Winter Olympics 2014- Valentine's day and Full Moon

Friday, February 14th-

Every four years I actually like Valentine's Day because I get to spend it at the Olympics.  In 2006 I am pretty sure that is the day that I saw Ted Ligety win his gold medal in Super Combined.  Since this is an Olympic year I expected to enjoy the day a little more than usual.  I even planned ahead and brought a box of children's Truth or Dare Valentine's card to give out to those I work with.  I kept hoping someone would pick dare and I would get to hear some cowboy yells or see someone acting like a gorilla.  But if they did I missed seeing it.  I also got to start out my morning with visits from Ryan St. Onge and Don Cook as they prepared for the day and heading up to the mountains to watch women's aerials.  Ryan was on our team and retired after the 2010 Olympics.  It was a lovely way to start my day seeing him.  When Don came by for a park pass we talked about how hard it is to watch someone you love compete and not be able to do anything to help them.  I have never had his experience and I cannot imagine that my nerves for my soccer team in college come close, but it gives me an inkling about how he feels.

Valentine's Day cards

It turned out to be a pretty quiet day overall.  By the time I finished the morning hours I not heard from anyone who would need to meet me at the Park.  I decided to take advantage of the slow day and take a walk along the boardwalk by our hotel.  So far I had not even had time to walk over there during daylight hours.  I am so glad that I took the time.  It is a beautiful view of the Black Sea and the walkways stretches forever with benches here and there along the way.  I had been told that if you walked toward Olympic Park you would eventually hit a point not too far down where you could not go any further.  So I decided to go the other direction.  Since the Radisson was in that direction I was hoping I would get lucky and run into Bonnie Blair out for a run.  From what I had heard, it could happen.  The beach over here is all stone.  I have always enjoyed the sound of water hitting a stone beach ever since my first trip to Nice in 2004.  Since it was not high tide during my walk the sound was not as pronounced but it was still soothing.

View from the walk.

 On the way back I decided to walk on the beach.  I am not sure which is harder, walking on sand or stones.  Neither is easy.  But I enjoyed the walk on the stones much more than all the pavement walking I have been doing.  When I was almost back to the hotel I ran into someone from figure skating who was being brave enough to dip her toes in the water.  I helped her out by taking her picture to prove she did it.  She said that the stones felt good on the bottom of your feet.  I might have to give that a try.

Sparkles on the water.

I found someone's heart on the beach.

 Since I still did not have any requests from families I decided to take my laptop upstairs and watch the slalom run of the combined and the men's cross country race.  I was hoping I could find one on the TV and watch the other on my laptop.  The mistake I made was sitting on my bed.  I ended up crashing and woke up to realize that I had missed most of the USA slalom runs except Bode Miller's.  Result wise I did not miss much, but I would have liked to see the other guys and cheer them along.  My timing was better for the cross country race.  Unfortunately, they do not show much of the Americans in the coverage over here whether I am online or watching TV.  I was laughing to see some of the guys going out in tank tops or knee length instead of full length race suits.  It looked more like one of their spring series races than what you would expect to see in February at the Winter Olympics.

When it was time for Aerials I made myself go sit at the desk so I would not risk falling asleep by accident.  Apparently I was more tired than I realized.  As I was sitting at the desk I noticed that it was almost time for the sunset.  I really wanted to go out to the boardwalk for photos, but I really did not want to miss any of the finals jumps for Ashley and Emily.  I finally decided that I was just going to have to watch from my room so that I could cheer for the girls.  I had already turned down the opportunity to go to men's ski jumping so that I could watch aerials and jumping without missing either one.  This will be Emily's last Olympics, and while I might not be able to attend the event, I did not want to miss seeing her compete.  I was excited to see that Ashley had qualified with the highest score going into the finals.  Finals starts with a round of 12, goes down to 8 and then the last run is the top 4.  Each round is a clean slate, so your previous scores do not help you.  Despite Ashley's placement going into her first jump of finals she had a less than perfect landing.  I watched as she waited for her score with a look of disbelief on her face.  When it came in it was clear that there would not be a next round for Ashley.  I felt so bad for her.  Over the past couple of years she has come back from two ACL surgeries and still fought to have some of the most difficult tricks and make the Olympic team.  A few athletes later and it was time to cheer for Emily.  She had a good first finals jump and made it through to the round of 8.  On the next round Emily had a great jump but her landing was not clean.  Her score kept her from the final 4.  I always say that while I cheer for anyone in USA colors, there are just certain people you want the medal for.  Emily is one of those people.  For 8 years I have watched her work hard, rehab, train continually, volunteer, support her teammates and others and just be the most amazing person you could know.  I wanted to see her finish her Olympic career with a podium.  But she definitely finished with a great jump and a fabulous outlook on life.  I look forward to seeing where things take her next.
 

Sunset from my balcony.

Love that I can see the Sea and Sunset from my room.

 I believe I have mentioned it before, but I get two meals a day with my hotel room.  Breakfast and dinner are prepared for us by USOC chefs.  So I have only sampled some Russian food at event concessions.  But the meals we have received at the hotel have been amazing.  For Valentine's day we had prime rib, shrimp scampi, eggplant, roasted asparagus, lots of hors d'oeuvres, fresh fruit, chocolate mousse cake and chocolate covered strawberries.  It was divine.  I came in late since I had been watching the aerials and many of the tables were full, so I sat at one end of an empty table next to one that had people.  Sarah Konrad came over and sat with me while she had dessert and some wine.  I had chatted with her briefly on other days when our paths crossed, but this was the first time I had a long conversation with her.  I really enjoyed getting to know more about her background and what she is doing now with the USOC and the Athlete Advisory Council.  Sarah actually raced for the US Cross Country team and was on the 2006 Olympic team for Cross Country and Biathlon.  We talked about my experience attending the IOC Women in Sport conference in LA two years ago and how I came back to work ready to instigate getting some women on our board.  This spring we have at least two female athletes running to represent their sports on the board.  It is a small start to getting some more female voices heard.

Before the night ended it got a little bit more chaotic.  I received a message from Nick Goepper's uncle that he had lost his ipad on the bus after the medal celebration.  He had started his travels home and needed help in finding it.  Everyone I asked about lost and found seemed to think he was going to be out of luck.  But Kevin insisted that he has good karma with these things.  We shall see what happens.

Saturday, February 15th-

On my way to bed last night I noticed the moon coming up and wondered if I would be able to see it setting in the morning.  Of course I forgot all about it until I opened the curtains in my room and saw it out the window.  I grabbed my camera and tried a couple shots from the balcony.  But it just was not the photo I was hoping for so I headed for the walkway by the Sea.  The view was much better down there.  It is a toss up, but I think the camera on the phone was doing a better job than my Nikon.  I loved watching the moon slowly sink into the clouds at the horizon.

Morning Moon Set over the Black Sea.

Moon reflection on the Black Sea.

I have finally learned that if there is an alpine race I stand a pretty good chance that the BBC will be covering it.  So at least for those events I can get English commentating so that I do not miss anyone.  This morning was the Women's Super G.  I had the race on my computer so our security guy and I were watching.  Leanne Smith came down second and finished in 1st.  I always wonder if it will hold when they come down so early in the line up.  But one after the other the next racers skied out of the course or fell or slowed before the end.  Eventually Leanne was pushed off the podium, but it took awhile and I was holding out hope that her early run would be a winning one.  In the end the course took out 18 athletes which is just ridiculous.  We also watched the Women's Cross Country relay.  It is a good thing that I am not superstitious about watching or saying that people should watch an event.  If I was I would never be able to watch another Cross Country race.  This was an event that the USA thought they could do well in.  Unfortunately, it was just not their day.  Due to the feed we were watching we did not know if there had been a crash or some technical issue.  We just knew that as Kikkan came in to tag off to her teammate she was in 12th position.  Somewhere during the 2nd or 3rd leg the hotel lost power and internet for a few minutes.  By the time it came back I had no idea where we were.  In the end I got to see Jessie racing in for 9th position.  I love that no matter what, our girls do not give up.  I just wish that it had been a better day for them.

While I was watching the parents of Trevor Jacob arrived.  It was nice to meet them.  I had Trevor as a rookie when he was on the halfpipe team.  Now he is on the SBX team.  They were telling me that they had gotten notice 2 weeks ago that their hotel had been double booked.  Since they went through one of the travel companies it had been dealt with and they ended up in a gorgeous 5 star hotel resort.  Lynn was showing me photos on her phone and they were just beautiful.  Best place to be for a Russian vacation by the sea.

Today was my day for SBX families.  In the afternoon before I left the hotel, Nate Holland's cousin came by to pick up items for their group.  Then at the park I met up with Nick Baumgartner's mom and her niece.  Toward the end of the evening I was able to connect with Alex Deibold's mom and dad.  I think I have now met just about everyone connected to the men's team.  I also met Mac Bohonnon's family (he is an aerialist).  It was a busy afternoon of meeting families at the park, getting them in and giving them a run through of things to see and expect.  While I was connecting with everyone Pamela decided to come back down and meet me.  Since I was already inside the park I had her find me at the P&G House.  While we were chatting outside Ashley Caldwell came by.  I had seen her earlier with Ryan St. Onge when I was helping get park tickets to her parents.  I had given her a big hug and told her how proud I was of her.  But you could tell the results from the night before were still a little raw.  Pamela gave her a huge hug and we stood around chatting.  Since I was waiting on Nate's cousin to come pick up a couple more tickets Pamela and Ashley decided to go walk around a bit.  Neither one of them had been inside the Park before.  By the time they came back I was ready to go walk around with Pamela.  She needed some souvenirs but the line at the Olympic store was too long.  We decided to walk back and check out the USA House shop.  When we got there they had the USA v Russia hockey game on.  When we went up to check out there was only 30 seconds left in the overtime.  All the cashiers were glued to the TV and said they would help us in a moment.  That was fine since we wanted to see the end of the game too.  We ended up checking out between the overtime and the penalty shots.  Then we stuck around longer to see how it turned out.  You could not ask for a more dramatic ending to a hockey game.  I kept laughing though.  My soccer mentality cannot imagine taking that many penalty shots and missing so many.  Usually in soccer we make more than we miss.  It seems in hockey the goalie saves more than the players make.  Before we left we ran into Ron Randall, Kikkan's dad.  I was talking to him about the race and whether something had happened.  He said it just was not Kikkan's day.  No known reason for it.  I am just glad she is okay.  He gave me one of the Kikkan pins that her brother designed and he had made.  I am excited about that one.

 

Some dancers on our walk to USA House

View along our walk.

 Pamela had to head back to the mountains since she was leaving in the morning.  I needed to locate the information area to check on lost and found for Kevin's missing ipad.  We headed for the front.  I really wanted some food and we saw a guy with a hotdog.  We probably scared him when we almost grabbed him to find out where he got it.  Turned out that each section of concession trailer had different foods.  The one toward the end had different kinds of hot dog.  The line was long though so I decided to go search for the ipad.  But first, I had to enjoy the moon rising over the mountains.  It was just too beautiful to be missed.  This was a day made in heaven for someone like me who loves the moon so much.

Moon rising over the mountains.

Gorgeous night in Sochi.

After taking a few photos I resumed the search for the ipad.  I was told in the information tent that they only did lost and found for inside the park.  The ipad had been lost on a bus.  So then I walked out to the bus area to see if one of the volunteers knew about a lost and found for them.  They directed me to the train station information.  I went through security and headed upstairs to the information booth.  The woman at the window sent her colleague out to talk to me.  She told me they did not cover the buses and to go to the ticket office outside.  There was a line so I walked up to some volunteers and asked them about lost and found.  They were great.  Two of them took me around to the far side to a door that had lost and found written on it, but no one was there.  They made some calls and then walked me back to the front side.  One ran in to talk to someone who came out and told me they did not deal with the buses.  I asked if he could find a name and # for the company.  He went in to try but came back unsuccessfully and suggested I go to the bus pick up area, which is where I started.  At this point I was tired and hungry, but I headed back in hopes I could find a volunteer who spoke English.  I ended up with four crowded around me trying to help, but only one who spoke enough English and seemed to know what was going on.  He walked me over to their office trailer and made a call.  No one wherever he called had seen a white ipad.  I left my information and they promised to call if they found it.  I decided that as late as it was my best bet for food would be the hot dog so I went back into the park to get one.  It had an interesting taste but I was starving so it hit the spot.  Maybe tomorrow I will get further in the search for the ipad.

On the walk back Ron Randall caught up with me.  Our hotels are only a few buildings apart from each other.  So we had fun chatting on our way home for the evening.  Sounds like he has a really great situation at their hotel too.  I am glad it is working out for so many of our families.