Day 11

Duluth in the morning. We agreed the ice was good and some hardened competition kept us focused on the games.
John Shuster, fresh off a plane, turned up to see the game. It was an honour for us that he was there, and important for us that Sandy, our mascot got his photo taken with this three-times Olympian. Joe Polo, bronze at Sochi 2014, also came to support his countrymen: that’s quite a line-up of big names and an honour to us Scots.
Ninety minutes by coach and we were in Curl Mesabi which serves the quad-cities of Evelith, Gilbert, Mountain Iron and Virginia. Dennis Jorgensen, his family and a battalion of volunteers had everything in place for us including sprigs of white heather on the tables. Moose milk was the tot at stacking-of-brooms: what else would you expect up here!
At each session we were led on to the ice by a pair of the oldest active playing members, the oldest being 93. President Phil Drobnick made the formal welcome at dinner and recalled successful visits by Eve Muirhead, Tom Brewster and other Scots.
Our choir was, frankly, not up to even its recent standard. To counter that we had musical entertainment from two female singers well into the evening. Albert Middler was seen dancing while carefully calculating the number of rotations he’d need to finish where he thought he should.
Continuing the light-hearted theme, Dennis Jorgensen presented a heifer to our mascot Sandy, the Highland bull in the hope that from now on he would be more likely to stay at ‘home’.
This was just one in a succession of great days for our Tour for which we owe so much to our hosts.