Loving The Hodgepodge

Welcome to February and this week's edition of The Wednesday Hodgepodge. If you've answered today's questions add your link at the end of my post then go say hi to your neighbor there. Here we go-

1. The Winter Olympics kick off on Friday, February 6th...on a scale of 1-10 how excited are you? (1= eh and 10=watching every event all day every day). What's your favorite Winter Olympic sporting event? 

I love watching the Olympics, summer and winter both. I won't watch all day every day, but I will watch a lot, so giving myself a 7. 

I especially enjoy the love of country and sense of patriotism we typically see and feel at the Olympics. Recently it seems the press want athletes to bad mouth America and I appreciate those who say without hesitation they are proud to represent the USA. 

I enjoy all of the events and will watch whatever happens to be on when I'm available to watch. My favorites are probably alpine skiing, figure skating, hockey, and ski jumping. I like the sledding events too, so yeah, pretty much all of it. 

We stood at the top of the ski jump in Innsbruck and I'm just gonna say people who do this sport are a little bit crazy. Who went first? 

2. In other sporting news, the Superbowl (American football's championship game) will be played on Sunday, February 8th.  So tell us...what's your superpower?

I asked this question last February. Oops. Oh well, perhaps those of you who answered then will have discovered there's some new superpower you now possess. Last year I said napping and emptying the dishwasher, which honestly is kind of sad.  

This time around I'm going to say being a Nana. I love it, love spending time with my grands, love spoiling them when I can, love praying for them daily and for their parents too, and it's a huge part of who I am in this season of life. 

3. Are you a romantic? 

In a word yes, although the world is smudging my normally rose colored glasses somewhat here lately.

I read this description of what it means to say a person might be dubbed a romantic-'someone who expresses strong feelings of love and affection, often through thoughtful gestures...has a deep appreciation for emotional connection and beauty...sometimes holding idealistic views about love.' 

That fits. Mostly.  I'm not sure I'd say I'm idealistic about love. I think love within a marriage requires a daily choice to care for and nurture the relationship, and there's nothing idealistic about that. I do believe happily ever after is possible, but I don't think you get there by happenstance. 

4. Blue cheese-yay or nay? How about feta? If you said yes to one or both, what's a dish you like that calls for one of these? 

I like both, but wouldn't go so far as to say I love both. I definitely like blue cheese on a cheese board, but I don't order blue cheese salad dressing. I prefer Ranch style dressing with blue cheese crumbles. I like feta in small amounts. I love a Greek salad and Greek food in general, which often includes some feta. 

5. What's more important-doing what you love or loving what you do? 

One of those trick questions I see. 

I think both matter, but I'm going to say loving what you do is the more important side of the equation. It's great to do the things you love, if you're fortunate to have work or circumstances that feed your creativity and your God-given gifts, but sometimes that isn't an option. In that case it's more important to find the silver lining, the bright spot, the upside in what you have to do. There always is one. That's me. The romantic. 

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

February is the month of ❤️...
                                                    

"Love must be a light as much as a flame." Henry David Thoreau

Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be ski jumpers

Who else loves watching the Olympics? I admire the skill and discipline of the athletes and I love the beauty of the winter setting. The 2010 Winter Olympics begin tomorrow night and we'll be tuning in for alot of the games. One of the first events is ski jumping and I'm for sure going to watch that. Because they are crazy.

In 2005 we took a family ski holiday to a little town in Austria called Seefeld. It is a storybook village plunked down in the Alps and we all say this was one of our very favorite trips.

We flew to Munich and drove a couple of hours over to Seefeld...a small avalanche had closed the main road so we had to come in on a more circuitous route and it was absolutely beautiful. We stayed in a quaint little hotel and woke up every morning to this view from our window.

Everyone was so friendly, the food was wonderful, and the weather was perfect. It snowed about a foot half way through our trip which made for great skiing.

About mid week we took a day off from the slopes and drove about 10 miles up the road to the town of Innsbruck. Innsbruck hosted the Winter Olympics a couple of times, once in 1964 and again in 1976. I remember the 1976 games...that was the year Dorothy Hamill won a gold medal in figure skating and drummed up business for hair salons all across America. Everyone wanted her haircut in 1976. She was the Jennifer Anniston of the Winter Games.

While in Innsbruck we went out to the ski jump venue known as Bergisel. You come in to the stadium and ride a cable car up to the bottom of the ski jump. Even writing that doesn't sound right.

There is a cafe here and we had some lunch and then rode the lift up to the visitors platform. The tower at Bergisel is about 165 feet high and they take off going about 60 mph. There is a small balcony on the visitors platform and you can stand just above the speeding lane of the jump. It looked scary enough from the ground.

But from the top?

The word steep does not do it justice.

Do you notice the cemetery just on the other side of the stadium? Hmmm....

As we stood there I had to wonder about the first person to try this. I was sure it was a man. Sorry, I know that is terribly sexist but I can imagine some guys sitting around saying, 'hey, I have an idea..." In fact it was a man, a Norwegian lieutenant named Olaf Rye back in 1809. He flew just over 30 feet in front of an audience (of course). I guess this started that one upmanship thing because in 1862 another Norwegian jumped almost 100 feet over a rock without the benefit of poles. It would never occur to me to jump 100 feet over a rock, with or without poles. And it was 1862 so I'm pretty certain the gear was not anything even remotely close to what they have today. Today they can go over 600 feet.

Not always successfully though. Remember the video footage from the Wide World of Sports that was played back in the 1970's as they ran the opening credits....'the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat'...yeah...the agony of defeat was a ski jumper who miscalculated and went tumbling out of control while we watched. There is a building at Bergisel you can walk through to read some of the history of the sport. They also have a continuously running video clip of ski jump disasters. It is almost too hard to watch. You have to look away.

Did you know there is an Olympic sport called skeleton racing? The racers go head first down a bobsled track while their chin and toes are just millimeters from the ice all while balancing on a steel and fiberglass sled going approximately 80 miles an hour. They must have the same DNA as the ski jumpers.

Ski jumping begins on Day 1 in Vancouver...the qualifying round is at 10 am Friday morning and the individual final rounds on Saturday morning. I'll be watching. I admire their guts and their coordination and their skill. And their mamas, who I'm sure hold their breath until the skis are planted firmly back on solid ground.