The Hizzle of T-Fizzle

Again, sorry for the lack of pics, but I wisely opted to leave my phone on solid ground again.

This week’s lesson began roughly as it did last week, just at a faster pace.  We reviewed first sliding with a broom laying flat on the ice and no stone, then began throwing stones short distances and then longer distances and finally we broke into our 3-person teams for throwing/sweeping drills.

The reason leaving my phone in the warm room was a wise decision is because the possibility of falling became a reality this week!  My kayaking climbing certainly came in handy.  Surfing on a kayak is an interesting business.  The boat is constantly moving underneath you in a variety of ways.  After doing it awhile, you develop a keen sense of balance.  Your upper body learns to keep doing what it needs to do, even when your lower body does something unexpected.  This has always been handy in climbing for hanging on when the feet slip off and swing wildly, and tonight it came in handy on the ice.

In the first incident, I was delivering a stone, and as I was sliding out of the hack, something happened and my legs went out from under me, causing me to slide on my hip (instead of my foot).  There wasn’t even any conscious thought behind it - as soon as my hip hit the ice, I instinctively just popped myself back onto my sliding foot and finished the delivery.  The line was still relatively accurate, but the fall put added drag on the rock.

Second incident was a sweeping incident.  When sweeping, I have found that the gripper is SO grippy, that it makes the ”normal” gripper foot feel slippery.  As it happens, when I’m sweeping, I can dig the gripper in almost as if I was on dry ground, but when I dig my “normal” gripper foot into the ice with the same force, it slips.  It the heat of hard sweeping, this catches me by surprise occasionally.  My feet flew right out from under me.  But my upper body, still “aware” of what it should be doing was able to steer the broom clear of the rock as I feel and I was able to spring back to my feet and continue sweeping.  Thanks, kayaking!

After doing the 3-man drills, we were finally given our “wings,” so to speak.  It was time to actually “play a game” of curling (play a game in quotes because we only had time to play a single end).  We broke into teams of 4 (our team obviously consisting of X, Mike, Mary and me), chose positions (Mary - lead, X - second, me - third/vice skip, Mike - skip) and began playing.  Heavy shots plagued us pretty much the entire game.  One or two shots did not go far enough, but most cleared the house.  Mary did get one shot to stick, just biting the 12-foot ring.  Mike had a miraculous take-out shot.  He had previously thrown a very weak draw that did not even make it past the hog line, so my “mentor” and I were a bit sceptical about getting enough weight behind the stone.  But he delivered.  The shot was off the broom and also turning the wrong direction, but the combination managed to blow the opposing rock right out of the house.  Very exciting.  Unfortunately, they had the “hammer” and were able to knock Mike’s stone out to pick up a point.

At some point, I may have quipped that curling is one of precious few Olympic sports in which overweight 30-somethings could become competitive.  I don’t exactly rescind this statement, as I intend to become competitive in it, and I am overweight and almost a 30-something (I will be by the time the next Olympics roll around).  But the game is quite physical when it comes to sweeping.  In our faux game, the non-skips had to sweep 6 stones, which is avtually a lot of work.  I don’t think I’ll be sore the way I’ll be after a long climbing or paddling session, but I think I am definitely going to be feeling it in the morning.

Next week, it looks like we’ll be continuing “playing.”  We’ll probably get through 4 or 5 ends.  It’s going to be a pretty good workout!

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 12th, 2006 at 9:55 pm and is filed under Curling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.