Most of you have heard me lovingly refer to my new home of Minot, ND as “Practically Canada.” It is. The boarder is only a stone’s throw away. People here are silly-friendly and sometimes they drag their “oos” and “ohs.”
But that’s beside the point right now. Today I’m just itching to tell you about how I, Amy Allender, became Practically Canadian last night.
Derek and I….went curling!
Yes, Minot has a curling club. And, let me tell you…it’s awesome. {More awesome than it looks on TV.}
Let me describe the set up for you. Our friend Zach was cool enough to introduce us to the curling club and let us crash their exhibition practice.
I’ll be honest. We drove around for a while looking for the right place. First we actually missed the mark and ended up at a gymnastics studio. Lots of little girls in leotards. Hmmm…I was looking for teenage boys and middle aged men dressed in sweatpants and ski caps. Guess we were in the wrong place.
A second try landed us in the right place: The commercial building at the fair grounds, if you’ll believe it. Zach told us it would be cold…but this was really insane. They literally froze the floor. You could see your breath. Like a walk in freezer, but more fun. {Freezers aren’t that much fun. All the food is frozen solid and there isn’t enough room to play games.}
We were coached on by a curling pro. Do you believe that? I didn’t. Yeah, he’s so legit. He’s been to nationals. {Whatever that means.} And his son competed on the junior Olympic team. Legit. I don’t think he understood at first just how little we knew about the sport. As in “Umm…okay, so what is the point of the game?”
I’ll be honest, I change the channel when I see curling in the winter Olympics. I was clueless.
Here’s the brief on how the game works. Players take turns shoving heavy granite rocks down the ice toward a bulls eye. The rocks closest to the center score. You wear one slippery shoe to help you glide across the ice. Your teammates can sweet these little brooms in front of your rock to melt the ice a bit to help it keep moving further. Get it?
Now, here is the best part of the night. Kebly the curling pro said this to Derek:
“So…Amy must be pretty athletic. Did she play lots of sports in school?”
Yep. He said that. About me…B-Team Allender. Yes, I played lots of sports…poorly. Anything that required skill or coordination was pretty much out of the question. On the tennis team I got “most improved” {we all know that’s what they give the worst player. I went from awful to…pretty bad.} I was so bad I wasn’t even a real part of JV. I played exhibition. So if the opposing team had extra players that didn’t match up with ours, they could hit around with me. Pretty bad, right?
Anyway. The curling pro said this could be my sport. He says I’m a natural.
{Leave it to me to brag about something this weird and awkward.}
It was amazing. We are joining the curling club. I’m practically Canadian. Done-dundee.
Amy
