Very interesting sport. I was in Lake Placid for the day and a friend of mine asked me if I’d like as well, he was invited by a friend of his to go learn the basics of the game.
So I went along… And believe me, it’s more fun than it looks (IT HAS TO BE).
I had a good time (I wasn’t very god at it, but I DIDN’T FALL ON MY ASS 
)
Anyway… My truly MPSIMS post for a while.
That is so neat! Does your arm get sore? How do you keep from sliding all over the place and falling on your ass?
There’s a curling rink here in Seattle. They host “preview” events from time to time where you get to throw a few rocks for five bucks. My wife and I really want to try it.
I know the rocks are heavy, but how heavy, in practical terms? Like, oof, holy crap that’s a big rock, or, oof, okay, I can do this?
good for you. trying new things and being able to laugh at yourself, keeps life exciting.
it’s quite the stagedy sport.
That sounds great! I’d love to take up curling, but I just don’t live in the right place for it. Oddly enough, there’s a rink (sheet?) in Schenectady, NY, just a short drive from where I used to live.
Well they are heavy, but it doesn’t matter. The ones that I used were 35-40 pounds, but they stayed on the ice. You never had to pick them up. They slide with very little energy added to them.
You could kick one lightly or push it along with your foot with little effort at all, so the weight didn’t matter. And when you are doing the curling pushing part (whatever they call it) you just grab the handle, wind back and let it go. To get it moving it takes a second but not really hard.
My arm got a little sore, but I was playing for about an hour.
And the ice, if you stay kinda low to the ground (low center of gravity) it isn’t hard at all to keep from falling (just when you let it go you gotta make sure your body is kinda leaned the right way so you don’t fall over, and even if you did it would only be about a foot, you get the hang of it quick).
Lucky.
I learned how to curl last year (the Seattle curling club gave 4 lessons at a reasonable price, post Olympics) and while I only fell on my ass once - I destroyed my left knee. (Do not try and slide on your non-slidy foot. It just doesn’t work. Sadly, it took falling on the same knee hard, three times before I finally got that.)
Still, any sport where the rules dictate that it end in alcohol is probably a good thing. And despite the injury, it was fun.
And the rocks are really heavy, I’m not sure if I could pick one up, but as you’re never ever ever supposed to pick them up, it isn’t an issue.
I used to curl in highschool, and can confirm that it’s a LOT more fun than it looks. It lost some mystique with the demise of the corn broom, however. Part of the appeal for me was the wappata-wappata noise of the brooms, and that is gone now 
For the record, curling rocks weigh about 42 pounds. The vast majority are quarried from granite mines in Scotland and Wales which have the rare granite needed to provide proper weight and strength.
Curling is a great sport, not merely for the drinking. It’s one of the rare sports where it is relatively easy to find a league at your competitive level. Also, it can be played as a mixed gender sport, so it’s a way of spending time with your special someone or meeting someone.
Oh, and there’s almost always drinking involved.
Although I’m taking a year off, last season I was playing in a league with a former world champion. In how many sports can Joe Average player say, “Yeah, so we beat the world champ last night. It was great. And he had to but the first round of drinks! Ha Ha!”
I assume if you were in Lake Placid you are and American, clayton_e. That being the case, you are realistically not too far off from taking a run at the national championship, considering how few Americans play the game. Congrats to you for finding a fun way to survive winter!
P.S. There’s lots of drinking.
Lucky you! I was just mesmerized by curling in the last Olympics. I’m not a sports afficianado, but curling got me all whupped up! Perhaps it stirred some ancient Scots genetic disposition in hurling a heavy object over the barren ice toward a distant destination. The yelling, “Yarrrrgggghhh”, as the disc was hurled, was what really endeared me to it. And, the sweepy broom noise. What a great sport! It’s the only reason I’d want to move up North.
They don’t do the broom thing anymore? But that was the most fun part to watch!
I think they still use brooms, they’re just a different kind (the guy who was teaching had a thick accent… I didn’t quite catch it all…)
They haven’t used corn brooms for 20 years or more. They had long bristles that are made out of cornstalks (I think). You had to use some serious elbow grease to get it to slap the ice properly on the forward and back strokes. Wappata-wappata-wappata.
The brushes they use now just scrub the ice. Can’t be as much fun, but I suppose they work better.
I heard that the corn brooms tend to leak straws on the ice, disrupting the pristine surface. Man, I wish I lived near a curling joint…
A word on the brooms:
Corn brooms are very rare in the game these days for three reasons: 1) they’re hard to use, both technically and physically; 2) they wear out rapidly due to the corn stalks breaking during sweeping; 3) they’re expensive to replace. The big advantage to using them these days is the fact that they leave a lot of chaff on the ice – unless you know how to deal with the chaff and adjust your strategy, you’re in big trouble.
The broom of choice these days is a push broom, either with natural bristles (either horse or hog) or a synthetic cover. The brushes are easier to use, don’t require the massive triceps needed to work a corn broom, and you only need to buy a new one once every three or more years. A good analogy between corn brooms and push brooms is to compare them to the difference between wood baseball bats and aluminum bats. Anyone who has used an aluminum bat won’t want to handicap himself with a wood bat, nor would a typical curler want to handicap his game by using a corn broom (generally speaking – there are exceptions).
Although some do think that the absence of corn brooms has taken away some of the “romance” of the game, what with the cool noise and the cool-looking visual of two guys pounding away like mad, I think the advantages of the push broom far outweigh any losses.
I used to live in Lewiston MI (no not Maine), we had a curling club in town. Pretty cool for a town of about 2400! My neighbor bugged and begged and bothered me for about 2 months to join the league. I finally relented and MAN WAS IT FUN. I have since moved and find myself missing it every winter. We had 20 year olds through 70+ year olds. Males and females. And the drinking afterwards was an added bonus. During the off season we would get together the same core group and play poker and drink.
It’s kinda funny to hear people talking about wishing they were near a curling rink - in the Canadian prairies, every single town has a curling rink (and I suspect Eastern Canada is not much different). And these aren’t ramshackle little sheets, either - there’s lots of great ice to be found in rural Canada. Typical Canadian prairie town - gas station, corner store, grain elevator, and world-class sheets of curling ice.