GIVE IT A CHANCE MAN!

In recent conversations with some of you, I have come to realize that many of my compadres are not watching the Winter Olympics. I say something like, "Oh, gotta go watch" and you say something like, "Oh, I'm not watching the Winter Olympics. I only like the Summer Olympics."

To those of you who aren't watching I want to say: "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!?!" I don't think you have a clue what you are missing.

Now don't get me wrong. I am not into winter at all as most of you know. And going out into the cold to practice my love of a sport does not offer any excitement for me. However, these Olympics have been fantastic. Here is a quick recap of the favorites in the our house.

Snowboarding (half-pipe) The United States won gold medals in both men's and women's halfpipe. In fact the men won gold and silver and the women won gold and bronze. This is a fantastic sport with tons of young kids who use words like "gnarly" and "twisted" in their post-performance interviews. Shaun White is simply amazing. After falling on his first run, he had to perform perfectly to qualify. He did without needing his second run and took home the gold!

Shaun White "a.k.a 'The Flying Tomato'" wins gold.

Snowboarding (Snowboard Cross) First we watched American Seth Wescott take gold on the men's side in this exciting event which is a lot like motorcross racing on a snowboard. Then we thought we were watching Lindsey Jacobellis take home the gold. Instead, with no one even close, she tried to pull a trick right before she crossed the line and fell, ending up with the silver. Seth Wescott's Swiss girlfriend got the gold instead. I feel horribly for Lindsey. They were already parallelling her to other athletes who made huge sports snaffus.(How do you spell SNAFU?)

Lindsey Jacobellis peforms a trick coming over the last jump that costs her the gold medal.

Men's Pursuit (Biathalon) This is simply an amazing sport. In this Biatholon, you ski and then take "breaks" and shoot a rifle. If you miss, you have to ski an extra lap for each miss! It was absolutely amazing to watch even though the U.S. wasn't anywhere in the medals for this one.

Vincent Defrasne of France out sprinted four time gold medal winner Norway's Ole Einar Bjoerndalen to win the men's 12.5 km event.

There are a lot of other great spots. The luge, the bobsled, figure skating, hockey ... so much fun to watch. The only sports I don't particular find fascinating: ice dancing and curling. In ice dancing, each group gets up and performs what appears to be a flawless routine that looks identical to the group before them. I can't figure out what is good or what is bad. Curling is the strangest sport I have ever seen. It looks like they are being given a medal for properly cleaning ice. However, are there are good things about these two events: they provide some time for me to do the dishes (Maytag is STILL sick) while they are on.

And I didn't even mention the DRAMA especially in men's short track and long track. It is seriously a soap opera out there and it would take me at least three episodes to explain it all to you.

So for those of you who haven't been tuning in, I say, GIVE IT A CHANCE MAN! JB and I have already decided that one thing we want to do before we die is attend either the Summer or Winter games somewhere. It is awesome to see such pride in homelands.

GIVE IT A CHANCE MAN!