Day 13 - Cdn Women's Day!!!

As usual you can click on this link to see all of the Blog posts or read below. Enjoy!
http://bit.ly/bMw0UN
Wow, what a great day for our Canadian Women with 1 Gold, 2 silver and a bronze. And not to be outdone, Team Canada man handled the Russians.
Tomorrow will be equally exciting with Women's hockey and Women's figure skating.
I watched the hockey game with my cousin Chris and we were lucky enough to get good seats in a bar. After the game we stayed to see the bobsleigh finals. What a victory for Canada 1 and Canada 2!!
A good friend from Ausland has been a little perplexed by curling, so I thought I would give her the simple elements of the game, in 10,000 words or less.
1) You need to go to the north of Scotland and harvest 16 blocks of granite that can then be ground down into large 40lb 'checkers'. Don't forget that the bottom of the rock rides on a ring about 1/4" wide and the diameter of a salad plate. Finish it off with a handle on top. You need 8 yellow handles and 8 red handles.
2). Find a smooth sheet of ice that is almost as long as a hockey rink and about 14' wide. Draw some circles at both ends. The large ring is 12' in diameter and the inner ring is 4' There is a large dot in the centre of the rings and it is called the button. Each ring and the button are 1 foot wide. Finally, to make the rocks glide properly, you will need to sprinkle the ice with little droplets of water. So essentially the ring on the bottom of the rock will barely touch the ice, which is why it glides so far.
3). You then need 7 friends to play with you. 4 on each team
4). Don't forget brooms. Each player will need one. They are special brooms made of a synthetic material. The purpose of the broom is two-fold; i) to clear any dust away from the gliding rock, as hitting this could cause the rock to veer drastically off course and ii) sweeping can also speed up the rock to keep it from curling too much or to increase how far it will glide. A good sweeping team can drag a rock 30' farther than without any sweeping.
5). For shoes you will need one sole that is sticky and the other is smooth and slippery so that you can glide on that foot
6). The teams alternate throwing rocks and each member of the team throws two rocks for a total of 8 rocks each end. An end is a mini-game and there are 10 ends in a game
7). When the rocks are thrown you can turn the handle clockwise or counter clockwise. If you throw the rock hard it will stay straight and not curl, but if you throw it slow it may curl 3 or 4 feet.
8). Scoring. The team that has its rock closest to the centre of the button scores one point. If Team 1 has their rock closest to the button and Team 2 has a rock second closest then Team 1 only scores 1 point regardless of how many rocks the team has in the rings. The max any team can score in one end is 8 points, but this is very rare.
9). The player that throws first is called the 'Lead'; the next player is called the 'Second' the third player is called the 'Third' or 'Vice' and the last player is the captain and team strategist and is called the 'Skip'
10) If the Skip wants you to sweep he yells yes, hurry or harder if he thinks the throw is short. If he wants no sweeping they may yell 'No' or 'Never'
11) A rock left in front of the rings is called a guard. This is used to protect a scoring rock sitting within the rings. The rings may also be called the house.
12) If the Skip wants an opposing rock removed he will call for a hard throw, which is called a takeout. If he wants a rock to stop in the house, he wants light weight. This is called a draw.
13) The team that throws last in the end has the advantage and this called having the hammer
14) If you win the end, the other team gets the hammer in the next end
15) The game is very strategic and the skip must be able to read the ice to see how fast it is and how much the rocks will typically curl.
16) The team with the most points at the end of 10 ends wins and must buy a round of drinks for the losing team. If the losers are good sports they buy the second round.
17) Finally, when watching curling on TV I suggest that a little wine pairing will ease the confusion and make the game more interesting. When a yellow rock is thrown, I suggest that you pair with a deep yellow Chardonnay and when a red rock is thrown you would pair with a nice Aussie Shiraz. By the end of the game it won't matter what the rules are or how the game is played.
That is 'Curling' in 10,000 words or less and hopefully we will see Canada win both the Men's and Women's events.

sent from my BlackBerry device
Best regards,

Greg
M 416-347-1545