Sochi & Ice Storms

A word about the weather. The Southeast is learning all about ice storms and skating rink highways, and Sochi is learning all about mushy mountainsides that make snowboarding and downhill skiing a dangerous sport.

The tv shots of the ice in Atlanta and most of North and South Carolina remind me of Frost’s poem “Birches,” in which the truth of bowed birches isn’t that boys have been swinging on them but that ice storms have caused them to bend, ice storms that, when the sun comes out and the temperatures rise, make the world look like the “inner dome of heaven” has fallen. Oh, how I love that poem. Love it as much as the Atlantans hate the stuff about which it was written.

And then there’s Sochi, with the Olympic ski and snowboard participants falling on their butts or crashing into safety nets when their skis or boards can’t navigate the slushy slopes.

I know, I know, they all have to face the same conditions, but in these conditions the best don’t always win the gold. Shaun White is a good example. He’d have won if the snow had been snow, if at the bottom of a trick his board had been able to grab the snow as it’s supposed to. Sounds like sour grapes on my part. At least I’m thankful that no idiot terrorists have yet struck these Games. Yet.