The men of skating ROCK

A late night and well worth staying up to see the men rise to their best.
 My friends don't have a television, so I walked down a few blocks to the local brewery/pub where they have a large screen tv. I had to convince the manager to turn on the sound after the women's snowboarding. I stayed there until 10:30 when they closed up shop.
Across the street was a real bar with pool tables and video games and lots of tvs showing everything from basketball to Sex in the City to the Olympics. I asked the bartender to turn up the volume , but since the whole place was filled with loud music that seeped into the bar area, that wasn't going to work. I plunked myself down at a table in front of the largest darn screen in the quieter room and watched with great joy the last 6 men skate their hearts out to hard  rock music! It wasn't bad, actually. Produced an edgy feeling that was Much better than  the sappy music some of them choose for the short program.
The captioning was on, so I did get some of the insipid commentary
The bartender kept tabs on me, high fiving after Evan Lysacek skated a great program. " I don't want that Russian to win" he said.Another women said, " I don't want that blonde guy to win"  Frankly, neither did I.I was rooting for Daisake who eventually won the bronze I think he had the most exhuberant short program and all his motions flowed directly from his center and radiated out with flair and grace

But it was true. Evan made it happen. Skill artistry, difficulty, no mistakes.

When Pleshenko's scores came up and it was certain that Evan Lysacek had won gold, I cheered and clapped, the bartender high fived me again, and a big tip went into his tip bowl.
I left the bar smiling It was well worth having to walk back at midnight in the cool air, even knowing that I get up at 5:30 am tomorrow to catch my 7:40 train to Vancouver.
Yes finally, I will be in Vancouver tomorrow for the  Ice Dancing compulsory skate, so stay tuned.

A few activities in Seattle

The mountain has been in full view which is

 an unusual sight in February and reminds everyone why it is so glorious to live here.

At Drexel, I've been enjoying yoga classes, which my friend Anette also does at this studio called YogaTree. We went together for a class. The instructor gave a teaching on the Buddhist notion of suffering: When our expectations collide with reality we often blame 'reality' or the situation rather than our false expectations. We focused in the class on being present to the reality of the aches,the pleasures, our image of what we should be doing and what we could be doing.  This is a good send off for me as I go tomorrow into a situation with many expectations and I'm sure lots of surprises

Bikes Bikes everywhere in Seattle. Check out the Fremont Solstice parade on Youtube for more fun on bikes.

The Men of skating

Watch tonight for the finals



Like a schoolgirl, a smitten teenager, I love to watch these men in black.

Shaun White and Shani Davis

If you missed last night's events, check out Shaun White's Gold medal snowboard run and  Shani Davis' speed skating gold run. Shaun's sense of total fun and dedication is an inspiration, even to  those of us who will never get on a snowboard. I am disappointed that I won't see the speed skating live, especially after seeing Shani Davis,  the epitome of grace.

If you go to this website, you can see lots of great stuff, including Shaun White, Lindsey Von and Shani Davis

http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/assetid=d924411a-bea6-4fd8-b485-f58dc5238dfe.html#mens+halfpipe+white+wins+gold

Won't see skiing

I was supposed to see Ski cross on Feb 23, but a last look at email for the night shows this in my box:

Important: Standing Room Tickets for Cypress
We are disappointed to inform you that heavy warm rains have made the general admission standing room area at the Cypress Mountain snowboard stadium unsafe for spectators. As a result, account holders who purchased general admission standing room tickets for the sessions below will have their event tickets and Olympic bus network tickets cancelled and their money refunded.

So, I rushed online to see that there were still some tickets to see the women's (I just can't write ladies') short program on Tuesday. The seats are somewhere up in the stratosphere, but hey that's what binoculars are for.