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Ollie, Ollie, Triple Lutz
So, I might have said I wasn’t going to watch anything “Olympic” this year. A good friend asked, “Not even the women’s hockey?” Well, maybe women’s hockey. But the truth of the matter is I haven’t watched women’s hockey, yet. But on Saturday evening, LOML and I poured ourselves a wee drink, filled a bowl with Chicago Mix and flipped through the entire selection on Netflix before we decided we weren’t in the mood for a movie, or a documentary, for that matter. Suddenly we found ourselves watching Slopestyle Snowboarding. Yeah, yeah, you read that right. A couple of old farts watching snowboarding. Not exactly believable, but if you haven’t watched it you don’t get to say “say what?”. Anyhow, instead of a movie and some tasty treats, we spent our Saturday evening watching a bunch of crazy kids careen down hills with a board strapped to their feet. This isn’t the first time we’ve been lured and hooked by a Backside 1440 or a Backside Rodeo Flip. The thing is, we aren’t quite sure what it is about snowboarding we find so fascinating. It’s not like we’re kicking-the-tires and trying to decide if it’s something we’d consider doing. Nope. And this isn’t our first “rodeo”. We watched snowboarding before and actually look forward to seeing the young “old hands”. Heck, we even know a “hand drag” when we see one. Oh, yeah! These old dogs may not be about to hit the slopes, but we do get a kick out of watching.
And so it is. LOML and I have become couch surfers. Sometimes we laugh about how wild it would be for either one of us to take up the sport. It would be a hoot—me, being terrified of falling, and he being a bit of a klutz when the going gets slippery. The funny thing is, as excited as we are now about the sport, way back in the day we scoffed at someone suggesting that anything “snowboard” was a sport. How could something a bunch of young daredevils do be anything remotely sport-like? It wasn’t until the earlier 2000s, we landed on a taping of the Winter X Games. Oh boy! We were fascinated by the sheer audacity and cheek of those kids: Torstein Horgmo, then Mark McMorris, Travis Rice, Kevin Pierce and Shaun White. Don’t get me wrong, we don’t go looking for the Winter X Games. We don’t put the upcoming events in our calendars. We don’t keep scoresheets or collect trading cards with the likes of these crazy young athletes, but we do get a kick out of watching them.
And then? Well, and then the Olympic Men’s Slopestyle event was over. A 17-year-old (I’ve got socks older than Red Gerard) from the USA won it handily. But LOML and I still had Chicago Mix in the bowl and decided that we could be convinced to watch a taping of curling. Curling we’ve done. It wasn’t a pretty sight, but we’ve curled. Heck, we even understand how to make the darn stone curl. Let’s just say there’s nothing like a Canadian Mixed Curling Team showing the world how the game is played. No Backside Rodeo Flips, but what’s not to love about burning a rock. It’s something, apparently, I was very good at doing and I was also excellent at over-delivering. Ah, the Winter Olympic Games. I’ve said it before, I’m not going to watch any of it this year. Psst! Did you see Moir and Virtue? Me either.
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