Well, we started off the day pretty early. The races started at noon, so we had to be there at 10am. We got there, and I sat in the press area for a while, but I felt kinda weird cheering for everyone from there (no one else was really cheering) so I just moved out to the bleachers with the rest of the fans. The races were OK. Today was the 500 meter races, which is Rusty's strongest distance. But he got reall screwed when he got impeded (well, I feel he did) and it wasn't called. So he lost the race. We were really bummed out. Apolo made it to the final, but he just ran out of room and he didn't medal either. SUCKS! The Canadians sweeped the race.

The relay was pretty good though. It was the US vs. team China (their B team). It was close for a while, but our guys managed to get a great lead and win the race. At least one good thing came out of today!!!

We also watched the relighting of the Olympic torch today (it's the anniversary of the Olympics) and we stood out in the freezing cold to watch everyone make speeches. But the fireworks show they had was worth the frostbitten toes. After the fireworks, we had the rustysmith.com dinner, where all the fans that were in SLC from the site got together for dinner. They were hoping that Rusty himself would be coming for dinner, but he had a charity gala to go to. So they were kinda bummed that he wasn't going to be there. Luckily, though, RUsty got out of the dinner early and stopped by our dinner. The group was so happy to have him there. He was really great, taking pictures and letting people wear his medal. Today wasn't a good day for him (not to mention a very LONG day) and it was great that he took the time out to say hello to his fans. Most people in the same position wouldn't do such a thing.

Since dinner let out a bit early, we decided to go out dancing and play pool. We were debating on which bar to go to when we saw Joey Cheek, and he told us where he was going (which was one of our choices) and we went along with him. Now the thing about SLC is that to go into a bar, you need to either be a member, or have a member sponsor you. Since none of us were members, Joey sponsored us, which was really cool. I owe that guy a drink. He rocks! The bar was OK. NOt the type of music that I like dancing to, but it was OK. The pool tables were so busy there were stacks of quarters on the edges and a million people waiting to play. We did manage to get one game of pool in at the very end of the night. GOod times!

And now, it's time to download the 120MB of pictures I took today. That's about 250 pictures I took!

Posted by Yano at February 9, 2003 04:09 AM

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