Five words: hip, hip, hurray Hannah Kearney, Torn Slatterns and Nugget Ranchers


At the Vancouver Winter Olympics, I loved the Biathlon, which combines cross-country skiing and shooting, or as they also call it: a Minnesota Drive-bye.

The Biathlon was close right up until the Frenchman heard gunshots, then there was no catching him.

The only other winter event that combines it's sport with gun-play - besides the NBA - is Curling where the spectators often try to kill themselves out of sheer drunken boredom.

Be honest, when you heard men's mogul silver medalist, Australian Dale Begg-Smith, has made a fortune in Spam, how many hoped his results would get wiped out by a Spam-generated computer glitch?

This is a bit of a scary time in New York City, on the heels of a huge winter storm, it is Fashion Week, so, please, do not stack up the super models for cord wood.

Since you asked:

One of my favorite things so far in the Olympics? Being a dad of a girl on a cute but kick-ass soccer team, it has been an inspiration how pretty girls can flat rock a sport and still be sweet and cute.

In the women's moguls, Hannah Kearney hauls and jumps and flies courageously down the mountain and after, we see her little tips of her pig tails curled up on the outside of her helmet. (see: above)

For some reason it reminds me of the story when I watched the little girl ski race in Grand Targhee, Montana. A loud cheer goes up the mountain for one competitor who seemed to be going too slow to deserve such a hearty roar. Turns out she was a little blond six-year-old blind skier who was being guided from behind by her instructor with a harness and shouts of "Left" and "Right."

It was so moving - not a dry eye on the mountain - that I yanked out my phone to call my own six-year-old daughter, Ann Caroline, to tell her all about it, ending with:

"It is really important to appreciate what we have."

At Parents Night at school a week later, I see that Ann Caroline was so moved by this story, she drew a crayon picture of the girl, complete with blond pig tails coming out of her helmet, her instructor, almost exactly as I had described, and it was posted on the wall. Plus Ann Caroline had added a caption sort of based on what I told her, but a tad different than; "It is really important to appreciate what we have."

Ann Caroline wrote of the tiny little blind girl bravely skiing through the slalom gates:

"My Dad said it is really important for blind people to appreciate what they have, because they could be deaf too."

This explains why the teacher looked at me funny when I walked in.