Arnold Asham on the Curling Show

I'd like to highlight another episode of Dean Gemmell's Curling Show that I just listened to, which featured Arnold Asham.  For those that don't know, he's the founder of Asham, one of the big curling equipment suppliers.  Now, I'm not always up to date on the new curling technology, but I'm kind of intrigued with two of the new broom features discussed on the show:

The Boomerang Shaped Brush

Kind of a weird idea, right?  Most brooms today have a rectangular brush head (like mine) or an oval shape (like my teammates').  The boomerang kinda makes sense though; the diagonal parts should make it easier to brush debris and frost to the sides.
 
The Grooved Brush Head

Such a simple idea.  When you're sweeping, frost accumulates more on the edges of your brush head.  Why not make a brush head with more edges?  And it doesn't really cost all that much more for the grooves compared to the flat ($2 more). 

So I just added a boomerang broom with the grooves to my wishlist.  It costs $166, $100 more than my first broom, but I think I'm ready for something new when next season comes around.

Paul Lukas on the Curling Show

I'm a regular listener for Dean Gemmell's Curling Show podcast.  I've been backed up on my podcasts, but just now listened to the Paul Lukas podcast from last week.  Now, most of these podcasts are interviews with top players in the curling world with some coaches thrown in there too.  And of course, most of the interviews are fairly standard and sometimes border on bland.  (I blame it on the fact that Canadians in general might be too nice.)  Like, a couple of Canada's top curlers are going to curl for Russia in 2014.  But no one's saying anything like, "That's such a betrayal" or "I hope they fail."  Along these lines, wouldn't it be funny to read about an affair between, say, "curlgar" Cheryl Bernard and John Morris.  That would be interesting curling news to read. 

Anyway, I thought the Lukas interview was kind of interesting.  His blog is uniwatchblog and one of his big interests is clothing in sports.  He also recently curled for the first time earlier this year and even played in a bonspiel in Duluth.

He and Dean were talking about how there's no "official" type curling clothing.  Like how if I say bowling shirt, you have a picture in your mind how that looks.  That got me thinking about all the crazy clothes you can see at the curling club.  There's a guy that always curls in a kilt.  There's the purple guy who wears purple and has a corn broom painted purple.  There's a number of velvet tracksuits (ensconced in velvet for any Seinfeld fans).  And of course, there are the old school cardigan sweaters.  My team has tossed around ideas for matching clothes, but we haven't hit on anything we all like. 

Anyway, it was an interesting podcast.  Go check it out.