Tag Archives: news

Feb25

A Little About the Olympics

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The games of the Twenty-fifth Winter Olympiad are all in the books now. I didn’t get to watch as much as I wanted to. I vastly prefer the winter games to the summer games. To me, they are just more exciting, and I just like the separate events more. For example, I love the sliding events! I also think some of these athletes are nuts. Now bobsled isn’t so bad. Two man or four man, everybody is enclosed in a vehicle. Speed is crazy, but if they crash, they have something around them. Then there’s skeleton and luge. These people have a death wish. Let’s get on a tiny sled that our bodies barely fit on and go hurtling down a track at ridiculous speeds just a couple of inches off the icy surface. They steer by wiggling their bodies. They are insane. Hit an imperfection in the ice the wrong way and get launched off the tiny sled and onto the track where your only protective gear is a nice helmet and a glorified leotard.

Luge isn’t any better. Let’s flip over and ride the tiny sled on our backs feet first down the track. Same wild speeds, same gear. This time they are just feet first. I remember being little and watching luge for the first time for the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics. I thought then that these people were crazy and the speeds have only increased since then. What’s more, luge has a DOUBLES event where TWO people are on the tiny sled screaming down the track. Now I don’t know or pretend to know these athletes’ sexual proclivities, but just looking at doubles luge seems to me the participants have to know each other, if not biblically, then at least very, very well.

Speaking of athletes’ sex lives, everyone lives for two weeks in the giant Olympic Village. Now this is a place where it is at least whispered about graphic and sordid things happening. Now I’m not sure how quiet the whispers are since they athletes are all provided a lot of condoms as part of their welcome package to the facility. I may be wrong, but I just picture the whole building as a giant fraternity house at a party college. It’s like Sodom and Gomorrah in there! Now I understand the attraction. After all, these are mostly a group of young people at the peak of their physical conditioning. Adrenaline and hormones are all swirling through the air. The atmosphere is exciting. I suppose it’s no wonder one thing doesn’t lead to another. These things happen.

Leaving sex behind, another favorite event, and a decidedly unsexy one at that, is curling. This game of glorified shuffleboard on ice just amazes me. I have but a slight comprehension of the rules, but the mechanics of the game are fascinating. One person in an elegant sliding motion sends a specially made stone down the icy path then starts screaming at two people with space age type “brooms” to sweep a line in front of the rock that makes it curve or go straight faster as the people want it to. I’m amazed at the stones themselves. I saw and episode of How It’s Made on Discovery Channel showing the only quarry of granite in the world where all curling stones originate from. The main body of the stone comes from one type of granite, while the small disc on the bottom is a second also special type of granite of another color. Maybe I’m just a nerd, but it’s heady stuff to me.

Even Budge likes curling. Back when we had cable, we found a sports channel that featured some curling matches so we got to watch outside the Olympics. I didn’t get all the details, but apparently, there was a spot of controversy at the games this year. Seems allegations of cheating were being leveled at certain teams by other teams. Whether or not it was true, I still think it’s a little funny to see the stuffy curler getting upset about the very gentlemanly game.

Budge’s favorite events are the ski events of any type except moguls, and figure skating. I find this amusingly strange. On the one hand, she loves to watch people hurtle down a mountain, but at the same time, adored the elegance and style of figure skating. One of her most enjoyed events, and one she has expressed a desire to do, is ski jumping. She finds it amazing how, for a brief time, these athletes are flying, practically flying, through the air. I told her she was welcomed to try and I would support her from the sidelines, because I’m old enough to remember ABC’s Wide World of Sports and their example of the “agony of defeat” was a ski jumper absolutely wiping out on the launch ramp. That’s all I need to know about the sport.

The other skiing events are pretty wild, too. Downhill skiers are about as crazy as the sliders. The downhill athletes go screaming down the mountains through curves and small jumps while reaching speeds that would be illegal on most highways in my home state. I know the big story of the games, at least the early part, was Lindsay Vonn’s comeback attempt ending in bitter tragedy with her terrifying crash on her first run. To me, she had no business trying to compete anyway. I understand the desire to get out and recapture that greatness, but honestly, downhill skiing is a young person’s sport and she’s over forty. She did survive the crash, but she credits the doctors and surgeons with saving her leg in the aftermath.

Still, Budge’s heart is set on figure skating before anything else. She watched the competition on her iPad every night it aired. She enjoys Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir’s commentary as much as she does the skating. She has studied the jumps and such and has a pretty good grasp of the rules. I, on the other hand, am at a total loss as to what’s going on out there. I have no idea what makes a Lutz different from a Salchow, or what a combination is supposed to look like. I know the judges are a finicky and picky lot of lemon suckers. I think no judge from a country whose skater is on the ice should be allowed to judge that skater. It’s too much temptation. I know they throw out the top and bottom score, but still. I enjoy watching the various iterations of the skating as long as I get to watch it with Budge. It makes her so happy, she smiles.

One last event she and I both enjoy is the biathlon. Now that’s a sport. Let’s ski cross country up and down hills and valleys, and over various obstacles. That’s going to get the old heart rate up and moving. Then, when were sucking in air like our lungs are going to sue us for nonsupport, we’ll stop and take a rifle and shoot at a little bitty target a good ways away while standing. I think those are some supreme athletes.

Anyway, I hate that the winter games only happen every four years. It’s the only time the sports I really enjoy are televised. I guess in Europe they have sports shows that feature luge, skeleton, and bobsled, but here in America we miss out. So in any event, stay warm, know that I love you all, and keep your feet clean!

Oct25

October Thoughts

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Hard as it is to believe, October is almost gone. Halloween is in a week and spooky season is done for another year. Now, it may come as a surprise, but I don’t really like October much. The tenth month has historically been hard on me for various reasons.

First, when I was eight years old, I got a promise in October that was supposed to be life changing. I waited for forty years, but the promise never came. I still think about it every now and then, but I’ve long since resigned myself to it having just been a pipe dream. I would have been nice though. I’ve lost several people in October, too. Papa John died in October. I’ve had some former students pass in October. It’s been just enough bad stuff for the month to put a sour taste in my mouth.

It’s a shame really, because it’s a beautiful time of years. The temps start dropping, the leaves start changing, and the sky takes on that hue that reminds everyone everywhere that God is a University of North Carolina fan. Granny Wham loved October. When I was little, we used to go to the mountains in October and see the leaves changing. We’d pack a lunch and stop beside the road to eat fried chicken.

This October, though, hasn’t done anything to move up in my esteem. It all started with my first hurricane experience. Hurricane Helene hit Greenville right square in the mouth. Back in 1989, we thought Hugo was going to hit either Greenville or Charlotte. It looked like Greenville, but, as the unpredictable storms will often do, it turned at the last minute and devastated downtown Charlotte. Not this year though. We took wind and rain right on the chin. All around us, people had monster trees down in their yards. Roads were impassable for days until trees cleared out, and power was a thing of the past.

Bad as we got it here, however, it was nothing compared to the devastation western North Carolina and middle Tennessee took. They were hit with landslides and flooding. Several small towns are just gone — wiped off the map by raging floodwaters and mudslides down the mountains. Parts of the city of Asheville just washed away. Major highways aren’t there anymore, having washed down the side of the mountain. Life is pretty much back to normal for us down here, except for some cleanup, but up there, places still don’t have power or water.

We were blessed and cursed in the storm. The actual storm caused extremely small amounts of damage to our home. We had a yard full of sticks and leaves, but none of our trees came down even as homes all around us lost trees enormous in size, some of which still haven’t been cleaned up because of the backlog of work tree companies have as well as the prohibitive cost of cleaning up a huge tree.

We also had some bad stuff happen to us though. The second night, we were without power and it was stuffy in the house so we raised the porch window all the way up to let maximum air flow in. Bob, our biggest, if youngest, cat took the opportunity to blow through the screen and run out into the night. That was bad enough, but he did come back a few hours later and hop back in the window and announce he wanted breakfast. Unfortunately, for reasons only she knows, our timid little girl Mavis followed him out the window. She was the last of our brood we would have figured to do such a thing, but she did, and she has not shown a hair since that night. She has a full set of claws and teeth and is an excellent hunter based on how well she stalks and catches mice in the house, but she only has one eye. We are slowly loosing hope that she’ll come back and it’s especially hard not knowing what’s happened to her, but we do have friends who encourage us that cats are funny and she may still turn up. We can only hope.

Just about the time we got power back from the storm, I started to feel a tingling sensation in the heel of my left hand. A bump rose up and I thought it was just a pimple, so I took a razor knife to it. It didn’t disappear, however, and was joined by several more lesions that looked more than anything like chicken pox. They also burned and ached like fire. I went to the urgent care center and got the bad news — shingles. I’ve dreaded shingles ever since I turned fifty because I knew I was a prime candidate for them, having had a massive case of chicken pox in first grade.

By the end of the week, I had lesions on both sides of my hand, up my fingers, and in the spots between my fingers. It looked pretty gnarly and the pain and ache went all the way up my left arm. The urgent care doctor gave me Valtrex anti-herpes drugs since shingles and herpes are in the same viral family, but she didn’t give me anything for pain, since, God forbid someone actually need pain meds. Oh no! It’ll always lead to opioid addiction. I had some oxycodone from a back strain and Budge had some from her facial pain back in March so I limped along on those. I’m pretty much back to normal now, but my left index finger is still as numb as novocained teeth. The lesions are drying up and disappearing. I have to wait 90 days to get the vaccine, but guaranteed, I will. I wouldn’t wish these things on my worst enemy.

That’s my thoughts on October, but before I go, I’d like to talk to y’all briefly about the blog. I know I don’t put out the amount of content I once did. It’s hard for me to come up with ideas I think y’all want to read about. I don’t get many comments — maybe one every six months. So I’ve started to wonder if maybe 12 or so years is long enough and maybe it’s time to shut ‘er down. What do you, my readers, think? Is there a reason to keep writing? Is there something you’d like me to visit or even revisit? I’d love to know.

So until next time, love y’all and keep your feet clean.