2002: part 5

On Monday, the Daily SLOC Briefing was by far the smoothest one so far. The SLOC Telecom group was well organized, and well prepped.

The next press conference wasn't until 1:00pm, so a bunch of us watched snowboarding in the office. We had four US ualifiers, which was awesome, and the cinematography was incredible. The shots were gorgeous, and there were some great tricks.

Our 1:00pm was the USOC Men's Hockey Press Conference, with the coach, Herb Brooks. It was a pretty packed house, and all went well. Afterwards, we had another break—this one four hours before the next press conference, so I got my haircut.

While I was in the chair, the US swept the medals in snowboarding, which was so awesome. Apparently, there hasn't been a US sweep since 1956, so it's pretty impressive. Plus, snowboarding is such a cool sport, that that made it even more fun.

Following the completion of the Snowboard events, Sara, Mark, Sean and I watched Curling in the office. Apparently Mark, being an Aussie, is a long-time curling fan, so he was trying to explain the nuances of the game—which were pretty entertaining. Sean kept reading from the Spectator's Guide, which was making us laugh even more. He was reading about the hog line and other such nonsense, which was quite entertaining! They seem determined to turn Sara and I into Curling fans, and I will say it can be addictive…

We heard from USOC Jeff (Howard), and he said he was going to try and get the snowboarders at the building around 6:00ish for a press conference. The buzz started going around the building, and people started asking questions. But we had another USOC Press Conference— Men's Slalom/Giant Slalom in the meantime.

It was confirmed that the Snowboarders would be coming for a Press Conference, and Jeff told Sara and I that we needed to do a photo opp with the guys. It is a fine professional line, as we are not allowed to take pictures, ask for autographs, or anything like that, but he was insistent. Jeff told me to get my camera, so I went to grab it, and the batteries were dead. Finally we realized that one of our AV guys had a digital, so we grabbed him. It worked out well, since he had been hoping to meet them anyway.