Too fast for me

I saw my first athlete competing Friday. I also missed my first photo opportunity.

We went up to the luge and bobsled track, ostensibly to get a credential for my colleague, Thom, who lost his at the Paris airport. But while we were there we also decided to check out the venue’s media center to see if the Internet worked . We don’t have Internet access in our room, nor do we know of any place that offers it in our little village of Cesana Torinese.

So after Thom got his credential, we hiked up Mount Luge. Naturally the media center was at the top of a steep, treacherous hill. Fortunately it wasn’t snowing. Anyway, the path took us right up to the track, and the women lugers were doing practice runs. Literally I could have reached out and given a luger a high five — had I wanted to lose my hand. Instead I got out my camera and prepared to take a shot of the next competitor.

Swing and a miss. The luger whizzed by so fast. But I did get a nice shot of the luge track.

Humbled, I trudged on up the hill and successfully got on the Internet ever so briefly. As I was about to post my last blog entry, my Internet connection vanished. Poof. There went the story. And I couldn’t get back on to save my life. The next hour or so I spent on the phone with a patient Italian technician named Alberto, who eventually fixed the problem.

By that time however, all the luge practice runs were over. So I missed the photo op — again.