Olympic proportions

It's amusing to hear about the 2010 Olympics being referred to as 'jinxed' and 'cursed' and full of glitches.The Cauldron made me laugh, because it reminded me of "Spinal tap" when the pod refused to open on stage and the Stonehenge was only 18 inches high, instead of 18 feet. The fence was another miss, but at least a repair was swift and organized.

But have we forgotten the disaster of Atlanta? I recall stories about horrendous screwups regarding transportation,, scheduling and inept employees. Not only spectators, but journalists who covered were given bad direction and had to rely on gand braindead, inefficient employees who were unable to follow instructions because most of them were probably in written form. Journalists never arrived to events they were supposed to cover and some left in disgust.

Then there was the searing heat. Heat is always an issue in summer games: Mexico city, los angeles, athens..but those are, as they say, DRY heats. There's a reason it's called Hot 'Lanta. If you can't handle the oppressive humidity, you will suffer, but even more so if you're just sitting in it. Spectators had to be sprayed with water in the pitiless afternoon sun,where there was no shade. The horses began to suffer. (Of course, that was also a problem in Beijing, where the triathletes cooked like shrimp in a 27 degree water.) But when Atlanta bid for the games, they said their average annual temperature was 72 degrees. That means 90 in the summer and 50 in the winter.

Homeless residents (mostly black) were chased out of the area, so as not to scare off tourists and guests. However, a white trash lunatic managed to set off an explosive device, then fled and disappeared for 5 years. Obviously, Munich didn't have much of a lasting legacy.

And Lake Placid was plagued with similar transportation problems. Americans seem to have problems with public transportation. Unless it involves massive amounts of cars, it's beyond their scope.

I had a feeling all along that weather would be a problem and thought that Vancouver was possibly the dumbest place on earth for the winter Olympics, even with Whistler. As for the snow, I had a sort of premonition that this would happen. I remembered that Calgary, affected by warm chinook weather did have some snow problems as well.

Quebec city still has plenty of snow and perfect snow making temperatures, but it's not hard to understand why Quebecers would not want to take a dive into yet another Olympic toilet.