Slip Sliding and Sweeping

I don't know what it is about January that encourages everyone to try new things. Friends and family are practicing yoga, writing, dancing, and doing a myriad of other activities. Me? Well, my goal is to get back to swimming and my father has encouraged me to get back into yoga classes. However, I define my year by semesters, and as I have a week until a new semester begins, I have done neither swimming nor yoga. Really, I've just been stressed and lazy. Until! I stumbled upon central Virginia's only curling league. Thankfully, the blurb in the local weekly newspaper sold me faster than you can say "learn to curl" and before I knew it, I was determined to make curling something I could actually do.

If you slept through the Winter 2010 Olympics (How could you?! Crosby's game winning-goal to give Canada the gold medal! Lindsay Vonn and all her skiing! ALL THE CURLING!), then you missed the popular rebirth of curling, where teams throw/slide giant rocks of granite (with handles on them) down a sheet of ice while some other team members have awesome little brooms and they sweep the ice before the rock to make it go farther. You aim for a bullseye, and the team with their rocks closest to the center win that "end" (like an inning in baseball). There is minimal athletic ability required, which is awesome because people who like beer more than they like weight training can actually go to the Olympics and WIN A GOLD MEDAL. Back when I was in grad school in 2006, I started watching curling (before it became "cool" I suppose) and when I didn't want to do any work, I started playing this for more time than I care to admit. I was hooked.

So yesterday, I dragged an enthusiastic and willing friend to the local ice arena, and with about eight other people, we learned to curl. I was afraid that it was going to be more difficult than it looked, but our instructor gave us these directions: "Keep your ass up in the air, and then just Tebow." EASY. And fun! He added, "Most people are drunk while they play, so it's not really all that competitive." This was also good to hear as I don't really want to participate with people who are serious about winning and blame teammates for screwing up the game. It took a little umph to get the rock down the ice (as you're not using your arms to send it, but the power in your hips and legs from pushing off), but with a little practice my rocks were landing right on that bullseye where they were supposed to. And the sweeping! You put aside your fear of running on ice in tennis shoes and you simply do it. It was clear to see how the sweeping worked to make that rock go just a little farther (just enough to frustrate your opponent). We all had a fun time cheering each other on as we tried our hands at the different positions. How can you not get excited when nearly everyone improves so quickly?

At the end of the day, my friend took some awesome photos of me not falling on my ass, my hands were frozen, and I joined the league with a few other newbies to play every Monday night for the next 10 weeks. I was thrilled I enjoyed curling as much as I enjoyed watching it, but I think I was even more thrilled that I didn't hold back. I didn't blink at the cost of joining the league (which wasn't necessarily cheap), and I didn't think twice about participating in an activity with people I had met only 90 minutes earlier. I am not an extrovert, so this feels like a big deal for me.

Go out. Find something you've never tried before and do it without overthinking things. Join that rec league. Bake that difficult recipe. Find a local curling club and see how much fun it is! Who knows what kind of trouble you can get into! It just may be the best trouble you've found yourself in in a long time.