Athletes Feat

“Watch out! That ice is really slippery, Jen.”

Like so many Olympic couch potatoes, I am really going to miss the Sochi winter games.  Not only were they a much-needed tonic for the February blahs, but they were such great conversation starters, especially with total strangers.  After all, there’s nothing like the national camaraderie that comes from sharing OUR victories when WE’VE performed as well as WE have.  All thirty-five million of US.

But now that the athletes have blazed a trail through Sochi and gold has been safely returned to the Canadian women’s and men’s hockey teams, it’s time to get back to our own lives and rekindle our passions and enthusiasm for … for … I’m sorry, what the hell were we doing before the Olympics started?  Oh yeah, that’s right:  paying for Christmas.

Well I, for one, am not going to be able to get the thrill of alpine competition out of my psyche that easily.  Take my walk home yesterday; the sidewalk was a lunar surface of slush and ice so I stepped into the road to find a dry patch to walk on, only to land directly onto a vast expanse of black ice.

As my feet started back-pedalling, my arms flailing out to the sides to stop myself from plummeting onto my back, I summoned the authoritative voice of skip Jennifer Jones of our Canadian curling team.  But rather than barking strategic commands at myself, like “FLAIL HARDERRRR!” or “DON’T DIIIIIE!”, my autopilot response system kicked in, offering its only emergency vernacular, “SH#T!  SH#T!  SH###T!!”

Of course, I was blasting Pharrell Williams “Happy” into my eardrums at the time, giving my words that stadium-shrieking decibel count that, in true Olympic fashion, garnered its fair share of public attention.  But let’s face it; that kind of athleticism really does warrant a little spectator admiration.

And she sticks the landing!