HURRY UP AND WAIT

Master of waiting- a friendly stray in mountain cluster

Weather continues to hold and is supposed to through the weekend.  The K95 was prepped in time for the first jumps by fore-jumpers on Wednesday night.  All camera crews were in place to run through shots, angles and timing.  Bob Pappa is the lead play by play NBC announcer for ski jumping who was covering the Super Bowl and so just showed up late Tuesday night.  He and I were in the booth and sideline reporter Randy Moss in the "mix zone" at the end of the outrun to check lights, sound, and communication links to the truck and main IBC.  All went swimmingly.

The K95 seems to ski very low which really shouldn't make any difference one way or another but gives the skier the sense that the smallest hiccup will bring him/her down.  This is a hill where faith will be rewarded, doubt punished mightily.  First official training for men is Thursday night and it will be great to finally see some action and get a feel for who is showing up with what.

There has been some talk of stray dogs and I can assure you they exist and continue to exist.  But they seem to be more like communal companions than stray mutts.  Always friendly and obliging to the paparazzi.  Freakishly agile through traffic.

Been spending alot of time researching and crazy what people are putting out on twitter/facebook, etc.  There's a brand new perspective, huh?  But it's crazy to me how I can again and again be struck afresh by it.  Will it ever stop accelerating?  Rhetorical question and getting back to the point- I'm becoming a fan of Russian jumper Irina Avvakumova who at 22 has come out of nowhere and won a world cup this year and sits in 4th in the overall tour.  If she gets a medal it will be the only medal Russia gets in ski jumping (men are not a threat) AND it would contrast nicely with the quote from the Russian men's coach who said women should not be jumping but tending home fires!  In two clicks of the mouse from the official Sochi database I was rewarded with this shot posted on Irina's facebook page:

Is this the abdomen of a home fire tender?  But more to the point, should I be seeing this?  Should I be sharing it?  Too late now.

The take-away for me from Irina's page and others' women's tweets, postings, and bios is this- there is no milk-toast in this women's field, just a metric poop ton of attitude.  I'm hanging on by a thread.  And can't wait to fall.