<\/p>\n

Exactly two weeks ago, I decided I would become a winter Olympian.<\/p>\n

Since the beginning of the 2018 Winter Olympics, I have been glued to my television. On slow or busy days, I may only manage to squeeze in an hour’s worth of events. Some days — many days — I’ve consumed two hours, three hours, maybe even more. <\/p>\n

There’s not an event I don’t like. From quirky curling to soaring ski jumping and graceful ice skaters, I watch it all. I spent a couple of hours last week learning the lingo and rules of curling. In snowboarding, I know the difference between a melon grab and a stalefish grab<\/a>. Prior to 2018 I had never watched an entire game of ice hockey from beginning to end. Over the past two weeks, I’ve watched at least six.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday the women’s bobsled team from Germany took gold after beating the US team by 0.07 of a second. The scores consist of three timed runs, combined. That means the difference between Germany’s three runs and the US’s three runs was seven-one hundredth’s of a second. All the timed races fascinate me, but when the differences are so amazingly slim, I find it incredible. Seven-one hundredths of a second is roughly 1\/20 of the time it takes a human being to blink.<\/p>\n

As the Olympians continue to compete, I wonder which event I would have the best chance at competing in. Maybe I could be the goalie for our hockey team (those guys don’t need to know how to skate, right?). I was pretty good on a skateboard, thirty years ago — surely I could pick up a snowboard and figure things out. If all else fails, I feel like curling is always an option. One guy throws a rock, one guy sweeps, and people are always either yelling or being yelled at. I have experience with all of those things.<\/p>\n

The day before last, a winter storm rolled into Oklahoma, adding a layer of sleet and ice to everything. I managed not to leave the house Tuesday, but by Wednesday everyone was getting stir crazy and so we agreed to go out for dinner.<\/p>\n

Susan wanted Mexican food and so we went to San Marcos, but they had closed due to the weather. Our second stop was Chileno’s; they too had closed early. Our third pick, Qdoba, braved the winter storm and remained open. <\/p>\n

As I shuffled my way across the icy parking lot like an old man, I felt my Olympic dreams disappearing. Forget gliding gracefully across the stuff — I could barely get out of my car.<\/p>\n

On the way home from dinner, some fool came around the corner of Rockwell and NW Expressway sideways. I was going slow enough that I was able to slide over into the center lane and get back into my own lane before any more cars arrived. For a split second I had dreams of steering a toboggan in the luge, but that quickly subsided.<\/p>\n

Any final drops of hope were drained last night when I took the trash out. My legs quivered like Jell-O as I inched my way across the driveway, sack of trash in hand, over to the trash dumpster. It took every muscle I had to keep my feet underneath me and remain upright. I hate to say it, but I think the odds of me becoming a winter Olympian resemble one of the five Olympic rings: O.<\/p>\n

Except skeleton. I could totally do the skeleton. Back in my day, we called that “sledding head first…”<\/p>\n