The Curling Queue

I'm venturing a little outside my hometown for today's post. Granville is almost exactly halfway between the two nearest cities: Rutland, Vermont, to the northeast (population ~16,000) and Glens Falls, New York, to the southwest (~14,000). 

Yesterday I was in Rutland with my partner to attend a curling match. There's been an uptick of interest in curling, I suspect, owing to the recently-concluded Winter Olympic Games -- especially after the Norwegian team accused the Canadian team of cheating, and the Canadians uncharacteristically cursed at the Norwegians in return! My social media feed was filled with funny home videos of people sweeping around a moving object; my favorite used a Roomba as the "stone."

I learned a lot of new things, such as the fact that curling was invented in Scotland (I thought it was Canada) and that most (or all?) curling stones are produced on a Scottish island called Alisa Craig of a special kind of granite and can cost as much as $16,000 for a single set.

Anyway, the Scottish origins explain why there was a parade led by bagpipes and another piping instrument with a lit torch! In the second photo here,  you can see the players parading on in single file carrying their brooms (if that's what they call them). Sorry for the poor quality of these photos, and for the fact that I became so caught up in the match that I forgot to take any pictures of it!

P.S. There was a raffle taking place to support the league. I purchased $20, equal to 50 tickets, which I thought was exceptionally generous in terms of the number of tickets -- and ended up with four baskets full of things I mostly don't want. (Hint: a lot of booze!) My partner and I are working on giving most of it away, but we had a laugh over my unintended haul!!