Men (and women) With Brooms

That's the name of a Canadian curling movie. Last week I got to try out this Canadian pastime for myself. It was a lot of fun, frozen bowling basically. You play on a 'pebbled' ice surface (made by finely spraying water over the ice). One of your shoes gets duct tape around it (the 'slipper') and the other is left with its normal sole (the 'gripper'). You don't really have any real grip with running shoes on ice though, so I nearly hit the ice a couple of times. I wore my South Africa beanie to make sure everyone knew I was an amateur.

There I am lining up the shot, then releasing the stone (with fine form) about three meters short of the line. On TV (and I actually have watched a fair amount of curling on TV) they release it just before the line and then continue to slide on halfway down the sheet. But I just couldn't quite get the slide right (I don't think duct tape is the ideal thing for your 'slipper'). On my very first throw/slide I landed the stone almost right on the button. It was downhill from there. Yet despite only having a three man team, which meant I had to throw three stones instead of the usual two, we still won 4 out of 3 one end games including a victory over Joanne's team (Peter's wife who actually curls regularly).

I will defintely try to do more curling this winter. Most of my housemates are keen and I'm sure I can rally up a few more troops. So come next summer I should be an expert.

In the spirit of the Jamaican bob sleigh team, anyone interested in starting a South African curling team for the 2010 Winter Olympics? If you had paid close attention to the photos above you would have noticed that one of the sponsors of the St. john's Curling Club is Amarula liquer! So South African sponsorship is already on the table...