Olympics Bucket List

When I was little, I promised myself that one day I would attend an event at the Olympics.  I have always enjoyed the Olympics, and I still hope that someday I'll have the opportunity to see some sort of Olympic event live and in person.

I hadn't shared this Bucket List item with Little Smoot, so I thought it was interesting that as we were watching the opening ceremonies she said, "I hope we can go to the Olympics someday."

Well, here we are, several days into the events, and I'm starting to think that not only should I aim for watching the Olympics, maybe I should actually try to be a participant.

I enjoyed lunch with my good friend John this afternoon, and while we were eating, Olympic Curling was on the TV at our our favorite chicken wing joint.  It didn't take us long to decide that this was an event in which we could realistically compete.

Curling involves taking long strands of otherwise straight hair and heating it to the point where it takes on a new shape.  Ooops!  Wrong Wikipedia page.

Ah.  Here we go.  The sport of Curling is basically like playing shuffleboard on an ice rink.  You have this big stone thing that you whisk down the ice, aiming for a target a hundred or so feet (or meters, or hectacres, some such thing) away.  Your goal is to get as close to the target as possible, and you're allowed to bonk your opponents' stones out of the way.

Oh, and for some reason which neither of us could quite fathom, after the initial person launches the stone, a team of other people run off in front of it and sweep the ice with brooms.  We're a little unclear about the purpose of that whole thing.  Maybe the audience is full of rude people who throw litter onto the rink or something.

Anyway, we decided that it doesn't appear that this particular "sport" involves a heck of a lot of physical prowess, and therefore we should be Olympians.  As my friend John noted, "I can't imagine they could possibly turn too many people away who show an interest in being on the American team."

So look for us in the 2014 Olympics, which are slated to be held in Russia of all places.  I would expect that we'll fare very well, and will undoubtedly be overwhelmed with endorsement deals from broom companies and whatnot.