Don't ask a curler if curling is like shuffleboard.
"It's like chess on ice," said former Traverse City Curling Club president Cara Colburn. "And it's like a long putt. And it's like a game of billiards."
But no, it's not like shuffleboard. If I had to compare it to other activities, I'd say it's more like bowling.
And yoga.
At the same time.
"Some people still wear kilts," Colburn added. A cold proposition, considering the ice shed is kept around 40 degrees.
The basic goal is to slide a rock down a 150 foot sheet of ice toward a target. It seems simple, but I'm here to tell you: It's not. At least not the way they do it on TV.
What you're watching on TV are highly tuned athletes effortlessly gliding around a sheet of ice with a grace and ease that rivals that of a figure skater.
True, anyone can step out on a curling sheet and launch a rock toward the target with some success.
But I wanted to see what it takes to lean into that low glide, release the stone with just the right touch of curl, and then yell at the sweepers with everything I could muster.
I wanted to pretend, just for a minute, that I was an Olympian.
So I handed my audio equipment over to Colburn and stepped out onto the sheet.
In the moments that followed, I embarrassed myself, hyperextended muscles I didn't even know I had, and sealed the casket on any lingering dreams I had of ever becoming an Olympian.
Keep your eye out for Hannah though (pictured below). She's a student at Traverse City Christian School who has her eyes set on the 2034 games.
"See you there," she laughed when I told her I had dreams of being an Olympian too.
IPR's Vivian La contributed to this report.
