Closed down the Patch

On Wednesday night, Garrett and I went to see the World Men's Curling Championship. We used our free tickets from helping with the bar promotion last week. We went early to the 7:30 draw and had dinner at the Keith's Patch, which is a glorified beer garden, the likes of which I have only seen in Alberta. Other examples of said large, concert-like beer gardens include at the Calgary Stampede and the Edmonton's Capital Ex. In any case, Wednesday night was Celtic Night so we thought we would be able to get some Irish food for dinner. Silly us. The 'Food of the World' turned out to be American: corned beef, scalloped potatoes and vegetables. Mmmm...pass. We ended up eating the oh-so-exciting 'Jumbo Dog', also known in other locations as a normal hotdog and more commonly found at a reasonable price.

The draw started at 7:30 so we found our seats up in the near-nose bleed section. I say 'near', because there was another level up that we could have been sitting in. But I shouldn't complain about free tickets. There were four games going on at once, however we focused mainly on the Canada/USA game and the Finland/Norway games, since they were the closest to us and were being televised by TSN, thus the highlights were on the big screen. Plus, both of these games were very close in score and so were more interesting. I won't describe much of the game in detail, because it would be boring in text (although curling is fun and exciting!) but we had a good time and enjoyed the high level of skill these curlers displayed. There was also a huge upset in the Canada/USA game when the US took 3 points in the last end to win the game. That was the first game that Canada lost, actually.

After the game we went to the Keith's Patch with a couple of friends. There was a Celtic band playing called McCuaig, who were really awesome because the lead singer played the bagpipes. While they played we had a drink or two with our friends, chatting and laughing. When the band was done, we looked around and realized that nearly everyone else was gone and we had basically shut down the place! Time to head home and end a fun night.