In the House: Road trip!!!!

ROAD TRIP

I love a curling road trip. Every serious curling team at one point needs to get in a car and drive more than 6 hours to play in a spiel against teams from a different part of the country.

Yes, the big teams travel more of course, criss-crossing the country in airplanes to play in various slams. For us lesser mortals, without the team budget required to engage in the joys of air travel – this means a road trip.

For us – this is a 12 hour drive to Halifax Nova Scotia to play in the Dave Jones Mayflower Curling Classic. We get to play the best teams from the East and benefit from a little Maritime hospitality. The tournament organizer is Brent MacDougall, one of my former friend/foes from the Mixed Nationals and perennial candidate for the Nice Guy Hall of Fame, who has generously offered to host our team for the weekend. I am writing this blog from the free breakfast room in Edmunston, NB, about half way to Halifax.

A road trip serves multiple purposes for a competitive curling team. First, it creates a sense of team bonding. Spending 12 hours sitting next to somebody, hearing their stories, listening to their crappy playlists, smelling their road-food induced farts and seeing them snore and drool on your car seats inevitably makes you feel like you know your team a little better.

Road trips also provide you exposure to different teams. Inevitably, when you play in a certain part of the country you end up playing the same teams over and over again. Our strategy ends up all being somewhat similar – after playing the same teams over and over again you come to know what shot they will play before they play it. Its only November and I feel like we have played Desjardins 73 times this year. I know what they are going to do before they do it – and I am pretty sure they feel the same way about us. A road trip allows you to play against teams that you have never seen before. They often play differently; they try shots you might not often see. You do not know their strengths – their weaknesses. It forces you to think on the fly, and adjust. As a skip – it is just more fun.

On a side note – I think the current Slams often fall victim to this familiarity as well. Jacobs, Gushue, McEwen, Epping, Koe and Edin et al. all play each other so often now that they know every strength and weakness of their opponent (not that those teams have a lot of weaknesses). It almost feels like a rehearsed dance when they play. It was cool this past slam to see a few different teams in the final four – but this is the exception not the rule.

I am suspecting that many people in my entourage think that this trip is a weekend bender. While I am sure I might partake in some merriment, this is not why we travel. If I wanted to go on a weekend bender – I would likely suggest Vegas or Miami might be a better suited environment for such an occasion.

Rules of Curling Road Trip:

Driver has his choice of music.
Co-pilot in passenger seat needs to stay awake. The guys in back can sleep – but co-pilot must serve as entertainment to the driver – even if that means making up shit and revealing embarrassing personal stories.
Junk food while consumed en-route does not count. Eat whatever shit you need to eat to stay awake.
If you have a small bladder – do not drink large coffee at first road stop. The car only stops when the driver needs to stop.
Whatever troubles you get into – wherever you end up – always show up for your games. Do not make your team search for you!
New rule I discovered last night: No Extreme Beef Jerky. That shit smells like feet.
On return trip – most hungover guy drives first.

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Good luck to Martin Ferland playing in the Mixed Nationals – also in Nova Scotia this weekend, as well as my former Mixed Teammate Christie Gamble playing with Team Nova Scotia. Both teams have qualified for the playoff pool.

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In the goal of showing my non-curling readers just how cool curling has become, we once again have an arousing calendar of ridiculously hot curlers. How often do you really have the opportunity to support a good cause and order soft-core pics to your house?!

Here is the link to order. It does make the perfect stocking stuffer for the self-pleasuring teenage boy in all of us.

www.womenofcurling.ca