Traction Control.

When kids aren't natural talents in their sport, you often see them making up their own fun. They'll dig holes in the outfield with their heels, or try to stuff golf balls into their mouth, or just fiddle around with cheat codes, rather than play team deathmatch.

Likewise, if you needed more proof that I'm not a great curler, look no further than the fact that more than curling itself, I love sliding down the rink. Even though you're just returning to your position for the next rock... for a split second, you're poised on one foot, broom in both hands, your open jacket is billowing in the chilled air, and compared to all the other players, frozen in their concentration, you're flying past them like you're skateboarding through a museum.

That's why I always wear a slider while sweeping, even though it's not really necessary. But I was trying a different style of sweeping today, so I went without a slider, only putting it on to throw my rocks.

This worked fairly well, and it even made me feel a bit more professional. I was enjoying some exceptional accuracy with my take-outs, and the skip started calling for more challenging shots, which I took as a show of confidence. (Or possibly, he had no other choice. Skips aren't usually forthcoming with details like that.) One particular shot in the fifth end was a difficult bump-and-roll: a take-out that would curl around a guard, hit the opponent's rock, and come to rest behind a guard of its own. I crouched down, visualised the shot, and pushed off.

What happened next was something I'd never experienced before. Coming out of the hack, the entire world slowed down. Rather than flying through a museum, I was now one of the museum exhibits, slowly toppling off the pedestal and bumping along the floor as everyone turns in horror. The only thing I could do at normal speed was think - even after my initial shock, I still had all the time in the world to analyse what went wrong, and how I was going to blog about it that evening. As you may have guessed, I forgot to put my slider on.

There was only one direction I was going - straight down, face first into the ice, and all I could do was make sure I didn't take my rock with me. And so, I torqued my elbow and shoved the rock away before I sprawled out on the sheet. (Note for non-curlers: throwing a rock with your arm is generally accepted as the worst way you possibly deliver a rock, save for kicking it. It's about as elegant as signing your name with a metre-long pencil.)

At first, until they saw what had happened, the opposing team was actually impressed with my form - they hadn't often seen someone stay so low to the ground in delivery. Our skip noticed, too - his exact words were, "What sort of a Batman pose is Denton trying over there?" Meanwhile, I stood up, shook the ice off my jacket, and joked about it with the other team. Only once the sweepers came back did I actually look to see what had happened. My take-out curled around a guard, hit the opponent's rock, and came to rest behind a guard of its own. It was a perfect shot.

Naturally, I spent the rest of the game trying even harder to regain that "professional" feeling I'd had earlier, which meant I didn't make a single shot afterwards.

But at least I was flying again.

Don't Stop Believing.

My curling team, the Flaming Disasters, took to the ice this week, and the new (extra-amateur) league is proving to be a good fit for us. Not only do we have a lot more in common with the other teams, but we're now curling in a three-sheet quonset. If it were any more traditional, we'd be curling outdoors with frozen ice cream pails.

Anyway, last night I was calling for them to sweep, and I started singing the guitar solo to "The Final Countdown"... and that sort of set the theme for the evening. When I wanted a take-out, I'd ask for the Eye of the Tiger. And when it was my turn to throw, our vice-skip gestured broadly at the house. "Just put it in here somewhere," she said.

"Is there anywhere you need it?"

"Anywhere you want it!"

"That's the way I want it!"

And that's when our lead broke out into air guitar.

Needless to say, it was our best game so far. After previously losing by scores of 9-1, 11-1, and 9-2, we went into the last end with the score tied at 3-3. Our second suggested, "you know, we could just end the game right now..." we laughed, and the other skip and I headed down to the far end of the ice.

As we stood there, waiting for our teams to get into position, I said, "You know, we don't have to play this final end. A tie wouldn't be bad, would it?"

His eyes got a faraway look... he, too, was a skip by default, also used to guiding his inexperienced team to crushing defeats. "No, it wouldn't... but we can't. We must go on."

I nodded. "Very well. But let it be said, when people took upon this game in days yet to come, two teams stood upon this ice, and they had curled well."

He nodded solemnly. "Trapped in a system beyond their control, forced to play the game."

"But for one moment -- one undeniable moment, they were equals."

And with that, the final end began, and we lost the game 5-3. But we won our self-respect.

Not to mention a new theme song.

Curling Tunnel Syndrome.

The first thing they tell you about curling: Watch your balance. It's easy to fall, it's unprofessional, it's embarrassing, it damages the ice, and it hurts. Now, the Flaming Disasters are the worst team in the league, but at least we're not the most horizontal.

Well, before yesterday, that is.

We were down by five points, but it would have been eight if not for a last-rock miracle in the previous end, so the Flaming Disasters were still in the game, and we were still in good spirits. It was time for me to shoot, so I headed out of the house off to the hack, sliding backwards as I kept discussing strategy with the third...

...and I forgot that our lead had being throwing really short guards that day. Still going backwards, I caught one on my ankle, and over an extended twelve seconds, I managed to trip on it, land on it, fall on my funny bone, get my broom caught underneath my back, and chip a small divot out of the ice. And, naturally, it happened during that one rare moment when every team in the club was perfectly quiet.

I swear, the only thing I didn't do in that fall was set my clothes on fire.

The story doesn't end there. You see, the best part of any fall is the fallout.

Person #1: "Are you okay?"

Me: "Yeah, I'm fine."

Person #2: "Are you okay?"

Me: "Yeah, I'm fine."

Person #3: "Are you okay?"

Me: "Yeah, I'm fine."

Person #1: "Are you sure you're okay?"

Me: "Yeah, I'm fine."

...and so on. After a while, I started saying different things, just to entertain myself.

Person #8: "Are you okay?"

Me: "I can still feel... (pause to count) ...six toes, so that's not too bad."

But then people started worrying, so that had to stop.

On the bright side -- this was the first game in three months where I hadn't worn my kilt.

Could've been worse.


(This week's delay has been brought to you by "Zack & Wiki: The Quest for Barbaros' Treasure." More frequent blogging shall resume shortly.)

I remember a Henderson, and a Hasselbach.

Sometimes, things just work out so well, you'd think they were scripted. I plan to leave the Hat for a weekend vacation, and I decide to leave this afternoon. No particular reason, I just wanted to enjoy the morning. Last night, I get a call from my supervisor, asking me if I'd like free tickets to see this morning's draw of the Continental Cup of Curling.

A girl in my Tae Kwon Do class thought the same thing. She was trying to understand buffers in Grade 12 Chemistry, and then she realised that that guy in her class had a chemistry degree of some sort. Of course he'd remember how to calculate the equivalence point of a titration curve, right?

Right?

Whoops. Time for Denton to take a "refresher" course.

I should really buy some gloves.

It's a bit odd in a hockey game when a player loses a stick, but by the time he scrambles to retrieve it, everyone's forgotten about it.

When a curling broom skitters across the ice, though, it's a bit worse.

But even that isn't too bad -- sweeping takes a lot of quick motions, right? You try to change your grip, and your hand fumbles.

If only I were that lucky. No, this morning I was calling a shot as the skip.

"All right, I want a guard over--" *swoosh* *clatter* *skid* "--over where I'm now pointing."

There's a reason our team's called the Flaming Disasters, you see.

Their team jackets would be legendary.

At the Medicine Hat Curling Club, the bulletin board is adorned with league standings, bonspiel announcements, and the occasional ad for curling equipment. Also found: a recipe for dessert squares that taste "just like Skor Bars". The secret ingredient is Skor-flavoured Chipits(tm).

The important thing here, though, is the absolute sincerity involved. I've grown to like Medicine Hat for its scenic valleys, strategic location, and various amenities, but I think this is the closest I've come in two years to truly feeling that "charm of a smaller community" that is supposed to be such a big draw.

Of course, I don't go to the curling club for baking tips -- I go to the curling club to curl. Our latest game ended in -- what else? A Flaming Disaster! We had fun, though, and almost all our shots went in the right direction. Baby steps, people.

Far more interesting, however, was our opposition. Frank and his teammates were all pushing seventy, but they were just out for a good time like us. In fact, they were the only other winless team in the league, until they beat us 11-4. The truly endearing thing about them, though, wasn't their sportsmanship. It was their... "familiar" team dynamic.

Frank, you see, is your classic Mr. Big and Tall. His wife (the lead) is almost half his size. He dresses in black and grey, and he calls out his commands in a throaty rumble.

The vice-skip, Roger, is a different story. He's a bit smaller, dresses in red, and has a higher-pitched rasping voice. Also, he thinks he should have the skip's job. It was plain to see in how he argued the skip's decision, in how he held his own little meetings with the other team members, and how he'd yell his sweeping commands over the voice of the skip. It wasn't an ego problem, either. For one thing, all vice-skips are a little like that, and for another thing, this vice-skip was actually a pretty good curler.

In other words, it was just like curling with Decepticons. The comparison between Roger and Starscream was obvious to this child of the 80s, which made Frank a perfect analog for Megatron. His diminuitive wife? Laserbeak. The second was a pretty quiet guy, but we'll call him Soundwave, just so that he doesn't feel left out.

So, if we had to lose, I'm glad we lost to a team like that.

And survived.

The Flaming Disasters take to the ice.

Last week was my curling team's fantastic debut. That's "fantastic" in the literal sense, by the way, since losses that huge can't possibly be achieved without the aid of imps and pixies spitting honeydew on our rocks as they wheezed and whizzed down the ice. The opposing team was very good about the whole affair, though. In fact, they were polite enough not to keep score after the first end -- a great kindness which is usually rewarded with a kingship in the fables.

(Stop the presses! I just realised that "fable" is probably the origin of the word "fabulous"! Another victory for linguistics -- but also a crushing defeat, since that actually justifies "blogalicious" as a real word.)

I'll say it again: we are an awful team. We'd actually improve if we just started throwing stones at random. Actually, I take that back, for it isn't true. The reason I know this is because one of our curlers decided to start throwing stones at random while I was still deciding what shot to call, and that didn't work, either. However, no one fell down, and everyone had a great time. A moral victory for the scorecard, if nothing else.

Our second game of the season was this morning, and I was ready for it: I'd checked three curling books out of the library, and although two of them really didn't offer much besides an examination of 18th century Scottish poems about curling, it was still more research than I'd done last week.

We played a jolly group of seniors, they weren't quite as lenient as last week's opponent. To say they blew us out of the water in the last two ends wouldn't be quite right: Far more accurately, they blew us out of the water, and then hit us again before we landed, and again, and again, resulting in a mid-air combo KO. It's not often that curling reminds me of Street Fighter II, but when it does -- it hurts.

But that was just the last two ends. Maybe it was because they were still warming up, but for most of the game, we actually held our own. Guards were placed where necessary. Draw shots cozied up right into the house. Takeouts were landed with a satisfying crack. Not always, but often enough that we began to dream of better games after this one.

And once, just once, your humble skip had the hammer, and managed to curl it right around the guards. That beautiful stone gently bumped out the opponent's rock and came to rest snugly on the button, turning a 3-point loss into a 1-point gain. Not only did the other team offer a polite round of applause, so did the neighbouring rink.

It was truly... blogalicious.

Hurry Hard.

Last night, I attended the curling club's registration night on Wednesday, and tried to sign up our rink: We've decided on being called The Flaming Disasters. This works for two very important reasons: first, it'll be an awesome logo. Second, we can choose disaster-themed nicknames for everyone.

Anyway, they were sorry to say that the fellow in charge of our league wasn't there, so I'd have to contact him by phone at sign up in that manner. We were, however, welcome to the complimentary burger and pop -- although the soft drinks weren't actually available.

On Thursday, I phoned up the league president, who replied, "I really should have gone to the meeting last night."

"Well, we can still arrange this over the phone."

"No, I mean I could have reminded people I'm not the league organiser any more."

"Ah."

He did provide me the number of the current president, however. I gave him a call next.

"Hi, could I enter a team in the civil servant's league?"

"Well, we'll have to figure that out."

I assume that he thinks I'm looking to join a team that's one man short. "Oh, not to worry -- I've got three friends, and we're all willing to join the club."

"Oh. Well, we'll have to figure that out."

I should interject here, and point out that at the registration night, there was a sign on the main table exhorting members to order more snacks from the cafeteria, because every little bit helps the bottom line. Right next to the flyer for purchasing advertising space on the ice. I would have thought that some new blood would be, you know... good news.

"Well, is there a problem?"

"No, don't worry. I'll give you a call Monday and let you know if anyone else signs up."

"But I've already got a team."

"I know. But we can't have an odd number of teams, you know?"

I see. So, they'd rather decline four new (young) members and over a thousand dollars in entry fees (not to mention the extra concession revenue), because otherwise they might have to redo their scheduled rotations.

It's a bit bizarre, but I can't really blame them all that much. This isn't the Tournament of Hearts, this is a community organisation. In other words, they're running this league about as well as I would. Still, I can't wait for the inevitable confusion that erupts when I actually have to pay them. My goal is to keep the circus going for as long as possible before I point out that my supervisor at the Greenhouse is their treasurer.

All I need now is that kilt.

"You know," I said offhandedly, "it would be really neat if we put together a curling team this winter."

"Well, why don't we?", replied MJ.

...

I didn't really expect him to show interest. I thought that it was just another of my "foolish notions", like learning Hindi so that I could get a job as a stereotypical white thug in Bollywood. Or, at best, that it would be one of those "good idea, but don't expect me to help you" sort of deals, like driving a disco bus across Canada, with scheduled stops at every city for people to come and cover it with graffiti.

Buoyed by positive reinforcement, I sent out a few invitations at work. The response was not just positive, but strong: People wanted in! I had my four-person team in a few days, and those who couldn't make it still wanted to come to our practice sessions. Even if they had no interest whatsoever, they were almost always glad to see someone else doing it.

Perhaps I'm jaded, but I thought curling was an easy sport to dismiss nowadays -- people will often snort and deride it as being "bowling on ice" (never seeming to acknowledge that bowling is fun, too). Last year, the greenhouse's annual funspiel was cancelled due to lack of interest. And yet, I had no trouble finding a foursome, ready to commit their Saturday mornings for the next five months. What happened?

I think the main reason is that I'm advertising this as "a team that will lose every single game they play." We'll have to leave our pride in the boot rack for this one, because there's a total of seven months curling experience between all four of us. If that's the case, it makes for an odd inversion: curling's getting more exposure as a serious pasttime, but it only gains acceptance as a frivolous one. Hey, whatever works.

The scary thing, though, is that six of those seven months are mine. That's right, ladies and gentlemen: I'm the skip. My high school coach is breaking out in a cold sweat, even as I type this. This doesn't bode well, but on the bright side, that means I get to pick the name. Here are my options so far:

House of Ill Fame
School of Rock
Space Curlers
Rock It With a Hurry Game
The Flaming Disasters
(or, Denton's Disasters)
Zergling Rush
The Brothers Gibb
All We Throw Are Take-Outs

I'm partial to that last one, myself, but I'd love to hear any other suggestions.

And trust me... you haven't heard the end of this story yet.