Feb 28
I am back in the Land of Flavorful Food.
Although to be fair, when we managed to wander outside of the official Olympic bubble we had some tasty dishes. The two Georgian restaurants rank at the top of the list, but be prepared to spend hours waiting for their delicious offerings. The price of having just-prepared goodness, I guess. Read more
I resisted posting new items because none of them are likely to contain hooch or chocolate, which is apparently the key to getting blog readers to comment.
I actually thought it would be the puppies that would do the trick. At The Times, David Barstow (three Pulitzers) could spend a year uncovering how WalMart bribed Mexican officials so they could build a store near the Mayan ruins. That story would make the top of the most emailed list of stories for a few days. But write about puppies, and that story would sit atop the Times’s most-emailed list for weeks.
I thought the puppies would get even Tracy to comment. Read more
I think this story is best told by Sam Borden, A Times sports reporter, who also wrote about this episode on his blog: samborden.com.
I regret there are not pictures of the actual excursion, although there are many pictures of the aftermath.
This from Sam’s blog: Read more
PLAYING ‘CATCH THE LUGER’
A popular game among the fans (and some journalists) at luge is to try to take a picture of them with your iPhone as they speed past. That is Jim Luttrell above trying to do the same. He’ll tell you he was successful, but I think he managed to get a toe in one of the frames. Read more
I hear there is another storm hitting the Northeast, and here I am at the Winter Olympics shooting slopestyle in a T-shirt. About 50 degrees here today in the mountains. Spent the day taking photo sequences near the top of ski slopestyle. Read more
My feet have thawed.
In past years, the side of the halfpipe has been chock full of photographers and it is pretty much a free-for-all for positions. So we got there five hours before the preliminaries (and 12 hours before the final) to make sure we had positions to shoot. Read more
I have yet to see another human in my hotel. I am sure there must be somebody somewhere. Occasionally there is a security guard in a very dark room near the entrance of the building, maybe every third night or so. About as many nights as the elevator works. But I do know that people enter the building because my room gets cleaned every now and them. But the best part is that there is always something new in my room, shown in the picture above. I’m sure this was all supposed to be there when we arrived. But, hey, they’re catching up. Read more
The sports in the Winter Games, of course, have to be competed on ice or snow, which can make them a bit scary from the start. I’ve seen lugers and downhillers whiz by at 90 m.p.h. Two months ago I visited the US short track speed skaters with 17-inch razor blades strapped to their feet. They wear Kevlar under their Spandex because they crash into each other so much and those blades can cut pretty deep. Read more
Eat at Joe’s 