(ABC 6 News) – With the weather getting colder, some people are likely looking for things to do inside — including me.

Down in Texas, the only kind of ice we have to deal with come winter is the kind that shuts down the roads for a couple days.

Here in Minnesota, though, ice isn’t just a part of life.

For some, it’s a way of life.

In Owatonna, at the Steel County Fairgrounds, I got my first taste of curling with the local club.

Five days a week, members from across southeast Minnesota, and even up to the Twin Cities, travel to the dedicated ice of the almost 60 year old club.

Which, apparently, is a big deal.

“Dedicated ice is ice that’s specifically for curling,” says Owatonna Curling Club President Kim Swanson. “With that, we can prepare the ice specifically for curling and have it that way all the time.”

Kim has been curling for about 14 years, and for my first ever visit, just before the rest of the club shows up, she’s my teacher.

Learning curling starts by learning the equipment, beginning with the most obvious.

Curling ice requires a certain level of care to maintain, giving clubs like those in Rochester or Austin which play on arena ice some difficulty in having a consistent field.

The ice has to be as flat as possible to start with and, just like arena ice, kept as cold as possible so it remains level.

Arenas typically used for ice skating or hockey are often full of people that mess with the internal humidity, which, coupled with constant use of a Zamboni, can create uneven pockets not suitable for curling.

Curling ice also requires a layer of water droplets that freeze into “pebbles”, looking similar to the surface of an orange. The curling stone, a 40+pound of granite with a handle attached, travels along those pebbles.

The pebbles provide less direct contact to the bottom of the stone than just flat ice would, reducing friction and allowing the stone to travel further and in a curve-like path, or “curl.”

Then, there’s the brooms.

Contrary to what I initially thought, the brooms also help the stone travel farther, rather than slow it down.

“It melts the top of the pebble a little bit and reduces the friction between the rock and the ice to keep it moving a little bit further,” Kim said.

Kim gave me a chance to try it out for myself. She showed me the proper form, staying as low as possible and pushing off hard with your dominant foot to gain speed.

Curlers wear a special pair of shoes, one with a rubber sole for gripping the ice and the other with a Teflon sole for sliding.

Balance is a key part of proper form, and it’s much harder to do for the very first time than you might expect.

Despite how it might look on TV, for the uninitiated curling is actually quite difficult. Olympic athlete or no, curling is one of the most misunderstood winter sports, if people know what it is at all.

Only three team positions and one simple goal, be the closest to the center, betray the amount of strategy and physicality needed to be successful.

Tiny movements of the hand while throwing to get the perfect amount of curl…

Planning out each rock in advance to potentially block your opponents…

There’s a reason it’s known as a chess on ice.

By the time I’ve tried my hand at throwing and sweeping, I’m surprisingly exhausted and more impressed with the Olympic curling team than I already had been.

Eventually, I made way for the experts.

About 120 people make up the curling club, with all levels of skill.

On the league night I sat in on, most have been curling for at least several years.

Drake Simonson, a younger curler in his 30s, is a resident of Owatonna, working for the city’s parks and rec department.

He got his first taste of curling in high school, but it wasn’t until after he came home from college that he started doing it more regularly.

“My father-in-law’s been curling for numerous years and he asked me to jump on and sub for one year,” Drake said after he and his team had finished their game for the night. “Then come on the next year as a full time team member.”

Others in the group have been curling for decades.

Rob Hawkins, of Mantorville Township, first started playing in Rochester back in the ’90s.

“There was a group of guys and we actually went down and we curled at the Rochester club,” he said. “It wasn’t serious curling, it was arena ice so it wasn’t very good, but we had a blast.”

When the Rochester club originally folded in 2001, Rob ended up joining a team at the Owatonna club, remaining there ever since.

Regardless of the their level of experience, however, for all involved one of the biggest draws is the camaraderie the sport offers.

“Curling is a really social sport and so it’s just a really great community of folks,” said Kim. “I really enjoy being around the people that curl. It’s really nice to have an outlet to just come and be social and have a great time and have some competition as well.”