The Olympics... and beyond

One of my blog posts while in Sochi was about things I missed about home. So now that I’ve been home for a few days, maybe it’s time to write about some of the things I certainly didn’t miss about being home. I certainly didn’t miss putting gas in my car and truck. This afternoon I had to put more than $60 worth of gas in my truck after just two and a half days of being back in the States. That is certainly not much fun. I am happy to be driving again, but it would be great if gas was a little cheaper. Though I know I’m not the only one with that problem. I definitely didn’t miss paying bills. I went to the post office in Ossipee on Tuesday afternoon to pick up my mail from the two-plus weeks that I was away. Besides the magazines, the main thing piling up in the mailbox were the bills. American Express, Visa, Master Card, PSNH and insurance bills. Way too many bills to pay and it took me a few hours of time on Wednesday to get all caught up on those. I certain...

I am writing this entry as I sit in Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. It’s currently 1:45 in the afternoon here, but barely quarter of 8 in the morning in New England. And where I started this morning, it’s 4:45 in the afternoon. Needless to say, it’s been a long day. My first flight left Sochi at 2 a.m. and made its way to Moscow, arriving before 5 a.m. I then had a long wait in the Moscow airport, as my flight to Paris didn’t leave until almost 11 a.m. And here I sit, waiting once again. But, I have to admit, the process has been pretty seamless so far, despite the long waits in terminals across Europe. Security in Sochi was relatively simple and again in Moscow, there were volunteers there to greet us when we got off the plane and lead us from the domestic terminal to the international terminal, where again, security wasn’t too bad. Getting off the plane in Paris was a little sketchy for me, since I didn’t have a boarding pass for my next flight, as the ti...

Believe it or not, it does seem hard to believe, but this is my final day in Sochi. It has been a fantastic journey over the last two-plus weeks, but the time has come to bring this adventure to a close. On my final blog from Sochi, I thought I’d touch on something I noticed here, something that made me realize just how many people there are in the world. While around the world, I started noticing people that looked a lot like people who I know at home. I know it’s strange, but seemingly every day there was someone that I ran in to that reminded me of someone who I already knew. On the final flight here, from Moscow to Sochi, the guy sitting next to me with his son looked just like Kingswood boys’ soccer coach Mike Best. I was at the women’s ski jumping competition and one of the women in the group of American fans looked exactly like my Village Players friend Lisa Rose Penny. The first time I went into the gym here at the Main Media Center in the coastal...

One of the great pleasures in being a writer who covers mostly high school sports is getting to see the sheer looks of joy that kids tend to get on their faces when they accomplish something unexpected or reach a goal they have been working for their whole season or even their whole career. That moment when an underdog team lifts a championship trophy over its collective head, surrounding the team captain who’s been there through the good and the bad and serves as the beating heart of his or her team, that moment is hard to beat. You see the relief, joy, excitement and thrill, all in one simple look, all in one simple motion. Often times, words can’t express what they are feeling, but that look on their face pretty much says it all. As an athlete, you go through a large range of emotions in the course of a season, or in many cases, in the course of a game or match. I’m not going to pretend I know what it’s like to win a championship in anything, but I have se...

I have found myself consistently tired pretty much the whole time I’ve been in Russia. I have taken a few mornings to sleep in, but for the most part, the alarm clock goes off at 5 a.m. and I hit the shower and head off to the media center to get started. This is really no different than my normal routine when I’m at home. At home, the alarm goes off at 5:30 a.m., but for some reason, I feel much more tired here than I do when I’m home. Then again, the reason is probably due to the fact that I am staying up fairly late most nights, not getting back to my hotel room before 1 a.m. and maybe that’s catching up with me. The problem lies in the fact that a number of the events I’ve been looking to cover happen in the evening hours. All the moguls, aerials and halfpipe events often don’t start until after 8 p.m. When they finish, there’s the hour-long ride from the mountain cluster back to the coastal cluster and then the 15-minute ride to the hotel. That time all ad...