Monday, February 15, 2010

Eat Like An Olympian, A Retrospective

Seriously McDonalds? "So tonight, we eat like Olympians.?!?!?WT*??" Yeah, Johnny Spillane's just scarfing those chicken McNuggets down.

Side note, I once wrote about McNuggets for my local paper when I was in Lillehammer, Norway with my dad for the 1994 Winter Olympics.

Not just McNuggets of course. But also about the men's aerials, hockey, Dan Jansen's gold medal and world record in the 1,000 meters. That was one of the most incredible moments of my life. The whole trip was full of those moments. My dad and I met Kristi Yamaguchi (I'd show you the picture, but I dropped my Disney World Mickey Mouse Camera, and the photos were wrecked), bobsledder Brian Shimer, along with several of the CBS sportscasters. It was cold, and we ate little more than granola bars everyday, because all the restaurants were booked, and the only food at the venues was a pretzel type thing with a lingonberry jelly . We went skiing, and I dropped my gloves off the ski lift. it was freezing. The coldest I'd felt in my life. My dad calmly put his gloves on my frozen hands and marched down the mountain in ski boots, retrieving my gloves from a rocky ravine.

Then I accidentally skied off towards a double diamond slope. My dad yelled at me to fall down to stop myself. We finally found a slope we could deal with, until it leveled out and we realized that we'd actually left the slope a ways back and had been skiing on a road. It was white. Everything was white. Norway was like the inside of a sugar bowl.

One night I got sick. My dad carried me inside the hotel, helped me into bed. Went down to the front desk and asked where the drug store was. That has a different meaning in Norwegian. After convincing the woman at the front desk he wasn't searching for the narkotika, she directed him to the nearest pharmacy, where he bought medicine for me. My dad was really the American hero of that Olympics. He deserves a gold medal.

As for the McDonalds, ""Eat Like An Olympian"" stuff? Well, gold medal swimmer Michael Phelps does consume 12,000 calories a day. So i guess McDonalds isn't lying, they're just being misleading.

I have to say, I'm enjoying this Olympics. I mean, who knew Nordic Combined could be interesting? Although the longer cross-country races are like watching raindrops slowly trickle down a windowpane. But how about those Chinese pairs skaters? Amazing.

Of course there's been tragedy. And venue mishaps. But I love the Winter Games.

Even so, totally watching Lost tomorrow.

NEW FEATURE: Today's Winter Olympics Did You Know?:
"Polar bears eat seals almost exclusively."

Thanks Mary Carillo.

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