with my well known obsession for the Olympics, I just couldn’t imagine being so close to an Olympic site and not checking it out.

(although I have been to Vermont two dozen times and haven’t managed to make it to Lake Placid — a mere two hour drive west.)

i’ve been to Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park, to Melbourne’s Olympic Stadium, and had near misses with Canada Olympic Park in Calgary (drove by, but couldn’t stop) and Sydney Olympic Park (saw it from the air, but only had 18 hours on the ground).

Utah Olympic Park was home to 14 of the 28 events in the 2002 Olympics, including all the sliding events (bobsled, skeleton, luge) and the jumping events (ski jump, Nordic combined).

at the park, a multiple-sport Olympian (one of them for ballet skiing, apparently) took us around to the five venues, and Terry Kent (sliding venue announcer for the last three Olympics) talked us through what it was like in Vancouver.

great experience. stunning views.

it was mainline-ing the Olympic experience to someone who’s already an Olympic junkie … something tells me it’s only going to make things worse.

i’m in salt lake city for a web analytics conference, and the views from this place are just stunning. it’s not very hard to imagine a group of people being moved to center a religion here.

I’ve got no idea how this week will go … it’s my first week way from sparklet, i dont travel for work much anyway, and hordes of socially awkward web analytics geeks make me nervous,

I’m going to try and squeeze in two quick things while I’m out here … a trip to Utah Olympic Park (site of the 2002 Winter Games) and the Great Salt Lake (seems like a good thing to see in its eponymous city).

besides that, I’ll just be missing baby … and trying to process being in a city that make Vermont look like a bastion of genetic diversity.

holy moses, it’s actually snowing?!?

it seems like every other year, the D.C. weathermen predict at least one “major” storm that will paralyze the city … although, seeing that three inches of snow is more than enough to bring D.C. to its knees, i guess “major” is a relative term.

we’re supposedly at 10 inches, which would already puts us in the top five storms of the last twenty years. we got 24 inches of snow my junior year of college, a much smaller storm (maybe a foot?) in high school, and i remember using a yardstick to measure a 20+ incher back when i was seven or eight.

outside of those, we’ve had way more false alarms than anything of interest … which is a good thing, because in the end D.C. is a southern town, and southerners (a) refuse to walk or use public transit, and (b) only think they know how to drive on snow.

quick trip through the zoo. the last time we went, i got *really* great pictures, and then proceeded to have my camera stolen at the bar afterwards. no where near as good pictures this time, but at least we all came home in one piece.

it’s a bit of a tradition in D.C. to clamor up to your rooftop (if you have one) to watch the fireworks on the Fourth. the lady sparkler and i had never been, but decided to give it a go this year … thinking that it was probably our last year to do something illegal (before baby sparklet arrives).

i always assumed that the best show was from the mall, but i think the rest of the fireworks (they come from all around us, including Columbia Heights, Crestwood, Silver Spring and over by the National Cathedral) were even more fun.

i did the washington, d.c. part of the c&o canal last year, and liked it enough that i decided to go back for more. the next section, between great falls and edward’s ferry, started off exactly the same … until lock 23 (mile 22) where the trail turns into one long mud pit.

needless to say, my happy little three hour ride turned into a six hour extravaganza … one from which my thighs (and butt) may never fully recover.

Explore the Photo Set:
Edward’s Ferry, Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park, Maryland