Flashback Friday - Olympic Moments

With the winding down of yet another Olympics and watching all of the magnificent moments I started to think about my memories of the Olympics.During the Spring of 1996 the torch was on its way to Atlanta and it made a stop through Las Vegas, being in High School and thinking this is a once in a lifetime opportunity my friends and I decided to check it out. A kid from our HS was running with the torch down part of the strip so that is where we went. We got there right as they were closing the road so we parked our car at Spring Mt. and the Strip and got out to watch. It was pretty cool and we wanted to see more, so we hopped in the minivan and headed for downtown. Well, on the way I got a HUGE traffic ticket and it kind of ruined the excitement. A guess a grumpy cop and a van full of obnoxious teens don't mix.Then during the SLC Winter Olympic in 2002, I was living in Draper with my good friend Carrie working on my student teaching. It was amazing to see the excitement surround the city as the rings seemed to appear everywhere. I was teaching Kindergarten during this time and one of our students asked if he could bring in something special. Well, turns out his Grandfather got to run with the torch, when this happens you get to keep that torch, and he was able to bring it into the classroom for the students to see. I remember how beautiful it was and seeing the black left around the glass where the torch had burned. It was a pretty cool experience and I didn't think it would get better than that.
A few days later my sister and a bunch of friends came up so we headed downtown to walk around and check out the scene. We had wandered around and looked at about everything we had wanted to see and on our way back to the car we saw a group of girls sitting on a planter box. Turns out it was the Canadian Girls Hockey team wearing their GOLD medals. They were very friendly and let us look and touch their medals. I remember being surprised at how heavy they were. I couldn't believe that no one in our group had a camera, because we had all forgotten them in the car and cell phones didn't have them, yet.