On the road
Sometimes you have to travel a distance to be reminded how good things are back at home.
Last weekend, my son, Alex, and I traveled down to Houston, Texas to participate in a bonspiel with the Curling Club of Houston. The event was cleverly titled “Houston, We Have a Bonspiel.”
We checked our bag of brooms (which Delta Airlines labeled as golf clubs on the receipt), and hopped on a plane for a three hour flight south.
It was a pleasant, if not outright warm summer day in Minneapolis at about 70 degrees when we boarded the plane last Thursday morning, with the promise that it would be getting warm.
For those unfamiliar with geography, Houston is situated on what can be charitably described as swampland along the Gulf of Mexico. The house we were staying in was at sea level and the highest we climbed above sea level was going into the second floor on the airport to board our plane when we went home.
When Alex and I got off the plane in Houston, the wave of heat and humidity just about knocked us over. I grew up with 90+ degree, 100% humidity as the normal summertime conditions in Southern New Jersey, so in that regard it felt familiar — and an important reminder about why I prefer to live in Wisconsin. But still, it is a bit jarring when the nighttime lows were warmer than what we have had here as high temperatures for almost the entire summer. Showing up to a curling rink in shorts, a t-shirt and with sandals on is a far weirder experience in person than it would otherwise seem to be, as is deciding to curl in shorts because it was just too warm even out on the ice to put long pants on.
This was my first time visiting Houston. As the curler who came over from New Orleans explained, “The thing about Houston, is that it is an hour and half from itself.”
The rink where the bonspiel was held was about 10 miles from the house we had rented and took about 40 minutes and at least two highways to get to. Fortunately, I wasn’t the one driving, I was busy in the back seat doing shallow breathing exercise to keep from getting carsick at the accelerating and stopping.
People who live in warm areas have far too much faith in their brakes and have a tendency to accelerate into red lights and brake the last minute rather than coasting into them like folks who drive on icy roads most of the year.
Joining us in the bonspiel were my brothers, Tom and Mike. Tom lives in Texas and this was his second time curling. Mike lives in New Jersey and had never curled before. My sister Nicole was also on the team, she has more curling experience than either of my brothers, but hasn’t been on the ice in 15 years.
Considering my lifetime win/loss record, our best hope was that Alex would be able to carry us to at least get some points on the board.
Without the teams on the bottom half of the bracket, tournaments would not be able to take place. Besides, our goal wasn’t to bring home any trophies, but instead to bring home the experience of curling in summer in the deep south and spend time with family members I haven’t seen in years. In these regards, our bonspiel trip was a resounding success.
Like most clubs in southern regions, the Curling Club of Houston doesn’t have dedicated ice. Instead they rent the ice at a hockey rink paying $400 an hour for ice time. As you can imagine, this made maintaining the pace of play a huge priority with strict limits on when the last end of each game could start. It also impacted ice maintenance with a high priority placed on getting the sheets scraped and playable as fast as possible.
It is easy to take for granted our local dedicated curling facility or to even complain about its shortcomings. That is why it is always good to get out and see how other places do things.
