Curling

I have been busy the lately so that is why the blog has suffered a little. Yesterday we did something really fun as a group activity at work. We tried Curling. Very cool, a lot of fun but much harder than you would expect it to be. It looks so easy when I have watched it on tv when shown on the Olympic games. The curling and ice hall was located in Sundbyberg. We were all very exited as we headed there.

The first thing we got to do was to change into these kind of special shoes. The shoes are regular but the soles are special. Your left has a slippery sole surface so that you can glide across the ice on that fot and the right fot has a normal rubber sole so you can walk without sliding.

We got an instructor that first showed us a short movie about the rules that are very simple. You are supposed to slide the curling stone across the ice and get as close as possible into the red and blue circle. Each team consists of four players and each team has 8 curling stones. Two teams play against each other. You are also allowed to try to knock the other teams curling stones off the center circle by hitting them with your own .
 

We were divided into different teams. Besides the special shoes we also got to put on helmets. At first I thought this was kind of silly but when we got out on the ice it proved to be more slippery with the shoes on than I had anticipated. I managed to stay on my feet but several of the others slipped and fell. However, no one hurt them selfs.
 

This is how the curling stones look like. They are very heavy so moving them around is best by sliding them on the ice. Each team had a different color so that it would be easy to see which stone belonged to each team.
 

The brooms were also kind of fun. You use them to brush the ice and create friction that creates heat so that the stones glide even further if needed. It all depends on how much force you apply as you push them. This was the really tricky part, to apply just the right amount of force so that the stone would stop in the center of the circle.

Here you can see someone using their broom in action.

 

The field on the ice actually has two cicles at opposite ends. You start at one end pushing your stone and letting it go to slide across to the other side playing one set from one end and the next from the opposite end. You use the fot with the regular rubber sole to push yourself forward and then you glide on the ice with the other foot as you release the curling stone.
 

Here I am in action. It was a lot of fun. I am so glad we did this. We played for about two hours and after that we had a nice Christmas dinner scheduled at a Libanese restaurant. The food was really good.