Hitting the Olympic wall...and then not (but still kinda)

I was all ready to write a blog about how I'd hit the Olympic wall, how I'd gotten to the point in these Games where I was sick and tired of going through the same routine every day, eating the same food, seeing the same people (this happens every time I go to the Olympics...I'm pretty sure I've written about it in previous blogs)...and then I went to the USA-Canada women's hockey gold-medal game.

If you didn't stay up to watch it, the U.S. was losing 2-1 after two periods (we got there midway through the second), and then scored a goal in the third to tie it up. No one else scored in the rest of regulation, and the game went to sudden-death overtime.

The two teams played a hard-fought -- albeit scoreless -- OT period, and it was on to a shootout to decide the winner.

After five rounds of back-and-forth shootout attempts, the game was still tied. Jocelyne Lamoreaux-Davidson was up next for Team USA, and she did this...

https://twitter.com/CBJFrontLine/status/966571980790038528

What a deke (that's a hockey term for when you feint to one side and then go to the other)! The Americans then needed a save from their goalie, and they'd be the gold medalists.

And Maddie Rooney came up huge!

https://twitter.com/OneFanView/status/966573530258296832

Then, it was celebration time.

They're calling it the most exciting event at these Games, and I can't disagree (although I hear the finals of the team sprint free were RIVETING). It sure is the best thing I've seen since I've been here.

I'll admit, I wasn't that excited to go to the game in the first place. To be honest, I don't find women's hockey all that entertaining -- it's too slow, the passing isn't very crisp, there isn't much flow to the game -- but when the two best teams in the world are going toe to toe, with an Olympic gold medal on the line no less, you tend to forgot about your biases and get swept up in the emotion of it all. I know I did.

It doesn't change the fact that I'm still kind of Olympic'd out and I'm very ready to come home, but for a couple of hours at least, I was happy I was still here.

Snack Review

How could I pass these up? For goodness sakes, they have a WHALE on them! Luckily, they weren't flavored like humpback (not that I would know what that tastes like), only shaped like it.

When I opened the bag and smelled these, I immediately thought of ketchup, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. They only tasted faintly like ketchup, though...in fact, I couldn't really tell you what they tasted like. With every bite, I kept trying to come up with something to compare them to, and I kept coming up empty. The best I can do is, they were a little ketchup-y, a little vegetable-y, and reminded me a little of seasoning you'd put on chicken. That probably doesn't sound very appetizing, but these were actually very good, one of my favorite snacks I've had since I've been here.

The only downside was that they left kind of a funny aftertaste, but I won't let that affect the score too much.

Rating: 8.5