Several years ago, Liezel started a tradition with our group of 8 friends. It seemed that in our efforts to prevent life from passing us by, we were all starting to pass each other by! At the time, we were all getting married, changing jobs and hobbies and buying homes outside the small perimeter in Vancouver where we all lived.
So, the deal was that every other month we would get together to eat somewhere; either go out, or eat in at someone's house. We would each take turns planning an outing.
The gathering's have been great fun! We've gone out for Indian, Thai, Chinese and many other cuisines. We've had themed dinners at home and BBQ's and even had a picnic at the beach! We've had other people, outside of the 8 of us, join us on occasion. And we've even had 2 baby announcements at our gatherings! It's definitely been a wonderful way for the 8 of us to stay in touch. I'm just sad that I haven't taken any photos!
This last time around, we thought we'd try something a little different. Instead of making food the centre of our gathering, we thought we'd try something that most of us have not tried before. We went curling!
It was a blast! Thanks to Royal City Curling Club for hosting us! We called them up ahead of time and told them our situation - we were a group of 8 beginners looking to try curling. Not only did they book us a sheet of ice ($70 for 2 hours), but they provided us with all our equipment AND we had someone there to give us instruction for a good chunk of the time that we were there!
Firstly, it is MUCH harder than it looks. I think it helped that all of us have done at least 1 sport on ice. So, we were all comfortable being on the ice in our shoes. But then, we had to either balance in a croutched position as we threw a stone down the ice in the correct direction and speed OR we had to run across the ice in our shoes, trying not to fall at the same time as sweeping with enough downward pressure that we're actually impacting the speed of the stone! Man, it was fun!
I think Patrick was the star of the show. Having curled for a semester in CEGEP, he was definitely the ringer in our group! (hehehe) 
Liezel threw the most hilarious first stone - even after she was on her butt, she refused to let go of the stone! 
And Mon got heckled the most when she made an effort to sweep a stone, but gave up after she couldn't keep up with it. But, the shot of the day came from Brian. It was the final stone (because our 2 hours were up). Brian's yellow team was down by 2 and Patrick's blue team was poised to win the last end. Brian threw his last yellow stone that knocked the winning blue stone out of the "house". It left the yellow team with 4 stones in the house, winning the end and the match! Woo! Hoo! (BTW, please excuse my mixed up terminology as I have never curled before.)
It was definitely a fun dine in/dine out gathering for our group. And so we didn't forget the nature of our gatherings, we all went back to our house after curling and ordered in some Sushi Garden! Yum! Yum!
1 comment:
Way to curl Brian! Steve and I have been curling for 4 years now and are still having a blast. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Post a Comment