Oh no, not another...

Yep, it's true.

I've joined the esteemed ranks of TownieBastard and will now annoy you readers with incessant chatter about CURLING.

Except I'm less likely to actually bore you with the details of the curling matches... and much more likely to bore you with the details of ORGANIZING a curling club. Because that's what I've somehow been hoodwinked into.

Organizing Rankin Inlet's Co-Ed Curling Club.

I'm still not sure exactly how the hell that happened... except that the boy and Good Friend Sarah decided to take on the project, but both of them travel extensively for work... and both turned to me to help 'administer' things.

Now I'm certainly more involved than I wanted to be, but there's nothing I can do about that now. It's like no matter how hard I try to stay away from this sport, I get sucked into it. My younger sister is some kind of freaky curling guru... at one point she was known as "the next Suzanne Gaudet" and the hours upon hours of curling I've watched/ignored when I lived at home is remarkable...

Anyways. So my inaugural curling post (fittingly I write it on the night of our first curling match) is about all the fun little hiccups we've had over the past 3 months, when we first put this plan in gear.

This whole thing started back in February of last year. It was Good Friend Porter's birthday, and somehow curling came up. The boy, ever-enthusiastic after a couple brewskis, got everyone excited about a curling league in the fall. Then we all forgot about it for 6 months.

At the end of the summer, him and Good Friend Sarah began talking about it again. They talked to our local rec co-ordinator, he set the date of November 25th for our first night. He suggested it, we thought it sounded great. The rec staff would handle the ice and equipment all we had to do was organize the teams and show up.

Riiight. 

Now at times, I suffer from this little character flaw called "eternal optimism."  As you know, this isn't always the case. Sometimes I'm a little blue-er than others. But I believed this would happen, no biggie.

We held a 'registration bonanza' at the arena at the beginning of November, had a bunch of signups... strangely enough getting PLAYERS has been the least of our problems. We are constantly getting new teams/individuals sign up, and we're thinking we need to add a second night so that everyone can play once a week.

So we're all hyped up. We're ready to play. November 25th rolls around.

The ice isn't ready.

So we hold a little meeting. A meet-and-greet (that later turned into an impromptu AGM - we found out that there was a good chunk of change left over from the last curling club, but we had to hold and AGM to get it signed over. So we did! It lasted less than 5 minutes).

And "the executive" set up a schedule. We would curl next week, we'd only have one sheet of ice, so we'd have to do it on Tuesday AND Thursday. We were set.

By now you know that when I write something like that, disaster is always around the corner. And this is no exception.

Tuesday comes. It's 3:30. I get a call from Good Friend Paul, who also works at the hamlet.

"Bad news, the ice isn't ready"

This is about when I thought I was going to lose it. The rec coordinator PICKED THE DATE for when we could start playing. And TWO WEEKS past that date and it wasn't ready.

The reason? "We were using it as storage, and it's taken awhile to get that stuff out"

Riiiiight.

I'm sure he's a busy guy, but seriously... 3 months notice is MORE than enough to make a couple sheets of ice.

But as one of the team members said, and I agree...

"If it's not Hockey, it doesn't matter"

So we emergency-cancel the games. Tell people to stand by for more info on Thursday's matches.

The yesterday I get an email from Good Friend Paul. Title: new rocks. I excitedly double-click, thinking maybe there's some good news inside. Baaaad optimistic Jackie.

Turns out we have 26 rocks. Not 32. Twenty-freaking-six. Now where six curling rocks up and walk off to, I have no sweet clue. But it's going to be a problem.

You see, even if we were a little curling club in the south... rocks (that is EACH INDIVIDUAL ROCK) are expensive. Like REALLY expensive. Like 500 bucks for a cheap rock. 1500 for the higher-end ones. But being as we are a little curling club from the NORTH we also have to SHIP the heavy buggers up here, which will be no cheap venture.*

So that's going to be a problem. But I figure we'll suck enough that we'll hog a couple or over-shoot a couple each round... so it won't be too bad.

Then this morning The Boy and I went to the rink to check out the ice that we *hoped* would be ready for this evening's first match, at 6. And I tell you, the ice looked like SHIT.

I was standing behind the glass, looking at the ice, and I could see not only a GIANT CRACK down the blue-ring of the house closest to me AND serious variations in elevation across the ice. But in talking to the two guys hanging around there, they said they were going to scrape and pebble the ice so it'd be ready by tonite.

I went by this afternoon at 3pm  and lo and behold....

IT WAS READY! And it looks beautiful!

So tonite we curl. Tonite I throw my first rock, after avoiding doing so for ... 10 (?Okay, maybe 8) years.

I can't believe it, but I'm actually excited.




*We're currently working on finding out if there is anyone with extra rocks up here, and maybe negotiate some sort of deal with one of the airlines...