Watching Curling Again
What I understand about the game of curling would not, melted down, fill one of those little rye bottles you used to get on airplanes. Okay, sure, I understand that you throw rocks down a pebbled sheet of ice, that the rocks don't go straight as much as they wander off line, and that the whole thing is to figure out how much weight to throw so that the rocks wobble like you want. There's other stuff that's barely comprehensible, like the role of the sweepers. And the seemingly contradictory orders yelled out by the stone thrower (No! Way off! Whoa!) and the skip (On it! Hard! Hurry hard! Clean!) And, then, there's some totally opaque stuff, like the way the team members talk it out as they compose the next shot. I am writing all of this watching the 2017 Brier on TV. This is what I just heard from Team Northern Ontario's deliberations. "I don't think it matters, Brad." "Either that, or do you go all the way around?" "Whad...