#33 - Go Curling

I thought I'd click this one off during my 31 years living in the Midwest, but somehow it happened during my less than 2 years in Southern California... with a fellow Midwesterner Tara Edberg.  Wha...?

Either way, curling is ONLY THE MOST FUN I'VE EVER HAD.

That might be an exaggeration but only a slight one.

I don't have many words for this experience, so here's a quick history.

2010: I was quite obsessed with watching Olympic curling as were many of my friends.  In fact, I think I texted into work, more than once: "Hey, I stayed out too late watching curling at one of the late night bars* so I'll be in later."

*Let's be serious.  It was Bluelight.

2011: My boss Dave Merrill lives on a lake and is a ridiculous person, so he started making his own curling stones from concrete.  This took much longer than anticipated.  I got to throw a couple when he'd finished a few, but there were so many more pieces of the puzzle, like how a hack is actually extremely important and just pushing off teammate's feet is not an effective alternative.

Tara yelling nonsense at her sweepers.

2012: There was a bonspiel planned for the winter but the stupid weather did not cooperate.  In August, I moved to San Diego.

2013: No progress.

Sweepin like a mofo.

2014: Due to this stupid thing called "academic rigor," I was unable to watch curling in the Olympics but... what?  Tara wants to curl too?  And she found a curling club in San Diego?  Sold.  Spots purchased.  (Special thanks to Adam Borson for casually mentioning that it was at 10:30PM not a.m.)  I was wearing red, white, and blue, but Tara said she was sticking with grey and black, so I changed, obviously, so I could surprise her with my team spirit and we could go on to crush the competition united.  We ended up with a fun group of dudes who were equally competitive.  We did some drills.  Fun.  Then we played 4 ends.  Super fun but CRAZY hard.  But we dominated.  Obviously.

Thank you to the San Diego Curling Club!