Waking up

Brian Wilson

It was 5:45 a.m.

For the darkness it might have been midnight. I stumbled about in my darkened bedroom, trying to avoid making too much noise and risk waking up my wife and the houseguests on my daughter’s team who were still sleeping in our basement family room.

I managed to only stub my toes a few times. I was careful to keep my opinions about chair legs and doorway corners under my breath as I left the house.

The distance from my house to the Medford Curling Club is about a half mile as the crow flies. It is slightly longer if you stick to the roads, but it makes for a short trip even in the bleary-eyed early morning.

It is never truly dark in downtown Medford. The golden glow of the streetlights reflecting off snowbanks sees to that. It is peaceful and, in its own way, beautiful.

I was the first to arrive to the curling club. The half dozen vehicles parked at various spots in the parking lot gave evidence to how well the night before had gone for some and how miserable their mornings may be. I’ve driven a fair number of people home or to various motels over the years.

There is a distinctive feeling you get being the first person to walk into a sports venue on the morning of a competition. There is a sense of pregnant anticipation.

As if the very spirit of the building, whether it is a curling rink, a hockey arena or a gymnasium is waiting for the day to begin like an over-eager six-year old on Christmas morning. Waiting to see the spectacular shots that guarantee victory or the narrow misses which separate the teams still playing from the people in the stands watching them.

I started the morning setting-up rituals. Flipping on the lights. Measuring out the coffee and filling the ancient silver urn with cold water. It would be another hour before the coffee would be ready, providing the needed eye-opener for workers and players.

As I worked to get the sausage on the griddle and get the trays of bacon drizzled with maple syrup ready to go into the ovens, I would take note as other volunteers trickled in. The ice crew got to work shaving, mopping, pebbling and nipping, to make the ice surface ready for play. Others joined me in the kitchen getting plates and silverware ready, cracking the eggs, making sure everything was ready.

My team didn’t curl until slightly later in the morning, so I was able to keep working for a while. The sausages were replaced by eggs and then pancakes on the griddle.

One thing after another, like an assembly line of ingredients coming in and food going out. There is a peacefulness to that, with the roar of the exhaust fan being punctuated by the staccato cracks of the spatulas on the griddle surface as I flipped the pancakes working to keep ahead of the line of hungry athletes.

The early arrivals mumbled greetings and sat silently, perhaps in regret of staying quite so late the night before. After the food and coffee warmed them up, the conversation grew more animated and as the morning’s first draw was set to begin at 8 a.m. there was boisterous laughter and a general sense of busyness.

The day was fully awake. It was time to play. The electric potential in the predawn hours played out through the day as rock by rock, end by end and game by game until the games were all played, the stories all told and the competitors had gone off to their beds or other entertainment and the lights were flipped off.

A time to rest before starting all over again the next morning.

For those who have made it this far, I suppose I could test your patience even further by going into detail about my team’s games last weekend.

I could talk about how the curling spirits looked kindly upon my team guiding the rocks to where they needed to go or about the narrow losses to evenly-matched competitors or the lopsided losses to teams much better than ours.

My team was not expected to do well, and in this we met expectations. In the process, we gained some new memories and stories to share.

Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News.