Another Slice

My Favorite Flag

All sorts of stories from the Winter Olympics.

Definitely, my favorite flag is the one from Croatia. So far, they’ve won a silver in the men’s super-combined (alpine), which Bode Miller won. (Super-combined is one run of downhill, one run of slalom. It used to have 2 slalom runs, but they’ve shortened it. Probably just to save time.) And a bronze in the men’s biathlon 10K sprint.

Anyway, the flag reminds me of the 1959 movie The Mouse That Roared. Peter Sellers in multiple roles, the duchy of Grand Fenwick declaring war of the USA and subsequently invading. Their flag looks nothing like Croatia’s, but what the heck?

Croatia, you might remember, was one of the two large countries subsumed under the rubric “Yugoslavia,” by Marshall Tito after World War II. (The other country being Serbia.) Two sub-sets in one nation built out of seven historic countries, with different languages and even different alphabets. And plenty of age-old grudges.

Anyway, the only one of them that I think of, when it comes to winter sports (other than sniper fire) is Slovenia, which struck me the one and only time I was ever there, as sort of a lower-elevation set for The Sound Of Music. very pretty sub-alpine place.

Hope you’re enjoying watching the Olympics. Vancouver, not surprisingly, is doing a fantastic job as host city.

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Let it snow…

So they’ve had to cancel training for the men’s downhill at the Olympics. Rain, sleet, etc.

Some friends went up there a few weeks ago– albeit for free– and were greeted with rain at the bottom, freezing high winds at the top. And I thought to myself: Sounds like Stowe!

Anyway, back here in Colorado, we haven’t had an epic winter thus far. (And I bought a new snowblower this past fall. I should’ve saved my money.) But at least it hasn’t rained. You have no idea what rain can do to “dampen” the collective spirits in a ski resort.

Tomorrow morning I’ll probably have to console myself with a mere 6 inches of fresh snow on Aspen Mountain, or out at Snowmass.

I might even wind up, if I dip into the trees, looking a bit like the guy in the picture. He looks like he could do with a hot chocolate.

Speaking of which, I was driving down my street the other day, and there was a guy walking down the street with his back to me, walking really stiffly. And I mentioned to my wife, “This guy looks really cold.”

And we drove by, and it turned out to be a neighbor who’s a ski instructor, dressed in civvies.

And the reason he was walking so stiffly was because he’d had hernia surgery the day before. And he said that he was planning to be back teaching in a few more days.

A Few More Days! Imagine that! I don’t know much about medicine, but that’s pretty incredible. Years ago, I had a roommate who had hernia surgery, and he was laid up for months! (Granted, his may have been more severe, and he wasn’t exactly a world-class athlete, but still…)

So whatever the mess our health-care system is in, at least sometimes they can actually heal you!

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Maybe it’s time to head down to the lanes.

Now that the Super Bowl is out of the way (as well as, locally, the Winter X-Games), I get a chance to withdraw from spectator sports for a while. Til baseball’s spring training, at least.

Not being much of a fan of basketball or hockey (on TV), the only sports I’m likely to tune into are maybe the new Hank Haney series with Ray Romano. Not that I’ll know when they’re on. I’ll have to check with Number One Son, who’s always watching The Golf Channel.

The topic of TV sports reminded me of a conversation I once had with a neighbor, who used to actually compete at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, French Open, etc. (In tennis… obviously.)

Anyway, since she retired from world-class tennis, she’s taken up golf with an equal passion and dedication. And we were talking once, about something or other, and I happened to mention that I don’t watch golf on TV. And she was not exactly aghast, but close. She then said, “And I suppose you don’t watch tennis on TV, either?”

And I countered with something like, “What would happen if I happened to have a brother who was a professional bowler? Should I expect you and everybody else we know to watch bowling?”

Spectator sports are fine, when all you want is to be a spectator. (I definitely would’ve felt like that, if I’d lived in ancient Rome and you’d given me the choice of either participating in or simply watching gladiator fights.)

Bowling strikes me as definitely more fun to do, then to watch. (Even if the beer was free.) Likewise, golf.

That’s just my personal take.

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Does Toyota Make Trains?

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Superpipe

Just in case you’ve never actually seen an X-Games monster halfpipe.

In this case, referred to as a “Superpipe,” here’s a photo taken from the bottom, looking up toward the start house. Those little ant-like creatures in the middle are a competitor and a hand-held cameraman following her. (The camerman is 22 feet below those folks you can see standing on the lip, to his left.)

And as with any snow event, it’s a heckuva lot scarier in real life, whether you’re at the top looking down, on even standing up on the lips at either side.

Though I’ve always found this strange: Ski slopes themselves always seem steeper and more difficult when you’re standing on them in the summer, when it’s just rocks and weeds, and looking down and imagining having to negotiate your way down. Once there’s a nice blanket of snow, however big the moguls are, it seems a lot easier. Strange.

The X-Games organizers put on a new competition this year, at the tail end of Sunday night: They selected 6 guys (skiers, not boarders) and had them just try to see who could get the highest (above the lip on either side). No tricks, no style points, just height. All they had to do was jump real high, then land clean– no hands, no butt slides.

The winner, Peter Olenick (from just down the road in Carbondale), posted a jump of 24 feet, 11 inches. (And that’s not from the bottom, inside the pipe. That’s from the lip, which is 22 feet above the bottom, inside. And remember: It’s built on a ski run, so the whole thing’s tilted… down… severely. Yikes.)

And did I mention that the surface is as hard as a skating rink? So you have to be able to ride a flat ski on your way up, then grab an edge real quick when you land. Obviously, you’re not going in there with standard recreational skis.

You’re not required to do this, when you come out to visit.

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