Evelynn Starr

This week I have been engaged in a particularly egregious bout of cyberloafing. The 2014 Olympics started last Friday, and they are taking place 9 time zones ahead of where I am currently sitting. That means unfortunately most of the competition happens while I am still asleep. And that means that the moment I get into the office I have to catch up on everything that happened overnight that I missed.

After selective trawling of internet-disseminated news from several sources in numerous languages, what follows is a true all-you-can-eat smorgasbord of livestream TV feeds direct from Sochi. Though perhaps somewhat complicated to navigate, the NBC Olympics website opens up a myriad of possibilities to keep one occupied and entertained well into the afternoon, Eastern Standard Time. I usually start off with biathlon, then maybe some luge, a bit of snowboarding, and of course the crowning highlights of the games from my perspective: speedskating.

I tried speedskating once myself, because hey, I’m an inline skater, how hard can it be? Answer: A lot harder than it looks. Speedskating on ice is an entire nother ball of wax. First of all, the blade edges are perpendicular to the ice rather than rounded as we well know from hockey or figure skating, designed to glide without unnecessary friction. This allows for ludicrously easy sideways slipping, too. My first move in speedskates was the splits. (Virtually impossible with composite rubber wheels unless you go skating in the pouring rain.) Second, the blades attached to the boots are about as long as my thigh, making it terribly difficult to propel oneself forward without tripping on them and thereby drilling a hole into the surface as one brings ones foot forward to take the next step. Third, the ice (upon which one inevitably ends up sitting, usually sooner rather than later) is wet and terribly cold.

Ice vs. asphalt does have one advantage: when you submit to the law of gravity there is no shredded skin…. only freezer burn.

So anyway, when the Olympic competition ceases for the day, by about 2pm my time, the next major decision is figure out what I will have for lunch and then check out which tape replay to watch. But I  haven’t really gotten into the whole tape replay thing since I know most of the results already. So I decide to write a blog post instead.