Look, up in the sky!

A few days ago, Everen told me you could drop a bag of clothes off at the front desk in the morning and they would launder them for you, free of charge. He did warn me that when you came back that night, you'd find your clothes hanging from various places in your room.

Yesterday I found myself running low on certain essential items, so I crammed as many pairs of socks and underwear, and shirts into a bag and left it at the front desk. When I returned to my room, this is what I found...

I mean, they laid my (brightly colored) socks individually on the TV stand, on the table, on the hangers to dry. They put my underwear on hangers and hung them from this ceiling feature I've got in my room.

How can you not love these people?

After the skating event got done yesterday, I went over to the MPC for a press conference. While I was there, I ran into a colleague who told me she was going to cover aerials that night and that I should come and watch. Have nothing else to do, I said, "Sure, why not."

When you're at the Olympics, if you have the chance to do or see something you've never done or seen before, you shouldn't ever say "no" (unless it directly interferes with your work or could get you arrested). Even if you're not sure you're going to like it or have much interest in it, this event doesn't come around very often -- and you don't know if you're ever going to get to experience it again -- so you should always take advantage of a new opportunity if it presents itself.

I hopped on a shuttle, which took me 45 minutes away from the MPC (which is a good half hour away from the media village, which is about 10 minutes from my hotel). We drove into the night, ending up at the Phoenix Snow Park. After collecting my bearings, I found the route to the aerial park and started walking.

Little did I know, you practically had to be an Olympian just to get to the park itself. At several points, you had to walk over rickety man-made footbridges.

This is one stretch of the path...

That picture doesn't do the incline justice; it was steep.

Here's another part of the journey...

I felt like I was on some kind of survival march. It was crazy that there were this many people who were willing to make this trek to watch some Belarussian women launch themselves off ski ramps. But, again, this is the kind of thing the Olympics make you do.

I finally made it to the aerial park, and it was a lively scene.

https://www.facebook.com/mickeybrown1/videos/10156117116049568/

Very different than at the figure skating venue, where they have an opera singer to entertain the crowd during ice resurfaces.

If you've never watched aerials, it basically involves skiing down a mountain and then launching yourself off a ramp and doing a series of tricks in the air before trying to stick the landing. It's something you watch and you think to yourself, "I can't imagine anyone watching this and thinking to themselves, 'I want to do that.'"

But do that they do.

Here what it looked like from my vantage point...

See that blue circle up there. That there's a person. I don't know how many feet up in the air she is, but in my mind, it's too many. This sport is not for the faint of heart.

Aerials, at least to me, was kind of like auto racing: It's very repetitive, all the jumps kind of looking the same, and the most exciting parts are the wipeouts. The wipeouts are NASTY. When the competitors over- or under-rotate in the air, their bodies violently whip back or forward, eliciting an immediate "OHHHH!" from the crowd. They never seem to get hurt too badly (I think the snow is packed in such a way that their landing is cushioned), but that doesn't take away from the inherent danger in the sport.

After one round of qualifying, I had had it. It was just too cold, and I wasn't dressed for the occasion. (I also didn't met up with my colleague; we never set a meeting point, and my phone mysteriously died.) I made the long trip back to my hotel and, several hours later, collapsed into bed, exhausted from the day I'd had.

Snack review time! Today we've got these...

I wasn't sure what I was getting into with these when I bought them. I thought the picture on the bag looked like either coconuts or baked potatoes. Unfortunately, it ended up being the former.

The less said about these, the better. They're horrendous. They taste somewhat coconut-ty, but not really, the texture is kind of crunchy, but not enough. Everything about these is wrong. I can't believe these are things people willingly eat, much less made it through the taste-testing process.

Rating: 0.0