Let The Games Begin

I have never really considered myself an athlete. I love sports and at times, while spectating, I trick myself into thinking; if I would train hard enough and pull from my reservoir of self-will... buckets of determination and consistency I could pull off a sport. The specifics, of which, have yet to be determined. After one day of watching the Olympics, I concede.

I can carry my own weight when the heats are held in the Holiday Inn pool lanes and my competition is a few energetic seniors who have just completed 2 hours of water aerobics and are swimming cool down laps. But synchronized diving? C'mon! I am amazed at the commentators in diving, let alone the athletes who start and finish their dive TOGETHER and make some sort of bubble blurb that can't even by written in the same sentence as the word splash. All without nose-plugs.

There is a 45-year-old biker in the women's road race. And the bike has pedals. Once again, I reiterate that biking is the most grueling of all sports. If you are better than your opponent in tennis you can finish them off in a 6-0, 6-1, one-hour-or-so-match. And you even get to sit down after every set and a towel break after each game. Team sports, with a certain lead, afford some breathing room. Weightlifting: pick it up, hold it for a second, and throw it down. With bike racing, you keep pedaling through wind, rain, snow, and even altitude changes. A bug in your eye does not even constitute a time out. For crying out loud, in basket ball, a shoestring untied, or a microscopic sweat bead on the floor, can hold up the whole game. Even though some Olympic shuttlecocks reach speeds of 200-mph... it's still badminton.

I am going out on limb here. I would venture to say that if I stood (on solid ground, mind you) and held my EMPTY arms out to my side I could hold them for the 2 seconds required of the men in the simple apparatus called the gymnastic rings. I can't for the life of me figure out why they call them games.

Summer games, to me, should always include some type of spirited drink and a deck of cards.

I'm gonna go on a walk now.