The Olympics... and beyond

Sometimes, now that the busy fall season has drawn to a close, I find myself with a little free time in the office on a Monday or Tuesday and I tend to get drawn down rabbit holes. Mostly, my rabbit holes involve the Olympics, in one form or another. This probably isn't much of a surprise, but given the postponement of the 2020 Summer Games until next summer as well as the next Winter Olympics, which will take place in 2022 in Beijing, China, I spend a lot of time reading updates and checking in on any new information coming out from the International Olympic Committee or any of the host organizations. For whatever reason, I like to read many of the documents that were presented when the different cities were making their bids for the Olympics. It's interesting to see what the cities were proposing when they made their bids and how they envisioned the Olympics playing out in their city. What's even more interesting about these documents are the proposals from the cities tha...

 Another month, another gut punch from the spectacular pile of crap that has been 2020. It's the day before Thanksgiving. Normally, I would be traveling to upstate New York to visit family for the holiday. This is traditionally one of the few "vacations" I take during the year. I love to visit the farm and spend a few days away from work and just relaxing. But like everything else in 2020, that has gone down the drain. First it was the end of the high school winter sports season, with a number of local teams still in contention for championships. The complete loss of the spring sports season followed, leaving a large group of athletes without a chance to compete for one final time for their school and their community. There was a trip to New York and another to Atlanta, both for Survivor - RHAP events, both cancelled due to 2020 being a shit show. There was the St. Patrick's Day trip to Dublin, Ireland with the University of New Hampshire Marching Band that got called...

For almost all of the last 18-plus years, covering sports is how I made my living, mostly. Starting in January of 2003, I have been full-time with Salmon Press, with the lone exception of the few months this past summer where I was laid off. But over the course of that time, I have also held numerous jobs on the side, helping to pay the credit card bills that I built up during my college years. The good news is that one of those was completely paid off late last year and the other is ticking downward every month. And it's because of those side jobs that I've been able to pay the bills a bit quicker than if I just worked the one job. When I started this job, I had been working at Mountain View Nursing Home in Ossipee full-time in the kitchen. I went down to two days a week when I started full-time at the paper and worked there for a number of years. After leaving that job, I went to work part-time at Pronto Market in Wolfeboro, which was conveniently located right next door to o...

 Since I started back to work in mid-August, things have been going a mile a minute and there's barely been time to slow down and breathe. Now that the high school season is slowly drawing to a close, time has become more readily available and it was time to look back on what has been the strangest season of high school sports I have ever been a part of. If you had asked me, while I was making hundreds of donuts a day back in mid-June, if there would even be a high school season this fall, I would've told you that I was not optimistic. I also would have said that they may start a season but there's no way it's reaching the playoffs. Thankfully, I was wrong on both counts. Practices started in early September and the first official games of the fall season started shortly after that. The schedule was regionalized, meaning there were very few games on my schedule that did not involve two teams that I cover. Of course, there were 10 schools added to my coverage area to sta...