So, you wanna know how to draw to the top of the four foot in curling? Allow the master to demonstrate:
Or how about an education on how to call the line on a hit and roll, to remove an opponent's stone and slip yours under cover?
There's your curling lessons for the day. Come out to the rink and I'll test you.
I played in a Tier 55 curling bonspiel this past Wednesday in Bowling Green, Ohio. We did all right, coming in third. Bronze medals are worth something, right?
Yet the best and most interesting thing which happened was running into two old friends, completely unexpected. I had met Humphrey about 25 years ago. He curls out of Fairbanks, Alaska but was in Detroit then, and we curled together. You figure afterwards you'll never see the guy again...and there he was in Bowling Green the other day, to play in that tournament. It was great to see him.
Further, it turns out that a guy who I had bowled with literally 45 years ago for three seasons now curls. I hadn't seen Mike in, well, 45 years. And there he was, a curler now.
Small world. It's stuff like Wednesday which can make life good.
Yesterday my team curled in the Senior Bonspiel at the Bowling Green Curling Club in Ohio. It's a good club and a fun place to be. We went 1-1, finishing fifth. I skipped the second game and we got some breaks and the boys played good in front of me. We won it, 10-5.
It's the first game I've played skip in around 7 years. I don't mind saying I was intimidated by the prospect. I threw last rocks almost all the time for around twenty years, but you need a different mentality for being skip. You have to want it, you have to want to throw the rocks which generally mean the most to the outcome of a curling match.
But as I said, we caught a couple breaks and the boys played well in front of me. I did manage to shoot a tight port to punch out a stone to score four. We still had time to play, but I knew with that four spot we would win.
It felt good. Yes, the shot, but being skip again really made my day. I appreciate the guys letting me. I've said many times that curling is a great game, but it's the people who are the best.
Today I take a day off work (I'm the boss; I can do that) to curl in a bonspiel. A bonspiel is an odd way to say tournament, but that's okay. I think you have to be slightly odd to want to curl. Remember before your ire is raised that I'm a curler along with you. Unless, that is, your issue is in fact being associated with Marty in any way, shape, or form, at which point you can...
Okay, what was my original point? Ah, yes. This bonspiel is a Tier 55 tournament, which means you have to be over 55 in order to play. My fake birth certificate attests that I am. Those truly old enough to qualify won't know what hit them.
All right, what was I going for here really? Right: these tournaments are called Tier 55 because they can't be called Senior Bonspiels as they once were because the PC crowd has invaded even curling. We can't upset older curlers with the insult senior, so we alter the title.
The fact is, none of us old duffers care. We just want to curl. We don't care what you think about our age. We pay the fee, we throw stones, we have a few pops afterwards. What harm are you protecting us from? What evil threatens our supposedly fragile psyches?
I'm going curling today with a bunch of old guys who want to curl. If that's good enough for us, the details ain't none of your business. Go save some other frail mind who has no understanding of the real world. We're all right with ourselves. And that's the truth.
I curled yesterday at the Bowling Green Curling Club in Ohio. It was an old guys bonspiel, curling tournament, what they call Tier 55 because you have to be over 55 to play in one. The Metamucil shots were the highlight of the day.
It was fun. We placed third, so we did all right for ourselves. We won pork chops; for reasons I've never known curling loves 'meat spiels' where the common prizes are, well, meats, something which makes the Metamucil shots all the more necessary I suppose.
The friendships are the best thing about curling though. There's never a bad time in a curling club. And that's why.
Yesterday I curled for the first time in almost three years. Nothing meant against my curling brethren, but it's easy to quit curling. Just don't go into a curling club. The game loses its grip on you; if you ain't there, you ain't thinking about it.
So I must say in all honestly that I didn't miss it. Until I walked into the Detroit Curling Club and saw so many old friends. Until I walked out onto the ice and threw my first stone since March 2020. It was a corner guard that my sweepers overswept and drug into the rings, but no matter. I was curling again.
I threw first, then went into the house to call the game. I was well pleased to find all the old strategy still at the front of my mind. I found I could still call line. Don't worry if you have no idea what I mean by any of this curling jargon. Suffice it to say it was like riding a bike, I felt that comfortable.
Now I'm planning to curl more this season, and hang out again with so many old friends. Curling is back in my blood. I'm ready to play again. And I'm not as sore as I thought I would be today, although walking down the steps this morning was excruciating. Curling makes you use leg muscles you don't ordinarily stress. But you pay the price, right?
I'll miss this curling season when it ends in April. But I'm ready for it to end.
It hasn't been a bad season. We've won our share of games and a couple of bonspiels, and I really like playing the at Tier 55 level. The competition is still good, and you see the same guys often enough that even more and farther flung curling friendships grow. Curling is perhaps the best participation sport out there. You can play it for a long time too; I think the closest comparison to that is golf, and I'm getting that bug as well.
But today my right hip hurts; in fact, it burns a little. My left knee isn't liking me very much this morning either, almost like I've overextended it. If that keeps up I'll have to consider a brace of some sort for next season, or wear one of those baseball catcher's wedges to give it more support. One of the guys has been doing that this year and says it helps.
My right shoulder has been stinging so badly that the last couple of months it often wakes me up at night. I'm sure the sweeping motion from curling isn't helping. And all of this is before recurring lower back pain.
I'd say don't get old but there just aren't many other options to aging. So stay active, get exercise, and keep going. Keep the aspirin and the Tylenol handy while you're at it as well.
I play 20 games, and maybe as many as 24, in the next 17 days. My regular Thursday league game is tonight, them I actually play in two bonspiels (for the uninitiated, a bonspiel is a curling tournament) tomorrow: two games at a tier 55 in Chatham, Ontario followed by the first game of the Wild Goose Bonspiel in Kingsville (also in Ontario). Saturday and Sunday take up the rest of the latter tournament.
I have league games Monday and Thursday next week, then I spare in a league March 10. The week after I play Monday and Thursday as usual, with a two game tier 55 on the 15th and another on the 17th. Then I play in a St. Patrick's bonspiel on Saturday the 18th, another two game set.
Once a season I load up on the curling for a brief spell, and it's nice to do it towards the end because I like to play extra games as the season nears its close. I'll still have three weeks after this stretch, and maybe seven if the Detroit Club extends its season as it is considering. But for this minute, as of 6:45 tonight, Curlmageddon 2017 is on.
I'll keep you posted on the results. Including the anticipated aches and pains which I have no doubt I will experience.
Granted, I've curled a bit so far. I've played so-so in three tier 55 spiels (Tier 55 is the polite Canadian way of saying that old guys are curling) and all right in league play. But this week is the real start of my curling season.
We've played since October 24. Yet our season runs until April 7. So do the math: well over half of curling is still ahead of me. The gauntlet begins with a Tier 55 in Sarnia, Ontario on Wednesday, league play Thursday night, and the annual three day men's tournament at the Detroit Curling Club Friday through Sunday followed by the restart of our Monday league, appropriately enough, next Monday.
I currently have seven bonspiels scheduled for the remainder of the season and hope to squeeze in two to four more more. Yeah, I know, I'm holding back. But a guy's gotta attend to life sometimes, and the curling gods don't always work with you (my team is on the waiting list for a few spiels). Still, it's better than football. I'm participating and not merely watching.
And I'm looking forward to it all.
But aye, it appears the curtain was not so ready to drop as I had supposed. I returned for this year, intending it to be a swan song. Instead, I found it a refreshing swig of the curling grog.
Today is my last Tier 55 bonspiel of the season. I'm having a grand time at it, this transference to senior (over age 55) curling. Yet still, I partake of the more regular competitive and league curling which I've enjoyed for so long. I might do both now it seems. The best of all worlds, perhaps.
I've always loved baseball. Part of the reason is that baseball grows with you; the dimensions of the game grow along with you. I see now that in curling the dimensions also grow with you, but in another sense. You simply graduate along with your peers.
So I look forward to today thinking about how great next year will be. What a difference a year makes.
It began with my regular Thursday league game, which we won. On Friday I played in a Tier 55 spiel in Chatham, Ontario. Tier 55 is a kind Canadian term for senior curling, which itself is a PC term for old guys trying to keep curling. Be that as it may, we went 1-1 there and finished third. We won a nice pork loin for each member of the team; it was a meat spiel. For some reason, Canada loves to have curling tournaments where the prizes are meats. I won a three pound bag of breakfast sausages at a meat spiel in Leamington, Ontario, back in January. It's a great deal for us non, non-non, vegans.
Then I curled at Roseland, my home curling club in Windsor, Ontario, on Friday night. We won.
Next came the Wild Goose Bonspiel in Kingsville, Ontario. We played two games on Saturday and two on Sunday, finishing in the C Final. We lost that, but played really well, and maybe should have won that last game. Maybe the first one too, if the skip had have made his shots. Ah well. We were 2-2, and were part of the final group which were led onto the ice by a bagpiper in a grand procession. I tell ya, few things beat being piped onto the ice in a curling bonspiel.
My regular Monday league game came last. The boys in front of me played well and we caught some breaks to end up with a win.
So Curlmageddon 2016 went well for me, thanks to the players around me. 6-3 over nine games, and we really could have easily been 9-0. Honest. But now I'm very tired and gotta get some sleep. By Wednesday I'll be fine.
But it was a great five days on the rink.
Then, I have a game at 11 AM Saturday, again one of two, at the Kingsville, Ontario curling club. This will be followed by at least one game on Sunday at the same club. We may play two on Sunday, if we do well enough. I'll finish the streak with my regular Monday night league game.
So my question is, am I overscheduled, curling wise? But there are only six weeks left in the season.
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