Kage Baker always enjoyed the Winter Olympics.
Me, not so much. I tended to read and knit while she gasped at the ski jumpers and swooned over the beauty of the figure skaters. Her favourite events were men’s speed skating; which, she cheerfully admitted, won her heart for sheer male pulchritude.
She liked Olympic swimmers even better. Michael Phelps delighted her. I wish she’d seen the 2012 Summer Games …
I never did care about them much, Summer or Winter. Until the winter Kage died; when I suddenly needed distraction and company as I had not in my entire life. I watched damn near everything of the 2010 Winter Games, with Kimberly – an actual fan – to explain the more esoteric events to me. Like the differences in all the varied figure skating. Or the weird vocabulary of snowboarders. I don’t know how she knows all this stuff, but its an aspect of our family – when something interests one of us, we learn everything we can about it. Kimberly likes ice dancing and half-pipe …
Anyway, Dear Readers, that’s what I’ve mostly done this week. The strange tales of Sochi have utterly captured my attention, not to mention amusing me beyond all reason. So I’m not writing much. But I wanted to check in and assure all and sundry that I am here and fine.
Also, I urge you all to check out some of the Olympics. If you are not at all into winter sport – even such gentle ancient skills as curling – at least take a look at the blogs about the hotels and local politics. It’s hysterical. And, with all these genuinely talented athletes making the best of inadequate housing and peculiar venues, it’s heart-warming as well. It takes more than killer ski slopes, duplex toilets and trapping the US bobsled pusher in his own bathroom to get the Olympians down.
That’s a good lesson. I can testify to that.
Kathleen, Kage and the Company 
The trapping of an American pairs BOBSLED pusher…
Pairs luge is not pushed, but pulled off grips and then paddled.
And it wasn’t hard, his *other* job was playing football for the NFL & CFL…..breaking through cardboard & veneer doors likely wasn’t as tough as blocking drills.
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Thanks for the correction, Mark: I meant bobsled. It was bobsled in my head … somehow, it came out at my fingertips as “luge”. Very weird.
Oh, I’m sure it wasn’t difficult to get through the door. It’s the mere idea, that he got stuck in the bathroom by a shoddy door in the first place. The inconveniences of the Olympic Village get a little more peculiar every day. And funnier, at least to me.
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And thinking about funny & luge…
Did you see this Canadian commercial?
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Enjoying your posts, Kate, and yes, we too have become big Winter Olympic watchers since Vancouver here, in 2010. And no, I’m not Canadian, but live here, and it was uplifting to see the country’s pride in their athletes. Go Canada, go!
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it’s splendid, too, to see how the participating athletes support one another. You expect to see team members cheering one another one on: but it’s especially wonderful to see literal competitors from different countries embracing and cheering for their friends in a mutual discipline.
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Mark – yep, and it cracked me up. Have you seen the outfits the NBC commentators on the early-AM-in Los Angeles shift have been wearing? Pink suits, jewelled collars … amazing.
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