Competitons and meals

Wow, what a fun night! Last night, I was at Short Track Speed Skating for the men’s 500m and the men’s 5000m relay. Apollo had the perfect race and skated his way to a gold medal in the 500m. In the last event of the evening, our men’s team won bronze in the 5000m relay. I believe that sport represents a lot of things to a lot of different people. For some, playing organized sports while growing up taught them teamwork, dedication, commitment, and work ethic. For those of us who weren’t as athletically gifted, we developed those skills and characteristics through other venues- for me it was through the military. No matter how gained though, it’s a pretty emotional scene to witness those characteristics come to fruition at the highest level. Patriotism needs something to keep it burning, and National identity at the Olympics seems to work just as well as any other fuel at times.

After lots of jubilation and celebration, we left Palavela arena close to midnight in search of dinner. We stopped in at a little Pizzeria on our way back to the hotel and got a great slice of pizza for 2 euro! As is quite often the case, the place was run by a husband and wife team. They couldn’t speak much English and we couldn’t speak much Italian, so it was a little awkward at first trying to share our enthusiasm with each other (the Italians have done quite well during these Games also!). We stumbled around broken pieces of language for a while until they noticed the U.S. flag on our coats and wanted to know what state we were from. We answered that we came from Colorado and the husband got quite excited and went into a back room. When he returned he came out holding a postcard. After much sign language and laughter, we determined that he collects postcards and wanted us to send him one from Colorado! After the ice was broken with the postcard, we managed to communicate and laugh for quite some time before making our way home. Once again, the hospitality of Torino shone through and we got so much more than just a meal.