the rix mix

The strangely beautiful opening ceremony featured a Botticelli clamshell & acrobats dangling from surreal balloons & a fat old opera singer. This is Fellini's Italy. But my interest in the Winter Olympic games consists almost entirely of watching people slide as fast as they can down steep frozen inclines. On skis, on bobsleds, on skeletons, on cafeteria trays. That's what I loved doing whenever my parents deposited me at snowy, frigid Galloping Hill Golf Course & I told them not to come back until I called from a public phone. I walked home a few times. I'd bring one of the several classic Flexible Flyers my family had, or gather a crew for our superfast old toboggan, which we'd race against all challengers; I did not fear Suicide Hill even when it was a sheet of glacial ice, & I was utterly without compassion if I ran down some idiot dragging a flimsy aluminum saucer up the middle of the slope. As a teenager, I really wanted to try bobsledding, but not enough to hitch hike to Lake Placid in January. Not for me is any sport where judges hold up cards with numbers. Even the so-call "Xtreme" sports. Those competitions are obviously fixed. The opponent must be defeated head to head, by the clock, or because one side is better at manipulating & controling some loose object.

I blew it by not establishing legal residence in a tropical nation & becoming the entire Men's Singles Luge Team.