What's this all aboot?

Let's go curling!
or What to do in Windsor, Ontario year round

This week Eric got a phone call one of the few people we actually know out here in snowy-even-in-springtime Michigan, inviting us out for the weekend. Ana is one of Eric's friends from college who just happens to be living out here, about an hour away. Usually when we get together, it is your standard dinner and drinks fare, but she had something else in mind. Curling. Yeah, I said curling.

It turns out that there is some radical underground curling movement going on that I have been sadly left out of. Ana's company sponsors a group of young professionals and they host little outings; this week's outing was to Roseland Golf and Curling Club, for a rousing bout of bocci on ice. Well, not quite bocci, but that's the best comparison I can come up with. You know by now that I am not exactly an athlete, nor is my darling husband, but the beer was free so we were all about it. We got a quick lesson from the most limber kid I've ever seen, and then we curled for almost two hours. Here are a few things I learned, for those of you who want to try:

- Curling isn't only for retired people. While the elders were there in force, there was also a big group of young people hanging out and getting hammered, which I'm not sure is a great idea when you are sliding around on ice.

- You must wear good shoes. Since I'm not about to spring for a pair of professional curling shoes, and neither are you, you need to wear a pair of shoes with super sticky rubber soles. You need one foot to grip the ice, the other gets wrapped in packing tape to create a glider. If you can't grip, you're going to fall on your face.

- You are going to fall on your face. Unless you have perfect balance or luck, which I apparently have, since I miraculously didn't fall once. So proud! I saw many people fall, however, including Eric at least 3 times. The winner of the evening was this poor kid Tim, who literally scissor kicked both legs up into the air before landing sprawled out his belly. I'm sure it left a mark.

- You are going to suck. For at least a while anyway. You'd think a sport that is played by old folks would be easy, but it is way harder than it looks. We sucked something awful for at least an hour. Then we started to get the hang of it. Don't get me wrong, we still sucked, but at least we were getting it.

In the end our team won by a slim margin, and I only bruised my right knee a little. It was a pretty good thigh workout, and lo-and-behold, it was pretty damn fun. We're thinking of getting some other friends together to go again, and maybe we'll improve our skills a bit. At least it's an alternative to bowling!