An interesting day at the office

I’m sitting in the press tribune area of the Gangneung Hockey Center on Tuesday night. It’s been an interesting day, to say the least.

As has been the case most of the days I’ve been here, the alarm went off at 6 a.m. and after thinking about going back to sleep, I got up, took a shower and headed to the main media dining room to grab some breakfast, which has been my main meal every day.

I took the bus up to the mountains and switched buses at the International Broadcast Center, catching the bus to Phoenix Snow Park. There is a direct bus from the Gangneung Media Village to Phoenix, but it doesn’t leave until 8 a.m. and I was hoping to get the last of my deadline work done in the venue media center prior to the day’s halfpipe competition.

As I was sitting in the media venue organizing pages, a gentleman came up to me and pointed to my shirt and said, “is that the Kingswood in New Hampshire?” I was wearing my Kingswood shirt (the day before was Prospect Mountain, Plymouth is tomorrow) and was kind of surprised someone knew about it. He said he had a house in Barnstead but did a lot of golfing at Kingswood Golf Club in Wolfeboro. It is a small world for sure.

Then, Annalisa Drew, who graduated from New Hampton School and skis at Loon Mountain, came achingly close to winning a bronze medal in the halfpipe. She put down a monster third run to catapult herself into third place with just three skiers left. However, two of those skiers were already above her in the standings so she was guaranteed at least a fourth place finish. Her teammate, Brita Sigourney, came through with a good run of her own to take the third spot and put Drew in fourth overall, a solid performance in her second Olympics.

After writing the story in the venue media center, I had to use the bathroom, so I went outside and across the path to the bathrooms, which at this venue are located in trailers, with stairs leading up to them. As I started up the stairs, someone was coming out of the bathroom, so I took a step back and somehow, didn’t calculate right and tumbled backwards into the mud, which certainly did not smell nice. So, until I was able to get to the room to change, I didn’t smell so good the rest of the day.

I then took the bus to the PyeongChang Olympic Plaza and walked up the road to the post office and packed a bunch of things I’d purchased and sent them home. Hopefully I did it right. I guess I’ll see if a

I then made the trip to the Gangneung Olympic Plaza. While there was no US teams in action, I wanted to see the Gangneung Hockey Center, which is the larger of the two hockey rinks in Gangneung. I spent a bit of time walking around the plaza, quelled my cheeseburger craving at McDonald’s. I was proud of myself for lasting as long as I did without seeking out the Golden Arches.

The hockey center was quite impressive and the Korean team was playing, so the crowd was really into the game, which made for a good atmosphere, even though the Koreans lost. However, as the game ended, the Korean players skated to their bench and retrieved a number of flags and proceeded to skate around the ice with the flags, saluting the fans for their support.

It was a great conclusion to an interesting day.