Wednesday, March 4, 2015

OMG… 9 Hrs. Of Curling? NO THANKS

I can fully understand that a northern country like Canada has its focus in sports directed towards games with snow and ice. After all, winter is a pretty dominating part of the Canadian climate. It’s like central Europe is mostly focused on playing soccer (Fussball) which they can play basically at any time either outside or in a covered arena.
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Like a crash-landed flying saucer – The Saddledome

But of all winter sports in Canada I think Curling is the most boring game EVER.

YAWN! 

I mean there is no what-so-ever action in this game. Nobody is running or catching something (a ball??) There is no acrobatic grace over it and it seems to me as a pretty static game where we see the very same picture all the time. I mean I can understand why people are watching Hockey, as that game is full of action. Players are running and beating on each other with the clubs and they are falling on top of each other --- like I said: Full of action. The goal of the game would not interest me, but watching the players do their artistics can be quite entertaining.
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But look at Curling, there’s nothing of interest. A stone is pushed across the ice and lands somewhere with no meaning at all. Other stones are sending the previous one a bit further on his way.  Strange indeed!
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Bea has a name-sake in Calgary

And would you know it, I had the honour of driving a bunch of retirees (most of them were) to this curling game at the Saddledome in Calgary. We arrived around 1pm, and after dropping folks off I found a parking lot for the bus somewhat out in the southern peripheries of Stampede Park (Calgary Stampede) There was nothing around other than a 4-lane freeway where any attempt to walk along would have been suicidal. My schedule said that these fine people would be back from the game at 9:30pm, (yup that’s 8 hrs of watching a stupid game) so I re-appeared with my bus outside the west entrance and waited.
By that time waiting was my middle name.
Peter Waiting Harwerth, so to speak. But the game went longer than expected. First right around 10pm my group was piling into the bus again. Of course, now there was this one lady gone missing so her husband went looking for her.  Meanwhile we were waiting and I had just started to entertain the bunch by telling stories from my colourful past
when the lady was found and re-joined her husband  and rest of the group.
20150303_150325By now traffic had exploded to a scary FRIDAY-AFTERNOON-TRAFFIC- SCENE.
After another 30 minutes we had fought our way through the throngs and were eating miles to the north on Highway 2.

Today I am holed up in a hotel just south of Edmonton in order to pick up a bunch of 41 kids who are gonna try to break their legs on the ski slopes of Jasper National Park.

Junior High School!
How old are these??

I will let you folks know how that adventure goes.

Meanwhile have a non-boring day/evening or whatever you are having.

And thanks for stopping by!

2 comments:

  1. Thats the joys of being charter bus driver, hope you have a good e-reader to help pass the waiting hours.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Never can tell what the weather can be like during the winter. You never know what to expect and the hours of boredom or being too busy.

    ReplyDelete

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