Somewhere other than the night

Life can always relate to a Garth Brooks lyric.

Today's lyric comes from the song "Somewhere Other Than The Night." In this song, the guy comes in from the field and slams the door, saying "damn this rain and damn this wasted day."

For me, it was a slight variation on those words, more like "damn this wind and damn this wasted day."

Wanting to catch both American phenom Mikaela Shiffrin and Plymouth State skier Freydis Einasdottir in action at Yongpyong Alpine Center in the women's slalom, I made my way up from Gangneung to the Main Press Center and then hopped on a bus to Yongpyong. I should have known when I walked up the stairs toward the mixed zone in front of the grandstand that I wasn't going to see any racing today.

The race was originally scheduled for 10:15 a.m. and while I was eating breakfast, it got bumped back an hour to 11:15 a.m. An then it got moved up a half hour to 10:45 a.m. But as I stood in the mixed zone being buffeted by winds, I realized that I should have made the trip to Phoenix Snowpark and watched Shaun White make a little history rather than take this trip. There would be no racing today.

After originally postponing until 11:45 a.m., the decision was made to postpone for the day at 11:15 a.m., meaning it was too late to catch a shuttle down the mountain and catch another shuttle to Phoenix in order to see White's performance.

So, I did what any tired journalist would do. No, I didn't sleep. I sat in the venue media center at Yongpyong and edited content for the coming week's paper. Then I got on the bus back to PyeongChang and another bus back to Gangneung, where I had some lunch in the media cafeteria, which is located underground in the media village. As I walked out of the cafeteria, the wind was whipping through the media village so hard that it actually pulled a fence cemented into stones right out of the ground.

I went into the media workroom and set about writing stories and doing some more editing for a few hours. As far as covering the Olympics, it was all relatively boring stuff.

Though I am heading to hockey tonight to see the US men in action. 

So really, there's no such thing as a wasted day at the Olympics.

Maybe another Garth Brooks lyric, slightly altered, is appropriate here. "February's always bitter,

but Lord this one beats all. The wind ain't quit for weeks now.

This was about as much action as the slalom slope saw all day.