The Olympics... and beyond

 If 2020 had gone as planned (hahahahaha), this past Monday would have been my return trip from the Tokyo Olympics. I would have flown from the Japanese capital through Seattle and then to Boston. It surely would have been an exciting two weeks in Eastern Asia and I am hopeful that next summer offers the same opportunity. But that's a story for another day. On a related note, this coming Monday will mark my return to the job that I held since 2003 before I was temporarily laid off in April. It's been a long few months and over the past few weeks, I've been slowly gearing up for the return to writing, but I have to admit, it is going to take some getting used to. I've actually taken in a few different games over the last couple of weeks in preparation (I've seen you Wolfeboro Wolverines and MWV Eagles softball and Wolfeboro Senior Babe Ruth). Writing is something that I have essentially been doing since I've been out of college. I feel like covering sports is som...

Today is the day. Or more specifically, today was supposed to be the day. July 22, 2020 was the day I was set to board a plane at Logan Airport bound for Seoul, South Korea and then on to Tokyo to cover my first Summer Olympics. Of course, those plans all went out the window, along with just about everything else in the world, back in March when the International Olympic Committee announced that the 2020 Tokyo Olympics would be postponed for a year and will take place in July and August of 2021. Obviously, I've written many times over the past few months about the impact of the postponement of the Olympics. A few days after the announcement, I was temporarily laid off from my job at Salmon Press, meaning the possibility of covering the Olympics next year was also in doubt. As we head toward August, the possibility of getting back to work is down the road a bit and with it, comes the possibility of still getting the chance to go to Tokyo and if all goes as planned, one year from now...

This was supposed to be a good year. There was so much to look forward to, so much to be excited about and things were seemingly looking up. But, here we sit more than halfway through the year and I can't help but wonder if there is anything to look forward to right now. On March 11, I boarded an early morning flight out of Boston heading to Los Angeles. The flights were less than half full and it was obvious that change was coming to the country. I traveled to California for a Rob Has a Podcast live Survivor event in North Hollywood. These live RHAP events have been a great time for me over the past few years. I've been to New York City pretty much at least once a year for these events and have also gone to Chicago, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis, Toronto and Los Angeles on different occasions over the past few years. I've met a lot of great people at these events and it is always nice to catch up with folks I mostly see online. There's usually other events ...

Tuesdays and Wednesdays have been my days off from my "new normal" job at the Yum Yum Shop in Wolfeboro. That was scheduled to change this week, moving to Thursday and Friday, but I had already scheduled something this morning, so this week, I am off Tuesday and Thursday. The scheduled thing I had on the docket this morning was a visit with the HVAC representative doing some work on the air handling units at the Village Players Theater in Wolfeboro. This was the second visit I've overseen in the past month or so, as a large piece was taken out to be worked on and new parts were ordered. Today was the day that they got installed again. I decided to also use the time while I was waiting for the HVAC technician to do his thing to work on getting my money back for my flight to Tokyo, which was set to happen in just more than a month. I purchased the flights through Expedia, one on Korean Air and the other on Delta. I had also purchased the insurance on the flight offered by...

The term "the new normal" has been thrown out a lot in the past few months as people make adjustments to the conditions presented by the Covid-19 pandemic, including social distancing and the wearing of masks. In my case, there was a pretty large shakeup in life, with the temporary layoff taking place on April 1, which I have to admit was completely unexpected. Two days later, I applied for unemployment through the New Hampshire state web site. The good news was that I was paid for the week I was laid off and also received a week of pay for the personal time I had accrued through the first three months of the year. Each week, I went back to the unemployment web site and filed my claim, but the weeks went on with no money deposited in my account. Eventually, as it went out to more than a month without anything coming in, it became obvious I was either going to have to find a job or move out of my apartment if I wanted to keep paying my health insurance bill (Affordable Care ...

Over the last few weeks, living without sports has been an interesting experience. Networks have done a good job of bringing back old sporting events to our televisions and I spent a lot of time over the last two weeks watching old Olympic events from the Summer Games in Beijing in 2008, London in 2012 and Rio in 2016 along with a few highlights from Games even further back, including Sydney in 2000, Athens in 2004, Atlanta in 1996 and even the gold medal game for the original Dream Team in Barcelona in 1992. That was a lot of fun, and usually, in a normal world, I'd be writing about sports all the time, covering the local high school teams and other events going on throughout the community. Of course, I'd probably also be complaining about all this rain that would certainly be wreaking havoc on our spring schedule. But, with no high school sports or community activities and with no longer being employed, I have had a lack of sports interaction (or really, interaction in gene...

Last week I spent a good deal of time discussing the Olympic rabbit hole that I went down, reading tons of information on Olympic bids from various cities, including winning hosts Beijing, Milan-Cortina, Paris and Los Angeles. It was a great way to kill time, but unfortunately got me thinking about some deeper questions like whether or not I'd even have my job back next summer when the Tokyo Olympics take place or whether the Olympics would even be able to take place as planned in Tokyo next summer. Of course, in case you didn't know, I'm bored out of my mind. I've watched a lot of television and most of it is just rewatching shows I've seen before. However, I was online last week and noticed a schedule from NBC Sports Network that noted they would be running highlights from the Summer Olympics over the course of the next few weeks. I promptly went into my DVR and set it to record as many of the episodes as I could. Most of the first week was dedicated to recaps...