It's time for another Drinking With Ricky. Today's adventure? Ricky Goes Curling! So my connection to my curling expert is a little attenuated, so bear with me. My brother's college roommate's girlfriend is an olympic level curler. We'll call her Curler Jane. Still with me? Good. So Curler Jane wanted to teach her boyfriend and some of his friends how to curl. I was hanging around while they were talking about it. So, of course, I said I'd love to get in on that, and also said that I was probably a prodigy and would revolutionize that game. Curler Jane said I could join, and it was on. The date was set. Saturday, March 26. The plan is to drive over to Waylan MA (about 25 miles from Boston, and where the curling ... uh ... rink? .. is) at 10:00 am with some of Curler Jane's boyfriend's boys for an 11:00 ... uh ... tee time? Whatever. You get what I'm saying. And this is how it went:
8:15 am: Alarm clock goes off. I run to the gym for a quick workout. Not because I wanted to, but because I knew that I would be drinking in about 90 minutes, and wanted to make sure that I was as physically depleted as possible, so that I could maximize the affect that the booze would have on me. That's science, Holms.
9:00 am: Home from the gym. Got a good workout in. Although, I can't help but think that there is something fundamentally contradictory with blasting Eminem while gliding along on an eliptical next to two fat Asian women and what is clearly a faculty member of the Northeastern University dance department. But I digress. Either way, yeah, good workout. Sufficiently dehydrated. Time to drink. Rip a few from the bottle of Absolute 100. Hop in the shower.
9:10 am: Have a bagel and Irish coffee. Wait, an Irish coffee is four shots of whiskey loaded into a Keurig machine, right? Yeah, that's what I thought.
9:45 am: Ready to rock. Our ride should be on it's way. My brother and I are riding with Curler Jane's boyfriend's high school friends. The plan was for one of them, we'll call him Crazy Carl, to meet the other one who has the car, we'll call him Mail Man (because he always delivers, as we'll see), at Copley. When my brother calls Mail Man, he says "Oh, we're still doing that? I'm in the North End." Not a good start. It normally wouldn't have been a problem. But last weekend Crazy Carl busted his phone on a wall, as one does. So now we're in the position of having Crazy Carl in the North End with a phone but no car, Mail Man at Copley with a car but no phone, and my brother and me in the apartment (drinking) without any way of getting to fucking curling.
10:10 am: If you know me, you may know this. If you don't, well here's a little bit of knowledge about me. I can go from calm to fucking out my face pissed off in about two minutes. This is what happened here. Fucking Crazy Carl is blowing this for all of us. He's the only link between Mail Man's car and me and curling. But this dump bag was busy peeing the bed all over his smokeshow girlfriend from being out at BHP the night before, and didn't bother going to Copley to meet up with our ride, Mail Man, and thereby screwing everyone. I am about ready to throw a chair out a window, Chris Brown style. Losing it.
10:18 am: Our apartment buzzer rings. It's Mail Man. How the fuck did he find our place?! He was banking on Crazy Carl to get here! How the fuck did this wizard find us? Turns out, he had been here once. Months ago and hammered. He had some recollection of where we lived, so he headed over this way. This crazy bastard drove to the middle of our street, started honking the horn, and yelling our names. Fucking genius. And when that didn't work, what did this MacGyver do? He started going in to all the apartments on our street and ringing random buzzers, looking for our name. Slow clap for Mail Man. Eventually he gets us, and we roll out. But we're not dick bags. We're getting Crazy Carl and making this happen. I'm calm again. It's amazing. I went from being chill, to ready to murder kittens, to calm again in a matter of 20 minutes.
10:38: My brother, Mail Man, and I are in the North End waiting on Crazy Carl. It takes this fuck nut 25 minutes to walk down Hanover street. If you're not familiar with Boston, Hanover street is like 200 feet long. This dump bag has been holding us up for about an hour, and now can't stumble down Hanover. I'm ready to murder again. He finally gets in the car. He sees my bottle of Absolute 100. He says "fucking awesome ... hey, I think I played my first game of Beruit against you!" Best friends. And we're off!
11:20 am: We get to the rink. Or whatever it's called. I'm about 3/4 of a pint of Absolute 100 deep. Winning (side note: Is "Winning" over? Didn't think so).
11:25 am: We get on the ice. I'm rocking a sweet Under Armor shirt and jeans. Upon reflection, I look like a white trash power lifter. But, according to Curler Jane's email, jeans were fine. Everyone else, though, is rocking straight up ninja curling gear. Even Crazy Carl looks the part. Seriously, everyone looks like rock stars. I look like a drunk gym coach from West Virginia. Upon further review, however, Curler Jane's email said "anything but jeans are fine." Awesome. I look like a dick. But whatever, I'm an athlete. I'm going to own this shit.
11:40 am: Curler Jane shows me how to toss the pebble, or whatever. I say "yeah, I've seen this on TV, I've got this.
11:41 am: I jam my pinkie on the stone and fall down, twisting my wrist on the sweeper thing and end up spinning around on the ice on my back like a dying turtle. But I wasn't the only one. Our buddy, Larry Walker, is all over the place too.
11:55 am: I decide that "sweeping" (when you sweep the ice with that sqeegee thing so the stone does something or whatever) is my thing. I yell "I call all time sweeper!" Everyone looks at me like I just murdered a bus full of kindergarteners. Apparently curling isn't a yelling game.
12:10 pm: It's game time. It's me, my brother, Crazy Carl, and Maiil Man against everyone who showed up on time, had been paying attention, and is sober. I'm a shit head, so I still think we're going to win. Even though everyone on my team is drunk, wearing jeans, doesn't know what they're doing, and I honestly think that Crazy Carl just threw up in a bucket.
12:52 pm: We just got our asses kicked. But jokes on them. I've finished the rest of my pint of Absolute 100 AND only ripped my jeans twice. In your face sobriety. And in your face fashion, I know the NKOTB ripped jeans look is going to come back. Umm, victory? Yeah, victory.
1:00 pm: Off the ice. Now this is where the rubber meets the road when it comes to curling. Is this a sport where after the game everyone ices down? Or is it a sport where everyone gets drunk after the match ... err, game? Tussle? Whatever. Bottom line, do people get shitty after they run around on the ice? Answer: affirmative! People are rolling all over the lodge with glasses of wine that rival 32 oz Powerades. We go for a pitcher of Natty Ice. Yeah, you read that right. Natty Ice mother fucker. These cats know how to throw down.
1:18 pm: The rest of my crew is at one table. I start heading over there, but some old dude, Joe, starts talking to me. I'm like, fuck it, I'll humor the old dude. Three minutes later I realize that this dude is the shit. Apparently he busted his ACL in a football accident, and needed a new sport. His girlfriend at the time, now his wife of twenty years, was into curling. He tried it out, and he was hooked. This dude was fucking awesome. Kind of making fun of everyone, but also saying how this sport is pretty legit, and how he's glad that it's growing. He's pounding a "glass" of wine that is in a pint glass. This cat is the shit. My friends are looking over at me, trying to get me to join them. Screw that, I'm hanging out with the Hugh Heffner of the American curling circuit. Joe and I keep talking. He convinces me to come back. I tell him that I'll be more sober next time. He says, "well I wouldn't do that." Winning. Yes, winning.
1:30 pm: Some middle aged chick confuses me for some member of the club who just won the worlds. Part of me wants to correct her. The other part of me wants to go with it. Guess wich part won out? So I tell her, "yeah, the Worlds were pretty intense, I really wasn't sure how I was going to do." She asks how I approach the game. I keep things generic. I say, "it's like anything else, you just have to focus on what your coaches tell you, and trust in your own ability." She beams like I just saved her puppy from a fire. She says that her daughter (who is a smokeshow) is out on the ice, teaching a class, and that she would love for me to go out there and help her. I say, "Ugg, I wish I could, but I'm wearing jeans, I just can't get out there like this and do the game justice." She says I should come back and give her daughter a lesson. It takes literally everything I have in me to not lose my mind. But I am a professional. I keep my cool. I say, "well I'll be around, we should set that up."
1:52 pm: Time to hit the road. I'm sufficiently drunk and have just realized that I am bleeding from both knees and can't move three fingers on my left hand. 90% sure that those injuries are due to falling. The other 10% is acknowledging that this may just be due to the fact that my body is trying to tell me to stop drinking.
1:58 pm: In the car. Great day. Curling is actually pretty friggin' awesome. If you have done it, you know it's awesome. If you haven't, take my word, it's a real sport with real players. USA! USA! USA!
3:05 pm: We make it back to my neck of the woods. We have decided to have a darty* at my place for the college basketball games coming up that day. My brother, Mail Man, and I stop at the liquor store. Two 30's of Bud Light, a handle of Thompson whiskey, and a pint of So.Co. later and we have a good looking darty* ahead of us.
* Don't know what a "darty" is? Well, my friends, it's a "day party." A darty, if you will. It's a real thing. Look it up. Or don't, and just come to our next darty. Live free or die kids.
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