Oregon Public Broadcasting

Ah, the Olympics -- a time when couch potatoes feel the thrill of victory. It’s about this time that OPB commentator Bob Balmer  looks forward to welcoming a few small screen personalities back into his life. 

Sometime in February Bob Costas will become the other man in our household.  He’s like some lovable stranger who shows up for three weeks every two years to guide us through the Olympics. 

My wife even calls him darling Bob.   Such intimacy could bother me.  But I’m fine with it. 

I’m open, and I like Bob.   Besides judging from the way he arches his eyebrow at me, I think Bob likes me more than my wife.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Long before Bob shows up, I start to prepare for the Olympics.

For instance, I’m trying to squeeze in one last conversation with my wife about why I don’t want to turn the garage into a greenhouse.

Once the Olympics start our conversations revolve around skiing, skating and hockey. 

It’s a given that my wife will gush about how cute speed skater Apolo Ohno is.  He’s a perfect ten, she’ll say, and I’ll remind her that he’s a speed skater and that they time rather than judge speed skaters.

Then when Bob says:  Ohno could break Eric Heiden’s record for winning medals, we’ll say Eric who?  One problem with the Olympics – they only come every four years, so it’s difficult to remember the stars’ names.

Sure some nights the dog isn’t fed, and the bills stack up like snow in the Cascades, but then how often does one get to listen to an announcer pronounce Czech hockey players’ names or watch a skier dubbed The Snow Leopard of Ghana? 

Better yet, how often do my wife and I go three weeks without using the remote?

Our favorite event is figure skating.  This year we’ve decided to prepare for it, especially to learn its tricky nomenclature.  What is a lutz jump, an axel jump, a camel spin, a twizzle, a swizzle....?

Really, if a person can take a French class from the University of Phoenix, shouldn’t there be a comparable figure skating fluency course?

Beside the thrill of watching superior athletes, the Olympics are about eating in front of the television.  Chicken wings, Chinese, pizza, Thai....

Makes me wish there were an Olympics for eating.  I can already do a single-chicken-masticate, the correct term for eating a chicken wing in one bite.

So while our minds turn to Whistler, I can only say may your life be filled with star lifts.  No, I won’t tell you what it means.  Google it yourself or email Bob.  Really, aren’t the Olympics about striving? 

When he isn’t striving for the perfect chicken masticate himself, Bob Balmer is a writer and a regular commentator for OPB.