The most dangerous sport...

Back to that dangerous sport that we tried out on our holiday. In all the sports we did, our family had the least falls in skiing, next most dangerous was ice skating. That had them shaking in their boots. But probably the lack of fear is what made Curling the most dangerous of them all.

Yes, it is an Olympic event and we went Curling at the venue
of the Nagano Winter Olympics of 1998. Photo courtesy of
Wikipedia.

Curling is the ice world's lawn bowls. It involves pushing a 20kg granite "stone" (called a "kettle") from one end towards a circle (called a "house") at the other end of the "lane" (called a "sheet").

You don't even wear skates. You wear a sliding surface on one foot. The other foot simply wears an ordinary sneaker. But it is ice, after all. The whole thing looks very slow and tame. The game itself, however, is quite complex. And the ice is slippery and the rocks are heavy.

I have this slow-mo video in my mind now of my 9 y.o. standing in the middle of the "lane" next to one of the kettles. He had his woollen beanie on (hat) and seemed to be in another world (not uncommon for him). Why our attention was focused on him was that my husband had pushed another kettle down the lane but not noticed that our son was standing directly in the path he'd chosen for the kettle. Our son didn't hear us shouting at him and, as he was standing in the middle of ice, we couldn't run to intercept the smoothly gliding kettle. He just stood there as the kettle smacked into his ankle and toppled him over, smashing his head on the ice. It looked comical, if I didn't realise it had hurt. 

He limped for a while, but got back in the game after a bit, just long enough to take another tumble! Our eldest son also fell and knocked his knee. I, with my slightly strained knee, didn't put on a "sliding" shoe, but just used sneakers. I was very cautious and didn't fall at all. I think that's what was missing, a cautiousness that came automatically when they were on ice skates.

All the danger aside, it is a game that's sometimes called "Chess on Ice". That probably explains why our chess-loving 12 y.o. got so involved. He really enjoyed it and had impressive accuracy for someone who'd only just begun the sport. He also couldn't believe that our time was up after we'd been there over an hour. "But we've only just been here 10 minutes!" was his protest.

I've been rather distracted today and not been able to get much down here. So I'll leave it at that on this Christmas Eve.