But I have to admit, I was amazed by the shear number of wipeouts!  I felt completely encouraged by the number of athletes that took a spill here and there.  These are the best of the best in the world and they slipped, fell, and slid at break-neck speeds in all sorts of venues.   I could relate.

See, the Vancouver games took me back to my high school days and our ski trips that we took to New Mexico.   I loved going skiing with all my friends.  We had so much fun, when we weren’t sitting in the waiting room at the hospital!  We hadn’t been there very long when our youth minister blew out his knee.  They finally just loaded us all up and took us to the mall.  Most of the group had their regular clothes.  Four or five of us weren’t so lucky.  Our clothes were in a different trailer and we were stuck with the whole garb…moon boots and hot big snow bibs.  We were so embarrassed walking through the mall like that.  NO one dresses like that at the mall.

We got back to the ski resort to begin our fun and my cousin skied right smack into a tree.  Back to the hospital waiting room--to do what you do in a hospital waiting room--wait. Finally, we were on our way back to the ski resort for more skiing.  My friend threw snow a boot to me and hit me in the nose and my nose bled forever and ever.

Finally, we made it back to the slopes.  We found a great run and we had so much fun!  One of our guys went sailing down the hill and ripped the whole seat out of his pants.  He went to the infirmary  (They already knew us there.) where they gave him a pair of cut off red sweat shorts to go over the top of his jeans.  You could see him from a mile away! It was so funny to see him skiing down the mountains like that!  I was just glad it wasn’t me.

Finally, we tried some harder runs.  We skied all day the next day and had a blast, but about mid-way through the day, I went too fast down the slope and I fell from the top of the mountain to the bottom to the chorus of my friends’ laughter.  I didn’t think I’d ever stop tumbling through the snow.  I fell so hard that my ski lift ticket came off my zipper.  Have you ever tried to get one of those off?  It’s next to impossible, well unless you roll and tumble and slide down the mountain, screaming all the way and taking people out as you go!  I was laughing so hard that I couldn’t get up.  I just stayed there, laughing in the snow.  We really had a blast and still get tickled thinking back about this trip.

When I was watching the Olympics, from the comfort of my couch, I sort of felt like I was young again and could ski down the mountain like Lindsey Vonn, ice skate like Kim Yu-Na, or do a Double McTwisty thing like Shaun White, even though my actual experience with the snow and ice proved otherwise and I know nothing about it.  It was just a brief moment, anyway.

Saturday, though, I took the gold medal in the Wal-Mart Supercenter Restroom Ski-Jumping competition.  To my great surprise, someone left toilet paper on the floor in the restroom, right where each one of my feet were and they went right out from under me and I went sliding through the stall, to the chorus of my friends’ laughter.