Vancouver 2010

As winter wears on we get to relish in the Olympics games of 2010, the culmination of 4 years of trash talking between Scandinavian countries vying for the title of best ice sweeper - aka curling. But seriously I love the Olympics. There's nothing better than competing the top athletes around the world in sports that I would never even have known existed if it weren't for 2 weeks of games every 4 years. My favorite the biathlon - which blends two otherwise contradictory events into a cross county skiing and rifling competition. I little history: the biathlon was actually created in the early 19th century when a Swedish man would ski from bar to bar hustling owners for drinks in target shooting. Well I might have made that up... but it sounds about right. As much as a joke, I really do get into the event. I was on the edge of my seat this weekend watching these athletes ski as fast as they could to the shooting range and without time to wipe the saliva dripping from their mouth, shoot at a target 50 meters away. The saliva was gross but it was impressive to watch them work so hard to ski and then steady themselves enought to shoot a rifle with pinpoint precision. Another thrilling event is speed skating... go Apolo Ohno! Its almost like a Nascar race - where the best part is the crash. This was especially true this year because Apolo won silver because of a crash ahead of him. And my secret joy is the figure skating. I will admit that I watch this intently because I find it so amazing that you can toss a tiny little girl in the air and she lands perfectly on one leg like its nothing. I couldn't do that on carpet, let alone ice. The only thing that makes me mad is USA never gets a medal in couples skating. Why is that? Maybe its because when someone asks an American if they can toss them into the air spinning like a frisbe and land on ice they say... not thanks I'd rather go golfing. Smart.