Torino 2006: Been there, done that, got the T-shirt

...and the polo shirt, and the hat, and the scarf, and the gloves, and the refrigerator magnet, and a bunch of pins, and the cologne, and the commemorative bottle of (surprise) Italian wine. Seriously, the Olympics are awesome. They should hold them every year.

Friday afternoon following work, we stuffed 11 people into a 7-person camper and drove for about 10 hours to get to Torino. The drive was made more fun by the board games and beer that, it turns out, we WAY overstocked on. Better too much than too little, right? Saturday we went to the women's curling match, where I twice missed my chance to profess in person my undying love and devotion to US women's curling team skip Cassie Johnson. The US-Italy match ended early (the Italians conceded the rest of the match once they were down 11-3 in the 6th frame), so we stayed to watch the other two matches in progress (UK-Norway and Sweden-Japan). As I was intently focused on the grace and athleticism of one of the Swedish players, Cassie walked right by in front of our seats and I completely missed it until she had already gone by and was out of shouting distance. So to drown my sorrows, a couple of us got up to grab some beers, and I missed my second opportunity for a marriage proposal when she apparently walked back by our group and chatted with them for a couple minutes. Damn the timing. On the bright side, according to a friend back home, our group did make it onto NBC's broadcast of the event. Which we richly deserved, because we were the loudest, most supportive group of Americans there, aside from the friends and family of the team. We had three American flags for 11 people...that's a people-to-flag ratio of less than four, which I think is pretty darn good.

Sunday morning I took the coldest shower of my life at the campground. It was pretty ridiculous. We left and parked the R/V at one of the park-and-ride places just outside the city and took the shuttle bus in. (It was actually a very well set-up transportation system. There were about 8 or 9 giant park-and-ride places around the city; parking was free and we paid 5 euro for unlimited use of the shuttle buses and all the other buses in the city for 24 hours. And the trains for the events outside the city--like curling, for example--were pretty frequent and very clean. I want to move to northern Italy.) We wandered around Torino for a couple hours and bought some souveneirs. Meanwhile, it started raining and so we got cold and wet, which we stayed for pretty much all day. Continuing our quest for TV stardom, we randomly came upon the piazza where NBC is filming the Today Show. We managed to get front row spots, and I'm pretty sure we got on TV (although we only had one American flag with us then). We were right behind one of the segments they were filming, and the guy with the crowd cam wandered by us a couple times. During one segment, they were showing how to make cappuccino and one of the guys in our group yelled, "Put some whiskey in it," causing the cooking lady to say, "yeah, let's put some whiskey in it." So at least he got to be heard on national TV, if not seen.

Exhausted from our brush with fame, we took the bus up to the hockey stadium, outside of which the Olympic flame was burning. Looks a little too much like an oil refinery for me, but I suppose it's still pretty cool. Then we went to the hockey match between those international hockey powerhouses Slovakia and Kazhakstan. It was actually a lot of fun--we had top row nosebleed seats, so we could be obnoxious and loud, and it was a good game, too. We were pretty evenly divided in our group between Kazhakstan and Slovakia. And one confused guy in the group, not realizing which game we were going to see, panted the Czech flag on his face before the game.

After the game, we went back to the city center and wandered around some more. By this time, it was snowing rather heavily. We found the Olympic megastore, and by the time we got there we were soaking wet. I had leather fleece-lined gloves which, between the rain earlier that day and the snow that evening, had become soaked. So I did the only logical thing: bought a pair of nice, dry team Italia ski gloves. I was thinking about buying some dry Olympic socks, too, but since my shoes were soaked it wouldn't have lasted for long. Left the store and wandered by the piazza where they were doing that night's medals ceremony. Unfortunately, you needed advance tickets to get in, and we weren't able to get them. We did stand outside for a bit where we could see the big screen, and then they brought out Whitney Houston to sing. So we left. We went to a nice restaurant and had, of course, an absolutely delicious dinner.

After dinner, most of the group went back to the RV, but three of us decided to slog through the snow to go hang out at a pub we had seen the previous day. It was absolutely insane--packed full, and every single person in there was either American or Canadian. And it seemed like every other person there was in some way affiliated with the Olympics--"Jennifer Rodriguez is my sister," "I'm the travel coordinator for the ice dancing team," "Bode Miller's brother went to school with me," etc. Of course, they could have been lying, but they were all very friendly. It was just one big happy American party.

Of course, after staying out most of the night, the three of us had a rather rough time of it on the trip back this morning, but it was well worthwhile. I figure I may never get the chance to go to the Olympics again, so I wanted to get the most out of my experience. And if Olympic groupies go to the bar until the wee hours of the morning, well dammit, that's what I'm going to do, too.

The whole trip was an incredibly fun experience. People everywhere from every country were friendly and talkative, and just happy to be out supporting their teams and their countries. A nice dose of the real "Olympic spirit," not that cheesy stuff that NBC tries to sell. I'm planning on trying to come back to as many Olympic games as I can; Vancouver in 2010 is totally do-able, as will be the Summer Games in London in 2012. Don't think I'm making it to Beijing in 2008, but hey, you never know...