Winning Big Bucks at Jasper Place Curling Rink

Well, I guess I'll have to turn pro...
Look carefully at my left hand and you'll see the loot I won at the December/'05 Senior Men's Bonspiel at Jasper Place Curling Rink.
Twelve teams were assembled from the senior men's leagues at the Jasper Place and Crestwood Curling Clubs.
Over three days from Dec. 28 to 30 we played eight games and only lost one. (Actually, that's a bit of a lie because we tied in five of our six round robin games which involved four ends each with no tie-breaker...)
We moved from the round robin into the main semi-final game which we lost and then won the main consolation game.
The team from left is Ian Inglis, 63, who I've known since I was in university; Andy Anderson, 82, skip; Art Platten, 83, lead (he was the contractor when the rink was built in 1959) and yours truly, 64, second.
While both Andy and Art have to use "extenders" to deliver their rocks and Art is unable to sweep because of his arthritis, together they have about 100 years experience and are very good tacticians.
Curling is obviously a life-long sport.
If you can no longer bend down to deliver your rocks, you can use an extender -- a stick with a plastic sleeve on one end which fits over the handle of the rock. A lot of these guys are just deadly with extenders.
Several belong to an Edmonton club of senior curlers with a minimum age of 80 years!
Two of the guys on the team we played against in our final game have limited vision and use binoculars to scope out the house at the other end of the sheet before delivering their rocks.
It's only my second year of curling but I'm doing pretty well (usually as second). I couldn't play except as a spare in most the fall season because of my surgery in mid-October.
But starting this month, I'll play every Tuesday and Friday morning at the Crestwood rink near where we live. And I'll curl some Mondays as a spare at with the City Church Curling League at the Shamrock rink.
In mid-January, my older brother, Garnet, and I will join our younger brother David at a bonspiel at the tiny Seba Beach rink. It's near where David and his partner, Jane, have a menagerie of livestock and dogs on their farm overlooking Wabamun Lake.