sarah seems to be transfixed by the olympics. like most sporting events, i could care less about watching it. but i do find the olympics interesting as a cultural phenomenon. that official position lets me completely avoid watching them, and yet somehow lamely feel like i'm participating in the whole hoop-di-doo by standing in the background and nodding knowingly at everything that happens.
at one point during our recent trip, mrs. noz noted that during the last olympics we were also in canada. in the winter of 2002, mrs. noz had a conference in toronto. i followed along for a long weekend to soak up the free hotel and burn all my loonies as she was confined to a windowless conference room. in those days, virtually every spare surface had a screen with people curling on it. curling is perhaps the least comprehensible and most dull sport in the universe, but the canadians were transfixed, which, in turn, fascinated me. upon reflection i realized that curling only seemed ridiculous because it wasn't familiar to me. but that didn't make curling less ridiculous, it just made even more familiar sports seem like odd rituals, somehow mesmerizing to virtually everyone but me.
this year in canada i didn't see as much mania about the olympics. maybe because it's the summer, not winter, games. winter is probably where canada does best. but it was amusing to see the front page banner headlines of the vancouver paper touting that canada had won a silver medal in trampoline. i didn't even realize there was a trampoline olympic event. i wonder if that big parachute is also an olympic sport.
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post-script to the below post: as mrs. noz points out in her first ever comment on this site, we did see seals on our trip. the first one we saw turned its head to look right at us as we kayaked past it. i, of course, was oblivious even though i saw it first. "what's that dog doing way out here?" i asked my wife. after that, mrs. noz was obsessed with seeing seals and seemed to spot them every ten seconds. most of the time, she would call out "seal!" and i would turn my head only to see a fading ripple in the water
