got seriously injured, although I'm sure we all came home with bruises.
There were 16 of us, so we divided into 4 teams of 4 people and played a few games of curling. A game takes about 15 minutes to finish. Curling takes a considerable amount of strategy -- knowing when to sweep and when not to, how hard, where to place your rocks, etc. Dorothy talked about the rules of the game, showed us how to curl our rock (we don't pick it up and hurl it across the ice like a discus), and other fine points of the game, like when we yell, "Hurry hard!" She told us that we could also yell, "Stop!", which I tried later on in the game, but that's a command that the rocks don't like to obey. After a while, she left us to our own devices and we played quite a few games.
For about an hour and half, TOCers were frantically sweeping with the sort of vim and vigor that has never been seen when we were younger and our mothers told us to clean our rooms. I provided plenty of encouragement by yelling, "Hurry hard!" regardless of who was on the ice. It was Roland's first time out with us and we were delighted with his company. Vicki enthusiastically threw herself into curling. Heather showed significant improvement within a single game. Leo turned out to a pretty good curler and some of his shots impressed everyone who saw. Shannon and JP were often sweeping very hard for their team. Diane was really terrific about helping members during the games.
Curling turned out to be terrific fun. TOC events are in general quite fun and everyone has a good time, but this event turned out to be even more fun than anyone had imagined. Because most of us were beginners, we weren't worried about trying to look good. We just got into the game and into the spirit. No matter how hard you fell, you got up laughing even harder. Curling is simple enough that you can pick up how to play the game in a few minutes, but difficult enough that to play well, you need to play lots more of it. For a couple hours, we all threw rocks, brushed frantically, and yelled to our hearts' content. And we all became a little more Canadian that day.
Afterwards, we relaxed in the lounge at the curling club and enjoyed some beer. About half of us decided to continue the evening with dinner at Piatti in the Yonge & Eglinton area. Dinner there was quite fun as it has a Brazilian style service where the chef creates different dishes and servers wander around offering you food. You can eat as much as you want for a fixed price ($25 for dinner, $16 for lunch). The best part was dessert, as they offered a warm pineapple covered with cinnamon and brown sugar. Alison and I have already planned to incorporate this into future camping trips.
A good time was had by all.
Youtube videos:
Diane throws
Matt slides
Alison throws
Have some photos from this event that you'd like to share in our photo album? Please forward them to Erik Sonstenes at photos@torontooutdoorclub.com. Please note that we prefer to receive the photos in approximately 640x480 or 750x500 pixels - do NOT send original high-res photos. If you have a LOT of photos, please submit up to twenty of your favorites (only) for a day event, or up to forty of your favourites for a multi-day event. Thank you.