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Hobbes and Destiny talk winter sports and Olympics


Destiny Skywalker
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Winter Olympics are the real Olympics!

As far as the summer Olympics go. I like watching all of the more obscure events...fencing, rowing, archery/shooting (which can I just take a second to bitch about peacock and how difficult the app made it to watch these events).Ā  Other than figure skating and hockey, I feel the winter Olympics are all the quirky niche events.Ā 

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I grew up in Montana. Iā€™ve done a little bit of everything, from downhill and Cross Country skiing to extreme downhill sledding and Snowboarding. I had to wear a leg brace, after getting a leg scope from a skiing accident in 9th grade. My leg had swelled up like a watermelon.

Ā 

I like watching the mogul races, bobsled and downhill slalom. The ski jumping is also pretty intense.

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I do enjoy watching the Olympics.Ā  I like both quirky events and mainstream ones.Ā  The main issue I have with the winter ones is almost entirely due to my lack of knowledge about many of the sports: the differences between many of the skiing events, particularly, seem almost trivial to me.Ā  I know they have to do with the slopes primarily, but I'll be damned if I can tell the difference between some of them.

That won't at all stop me from watching those events, but I also find it harder to get into them because of it.

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41 minutes ago, Jacen123 said:

I do enjoy watching the Olympics.Ā  I like both quirky events and mainstream ones.Ā  The main issue I have with the winter ones is almost entirely due to my lack of knowledge about many of the sports: the differences between many of the skiing events, particularly, seem almost trivial to me.Ā  I know they have to do with the slopes primarily, but I'll be damned if I can tell the difference between some of them.

That won't at all stop me from watching those events, but I also find it harder to get into them because of it.

I can totally see that.

Think of it like this: downhill>super g>giant slalom>slalom.Ā 

On one end is the downhill, which is a pure sprint.Ā  On the other end is the slalom, which is like a hurdles (instead of hurdles there are gates).Ā  As you move left to right, the courses get shorter and the gates (hurdles) get closer together, and the technical difficulty increases.Ā  Not saying the downhill doesn't have technical ability, but it is more about raw power/ speed.Ā  There are other small things, like how many practice runs you get (super g you get zero) or how it is scored (whether you get one score, aggregate, heats, etc).Ā 

Ā 

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That makes more sense than basically any NBC coverage of the Olympics in my lifetime has made it.Ā  The differences between downhill and slalom have always been clear to me.Ā  The two in-between ones were never clear to me at all.Ā  Thanks :thumbsup:

My in-laws had planned on going to at least some events pre-omicron since it would only take them a few hours to get to Beijing, but that is sadly not to be.Ā  I know I hope to go to at least some Olympic events the next time they are held the US, or at least the next time the summer games are.Ā  The winter games likely would not work out at all with work.

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So to go back to winter sports and not so much the Olympics:

We had to live with my grandma for a year after my parents divorce in Arizona.Ā  My grandma lived in a very rich area and the high school I went to was high end like a Beverly Hills school. They still offered Russian and Yiddish as language classes you could take instead of Spanish and they actually had those drivers license fake cars to get your learner permits in the basement to use. One of the things they offered was during snowyĀ times they'd bus us up for PE to Summerhaven to teach you to ski in a few different skiing skills and it was only offered by the coaches for people who had the last period for PE. You had to get some extra fee money to rent ski's if you opted in for this or as many kids in my school had them already they just brought them to school in their fancy pick ups and would follow the school bus up. I managed to talk my grandma into letting me take this option in PEĀ instead of playing tennis or basketball or walking laps around the football field.Ā 

Ā I had a super crush on this particular boy and begged to be allowed to go and paid for my own ski rentals so I could ride in the bus with this boy I crushed on (Boy did that backfire - he was rich so he had his own truck and fancy ski's and poles and boots so only ever saw him as a blur going downhill).

It's where I fellĀ in love with snowshoes and cross country skiing. I hated downhill anything. I didn't have the hips or balance for downhill or even strong enough knees. So my coach thought it might be good for me to learn cross country. I had the stamina for that he said. It was so easy and you could pick a rhythm and go. It was easier and far more fun than doing laps around the football field. Plus the scenery was really beautiful once I realized my crush was beyond my scope. LOL Before the snowmelted and we had to go back to living in dustbowl Tucson and crab soccer the guys who rented me equipment were out of cross country skis but one of them offered me their snowshoes to try. And that became even more fun because I could move to more places to explore. I always had to make it back to take the bus down to Tucson but it was a nice way to do PE for those winter months. There was no coaches with whistles, often just me out on the trails and I just had to make it back to the bus on time to get down to Tucson. And NO PE clothes.

Sadly climate change has affected Summerville and I think new laws about how schools handle this type of outing killed this PE class. But honestly the best way to get a kid into a sport is to get them to try and do different ones and it was awesome not being tied to the usual sports your forced to do in a gym.Ā  I was glad that I lived in a school district that gave me this option for at least a year.Ā 

For the Olympics:

I find that they're trying to make things "Hipper" with the extreme sport stuff and I often don't even know what a triple 980 or flip 360 or whatever is but I like it.Ā 

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I love snowshoeing. I've only done it once but it was super fun and not hard. I keep trying to talk my family into it but Malibu Ken is not a fan of the cold. Neither is the boy. Only the girls in this family like winter sports. XC skiing definitely takes some stamina. I've talked about taking my Girl Scout troop snowshoeing as a starter trip even though the requirement is for skiing because I think it will be less of a shitshow. My daughter is one of the only athletes in the troop so I am not confident in some of their athletic abilities lol.

Growing up I had a few opportunities for teen day skip trips and we had a ski club my freshman year of high school, but it was clearly dying. They have some ski buses up here so when my daughter is older I might let her go do that.

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I did some snowshoeing around the rim of the Grand Canyon and that was fabulous! My Mom's 5th wedding was near the Canyon and we stayed in a condo near the main entrance to the park and my Mom let us do whatever so I would use the condos snowshoes to go out and explore early in the morning. The hardest part is attaching them to your feet but afterwards it was so much fun just tromping alone in nature.

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Been watching it a bit.Ā  I saw a similar article linking it to Olympic fatigue/ china politics/ covid...Ā  For me, the atmosphere is flat and sterile--minimal crowds, no filming of the surrounding areas, the fact that it doesn't snow in that area, Peacock app is terrible, and the whole genocide thing...

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I havenā€™t watch much television, so I may be out of the loop. It just seems that beyond endorsements, I havenā€™t seen much promotionĀ for individual events beyond this might be Shaun Whiteā€™s last Olympics. I missed the speed skating events.

Ā 

Speaking of Events, the opening ceremony for the Olympics was a snooze fest. I had to turn it off.

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5 minutes ago, Gamevet said:

I havenā€™t watch much television, so I may be out of the loop. It just seems that beyond endorsements, I havenā€™t seen much promotionĀ for individual events beyond this might be Shaun Whiteā€™s last Olympics. I missed the speed skating events.

Ā 

Speaking of Events, the opening ceremony for the Olympics was a snooze fest. I had to turn it off.

You are right.Ā  I remember when Nike and Coke would promote the athletes before the Olympics.Ā  I still remember Brian vs. Brian in figure skating and Dan vs. Dan in track and field.Ā  Also is missing the human interest stories on the athletes.Ā 

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We signed up for Peacock for the Olympics. My son sat and watched it for hours on Saturday. I peeked in every once in a while, and I watched the luge, but that's about it.

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I've had on coverage in the background, at least, whenever I'm sitting around in the living room.Ā  I've been enjoying mixed-team curling a lot.Ā  It was surprising to see Sweden get destroyed by Italy in it today after seeing them do so well in the group stage.

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I made a lot of math lessons surrounding the Olympics this week. Stuff like the Japanese skater scored 94.35 points and second Japanese skater scored 99.48. What does a American skater have to score to get Gold. What does he need to score to get bronze. Basically I'm trying to teach them sorting and placement on time/number lines this week.Ā 

How heartbreaking is it for that kid that made it all the way to the Olympics and gets kicked out because he's got Covid.

The Super G was crazy. Not many actually made it through that course.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have taken my boys for a few lessons--an hour here and an hour there, but they really aren't getting the whole wedge thing for opposite reasons.Ā  I bit the bullet and signed them up for full day ski lessons at purgatory tomorrow.Ā  I am going with them but just skiing all day.Ā 

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Nice. I used to dream about dropping the kids off at all-day ski school but now Q can keep up with me, so those days are probably over. I used to do all day ski school and loved it.

Last night Q begged me to take her on one of the hardest black diamond groomers (but its never groomed so I'm not sure why I'm calling it a groomer). Steep and moguls, I don't know how the hell she did it without edging, but she didn't even fall. Make a turn, pause, pick your next turn. Let's be real, that's about how I tackled it, too. My knees were so shot after that run, we did 2 more blues and called it a day.

We also did a few runs with her former ski buddy (she started at 5, he started at 6). I dont even think they've seen each other since COVID started. The differences were pretty stark. She's always been a little ahead of him but he's still wedging heavily for both traversing and turns, and poor kid side slipped down quite a bit of the run. I almost never see her wedging anymore, maybe when she's really trying to go slow in a lift line or something.

One thing that she's doing that makes me a little nuts is over-rotating her upper body on her turn to check and see where I am. After a few yard sales, I started making her go ahead of me to make sure I can grab any stray gear without having to climb back up the freaking hill. It also slows her way down and I almost hit her twice because of it. I finally just had to be like, look kid, quit worrying about where I am. Clearly if I have almost run you over twice, I am nearby at all times. I have let her get a little ahead of me because I can honestly catch up in about 2 or 3 turns, and I like to have a little more continuous run before I have to stop and let her get ahead again. I think she was getting tired and didn't want to admit it, because she did it more at the end of the night. We got in 10 runs in 4 hours last night so we were going hard.

Otherwise it was amateur night because of the holiday weekend. It wasn't super crowded, especially after 5pm, but dumbasses everywhere, especially on snowboards. The chair in front of us on our last black diamond run decided they weren't getting off and the liftie had to slam the emergency brake to make sure they didn't get taken out by the trip bar. They had to take their gear off so they could clear it and rode the lift back down. This particular lift is right next to several bunny slope lifts but you have to be a space case or a noob to not realize where this lift is going. I offered to show them the cat track that would take them down a really long blue run, but they noped out. Otherwise, we almost got taken out several times by boarders eating shit right in front of us after cutting us off. We might go back Wednesday night, hoping it is less full of idiots because it will be midweek, but it is mid-winter break here. Some people only have 2 days off, others get the full week if you go to one of the rich kid college prep schools.

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