This, my friends, was the kind of utterly unique experience that I was looking for when I threw my stuff in the trunk and headed out of familiar, wonderful Long Beach.  We were greeted in the hotel parking lot by a sign (flanked by American and Canadian flags) that said, “Welcome Curling Fans.”  What?  Was that fans in the plural?  I’ve had a curious interest in curling since seeing the weird sport on the Winter Olympics as a kid, but could it really be that there were people who followed it closely enough to be labeled “fans”?  It appeared so.
 
We left the hotel for the Ralph Engelstad Arena about ten minutes before the fourteenth draw (which we had tickets for) was scheduled to start, figuring we’d breeze in and park close to the arena.  Wrong.  We were greeted by four Lot Full signs as neon green-vested parking attendants directed us to a satellite lot.  Along the way, we passed hordes of families, many of them chasing enthusiastic young children towards the surprisingly modern stadium.  We parked on a gravel lot a few blocks away and headed for the arena.  I was surprised by how upscale it was because I had heard it was used almost exclusively for the University of North Dakota’s hockey team, and curling competitions, and I hadn’t realized what a huge draw the Fighting Sioux (that would be the hockey team) were until I saw their logo printed on a multi-million dollar structure.  I guess there were clues?tying in to what I wrote about in the last column, these kinds of teams are to the upper Midwest what the Lakers are to LA.  We saw signs outside of gas stations supporting the Sioux as far away as Bozeman, Montana, more than eight hundred miles from their home ice.

This is about one third of the arena, which I would again like to point out is for a college hockey team.  I’ll buy you a Coke if you can tell me where CSULB’s hockey team plays without using the internet.
 
I tried not to be a SoCal snob, but I couldn’t help gaping at the sheer number of people pouring into the arena.  Seriously?  This many people for curling, even a world championship event?  Turns out, not so much.  These people were headed for the Harlem Globetrotters game being held in a different part of the arena.  An arrogant young man directed us to the curling, where a weary looking old woman sized us up and asked, “You know this isn’t basketball, right?”  She brightened a little when we assured her that yes, we were intentionally there to see curling, but it looked like she’d had a long night.
 
I bought a foot long dog and a lemonade (I don’t care if it’s a polo match, if I pay for admission to a competitive event I’m eating a foot long) and entered the arena just as the announcer boomed, “Good luck and good curling, everyone!  Let the games begin!”  The five hundred or so people scattered around the immense hockey arena clapped politely.  This was more like it.
 
I won’t go into the details of the game, because I imagine that would bore you into a coma, but I will say that it was much more exciting and interesting than I imagined.  There are four matches going on at the same time, so there’s always action somewhere on the floor.  There’s also an incredible amount of athleticism that goes into curling?on a more precise level than I’m accustomed to?and some of the things we saw were hard to believe.

A curling zamboni, AKA a guy with a pushbroom.
 
I was also impressed by the fans.  When I go to a game at Qualcomm on, say, Military Day, I usually end up feeling alienated and unpatriotic for not wanting to applaud the newly legless soldier on the field just because he managed to kill forty insurgents while losing the ability to walk.  I expected an even more patriotic and flag-waving crowd at an event with international competition, especially one in North Dakota.  Instead, almost everyone clapped for Germany, the team playing America, when it did well, and most everyone cast dirty looks at the Patriots jersey-wearing man on the upper level who was waving a giant flag and screaming from time to time.
 
I’m going to cut this short: I really could go on and on about my newfound love of curling, but let’s be honest: Michael Jordan could join the national team, and you’d still need a microscope to see the ratings spike.  And I’m fine with that: curling isn’t engrossing in the way that the NBA or the NFL are.  It’s polite, slow-paced, intricately played, and there’s a lot of standing around involved.  But if you happen to be in North Dakota around next April, I can say that there are probably worse World Championships you could go to, even if it’s not as exciting as, say, the Harlem Globetrotters.

This is what I can’t understand: the next thrown stone was by yellow, and it knocked ALL OF THE RED STONES out of the target.