I found myself driving on a dark, lonely gravel road early Saturday morning to curl for the first time in years.

My future brother-in-law, Clinton, had invited me to a doubles tournament in St. Benedict.

I appreciated the invitation but worried my complete lack of skill might be a problem - the last time I curled was at a friend's birthday party and before that I had curled exactly once, at a bonspiel when I lived in Prince Edward Island - so I got a crash course from Humboldt Curling Club manager Kevin Kalthoff. The man is a gracious and helpful teacher - he even kindly lent me a slider - but I started to worry when my legs turned to Jell-O after just half an hour.

Anyway, back to St. Ben, where our first game was at 8 a.m.

I fell over three times, but only one of the falls actually hurt. (Weirdly, I almost managed to rip off a fingernail when my left hand hit the ice.) Half my shots didn’t make it to the hog line, and most of the others sailed well past the house, but we ended up winning because Clinton showed a knack for sneaking last minute rocks in the middle of a crowded house.

In the second game I started to figure out how much mustard to put on my throws (I got one on the button!) and at the halfway point we were sitting pretty. However we were ultimately no match for the young woman on the other team, who was able to consistently hide her rocks just out of reach of whatever we threw at them.

We were on the back foot for our third and final game from the first throw. In first and second ends I was able to clear out some opposing rocks with the hammer to staunch the bleeding to just two points, but the natural ice then betrayed us when we tried to pull off some ambitious out-turns. (At least, that’s what I choose to blame.) Those rocks kept right on sailing straight to the back corner, no matter how much spin I put on them.

Still, despite the 1-2 record the day was a success. I made some decent shots, visited with some fun people and three days later I’m almost completely not sore.

I might just have to do this more often.