![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blame canada
May. 22nd, 2011 02:37 amSo my MSFT team decided to go curling for their morale event, and the contract peons (meaning me and Chris) were invited (our Recruiter/contact dude paid our share). I have seen Men With Brooms, and watched Curling when it was on the Olympics last year, but I never really understood the scoring system till now. It's apparently like shuffleboard, except on ice. With big heavy stones. I joked last year that curling was invented by drunken Scottish janitors in the winter. "These big boulders, brooms, ice pond... HEY!!" Technically shuffleboard existed before Curling, but I can't see people playing shuffleboard and saying, "you know what would make this better?... instead of little disks, let's use big fuckin' rocks on ice! and brooms to make 'em go faster!" Whereas I can see curling then people saying "This game would be better indoors..."
So, anyway, there's a curling club in Shoreline, and Thursday it was closed for our use. My boss fretted initially that not many people would come - "if ten come I'll be happy" - but it ended up being 18-19 folk. So we watched the instructional video, had a drink (open bar, although as I hadn't eaten I didn't bother taking part), and suited up. I had stupidly worn socks with sandals- well, honestly I wasn't sure if our contractor guy had paid, and it was 60F, so I dressed more for that. Don't ever wear open-top shoes when playing on ice, guys. At least I had a wool shirt to pull on, and arm warmers. I couldn't find my jogging pants that morning, so I just wore tights under shorts, also a bad idea. They said to wear loose clothing and my jeans are all tight at the moment, sigh.
The important bit of the "uniform" were the rubber grips that fit over the bottom of shoes. You could even wear loafers with those, although you wouldn't want to. They basically allow you to walk/run on ice like it's a sidewalk. Pretty cool. We divided into three groups of five or six for tutoring. So, to throw a stone, they give you a little piece of shoe-shaped teflon (with a cloth top for your foot to go on) so you can slide. We practiced throwing stones for a while, then practiced sweeping. Our tutor admitted that the sweeping thing doesn't honestly do a heck of a lot, but if you get close enough to the stone and push really hard and fast it can help (TWSS). (And it was soooo cold until we swept for three rounds in a row. I felt sorry for our skip*. Or I would have, if he wasn't the only person to have brought gloves.)
Our section started playing a game, three white kids and a Hawaiian against an Indian and three tiny Chinese. (They were all speaking to each other, is how I know. My "allooksame-dar" isn't THAT good.) They kicked our ass. We were good at knocking the stones out, but not so good at getting them to stay in the circle. (The scoring works based on how many stones you get closest to the middle. If blue is closest, blue scores and counts one rock, going out to two rocks etc till you hit a red rock.) We only played one round before the food came, then went back till round 8, just before five, at which point we were like "phew!" Sweeping that way is hard work. Chris and I agreed the next day that we were sore in places that we didn't even know we had muscles, but so very fun.
*skip: the guy who calls the throws, usually the 4th guy to throw until it's his turn, when the 3rd guy goes.
So, anyway, there's a curling club in Shoreline, and Thursday it was closed for our use. My boss fretted initially that not many people would come - "if ten come I'll be happy" - but it ended up being 18-19 folk. So we watched the instructional video, had a drink (open bar, although as I hadn't eaten I didn't bother taking part), and suited up. I had stupidly worn socks with sandals- well, honestly I wasn't sure if our contractor guy had paid, and it was 60F, so I dressed more for that. Don't ever wear open-top shoes when playing on ice, guys. At least I had a wool shirt to pull on, and arm warmers. I couldn't find my jogging pants that morning, so I just wore tights under shorts, also a bad idea. They said to wear loose clothing and my jeans are all tight at the moment, sigh.
The important bit of the "uniform" were the rubber grips that fit over the bottom of shoes. You could even wear loafers with those, although you wouldn't want to. They basically allow you to walk/run on ice like it's a sidewalk. Pretty cool. We divided into three groups of five or six for tutoring. So, to throw a stone, they give you a little piece of shoe-shaped teflon (with a cloth top for your foot to go on) so you can slide. We practiced throwing stones for a while, then practiced sweeping. Our tutor admitted that the sweeping thing doesn't honestly do a heck of a lot, but if you get close enough to the stone and push really hard and fast it can help (TWSS). (And it was soooo cold until we swept for three rounds in a row. I felt sorry for our skip*. Or I would have, if he wasn't the only person to have brought gloves.)
Our section started playing a game, three white kids and a Hawaiian against an Indian and three tiny Chinese. (They were all speaking to each other, is how I know. My "allooksame-dar" isn't THAT good.) They kicked our ass. We were good at knocking the stones out, but not so good at getting them to stay in the circle. (The scoring works based on how many stones you get closest to the middle. If blue is closest, blue scores and counts one rock, going out to two rocks etc till you hit a red rock.) We only played one round before the food came, then went back till round 8, just before five, at which point we were like "phew!" Sweeping that way is hard work. Chris and I agreed the next day that we were sore in places that we didn't even know we had muscles, but so very fun.
*skip: the guy who calls the throws, usually the 4th guy to throw until it's his turn, when the 3rd guy goes.
