Curling Night In America

It's weird -- I certainly can't call myself a fan in the sense that I know the players or even the rules for that matter. But if I'm flipping through the channels and there's a match on, I can't turn away -- especially if it's the ladies.

I'm not a fan but I find it oddly mesmerizing. I remember sitting at my local a few years back on a Saturday afternoon. It was during some major tournament and a medal round featuring the Canadian women's rink was on the television. We weren't paying attention, but then my neighbour, Kathy, piped up. "Is it me, or did curling just get hot?" We all looked up and, sure enough, it was hot. (Well, hotter.) The women on the team were wearing form-fitted clothing and professional hair and make-up. Then came the commercial break. Lo and behold, there were the members of the team again, energetically pitching various household products. I was working at business magazine at the time and figured the national curling association was clearly doing something to up its revenue and branding game.

When I got back to work on Monday, I pitched the observation as a potential story for the magazine. We started working on it, but our efforts to gather information/interviews hit several brick walls. No one would talk to us. Eventually, the story fell by the wayside as other priorities took over our attention. Shame. A couple of years later, I saw some television critics cover the core idea of our story, but not as well as we would have done it had we been more dogged. Of course, we had no to blame but ourselves.

Before I recently retired, I spent a little over 3 years as a Zamboni driver/ice rink tech.
I had to set a few curling courses in one of our rinks, and was able to try it out a few times......not my thing, but it was fun to watch in person.

I fell down a lot.