The Olympics... and beyond

So, it has been more than a month since I made my way back to the United States from Russia and things have slowed down a bit. It seemed that as soon as I got back, the schedule was full-bore with tons of playoff games and the finish of the regular season. I barely had enough time to catch my breath. I touched down in Boston on Monday, Feb. 24, and Tuesday, Feb. 25, I was back in the office and then back at basketball that evening, with the Prospect Mountain girls in the playoffs. However, the last few weeks things have been slowing down a little bit. One by one, teams were eliminated from the playoffs and soon enough the season was over. The time between the winter and spring seasons usually isn't that long, but with this year's major snow coverage, it appears we might have a game or two before schools graduate in June. Therefore, I have been taking it easy, relatively speaking of course. I covered some youth hockey with the Seacoast Hockey League and then hit up the She-Wo...

Less than a week after I made my way through Logan Airport’s customs line and climbed into my car for the ride back to the Lakes Region, I found myself back in the car heading south on Route 93, but this time, the destination was a little different. Sunday night I headed down to South Station in Boston to pick up my brother, who was coming in via train from Utah. My brother lives out west, but has spent a good chunk of the last year abroad, working the last few months of last year in New Zealand and then spending the first part of this year in South America doing some climbing. He arrived back in the United States shortly after I took off for the Olympics. Since he’d been abroad, Jared hasn’t been home in a while. Traditionally he his home at Christmas time, but since he was in New Zealand in December, he didn’t make it home. Instead, he came back east in March, just in time for his birthday. Of course, the train was delayed and I learned that having a train through...

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...