Curling and other punishments

I'm curling two nights a week right now. Tuesday nights is a men's league and Wednesday night is mixed. I'm using Tuesdays as exercise more than anything else. I'm only shooting lead or second stones, which means I'm doing plenty of running up and down the ice. Wednesday night is when I Skip the team, which means less running around, but tends to spike my blood pressure more.

I like being a Skip, but it does mean I have to behave when I make mistakes. Which is hard because I make mistakes so frequently.

Anyway, I've been doing well so far. The first three games I've been on the winning team. And the scores have been blowouts – 10-1, 11-1 and 14-1. Two of those games I was shooting lead stones. One I was skip. However, it's early in the season, there's a lot of new players and the string of blow-outs won't last forever.

It's also worth mentioning that it hasn't been my skills winning these games. I have, in fact, being playing terrible. What I need is about an hour on the ice just shooting rocks, but I haven't managed to get that so far. Anyway, I knew I was past due for a pounding, and I got it last night. The team I skipped was whipped 11-3.

It was also Cathy's first game curling. I literally had 10 minutes before the game to show her how to sit in the hack, how to push out of the hack and how to stay upright on the ice. Remarkably, she didn't hate it and wants to come back next week. And she also did pretty well. I wasn't asking for skilled shot making, just to get the rock in play. And I'd say about two-thirds of the time she managed to do just that. You can't ask for anything more than that in your first game.

I, on the other hand, stank up the joint. I've been curling on and off for seven years total. I haven't curled that badly since junior high. I made 1.5 shots out of 12, and one of those shots was to throw the rock through the house to blank the end. It was just awful.

On the upside, though, I managed to not freak out, which is an improvement. I love curling like some people love golf – it's fun if you're doing well, but it's a good exercise for your lungs when you're not. There is nothing like cursing and venting when things are going bad.

Anyway, I took a beating. I'll have to try and get some ice time to do better in the future.

I don't know why I thought to write this. I don't think I'll be doing a curling update every week. Perhaps it's the beating I'm taking in the previous thread about kids that reminded me of the beating I took last night. The mind works in odd ways...