Nathan, Mandy, and I went to Olympic Square in Salt Lake City today and I believe we all had a really good time.

The main reason for going down to Olympic Square was to go to the Coca-Cola tent. Coke has this huge tent that you can try Olympic events. Some of the events you can try are the luge, curling, hockey, and bobsleigh.

Bobsleighing was the best activity in the coca-cola tent mostly because it was the most competitive and because it had the shortest wait to participate in the activity. Other events like the luge would have been fun, but a 2 hour wait was a big deterrent in participating in the 5 second event.

With each event in the Coca-Cola tent you competed against other people for medals. In the bobsleigh event, each competition was against 15 different teams assigned to represent different countries.

Another reason I think bobsleigh was the funnest event was due to the physical competitive nature of the event. The sad part of the whole thing is that Nathan and I were getting excited about trying so hard to get the gold medal and that we were mostly competing against young children and their parents. There were a few guys that we knew that we were going to have troubles competing against.

Nathan and Mandy’s team was probably about the 10th team to push the 600 lb sleigh. The commentator said that they looked very determined to win, and if you do know Nathan and Mandy at all, you know that they were determined to win the gold. Their determination helped beat out the other people for the first place position. They pushed the sleigh in the second fastest time that we had seen that day of 3.02 seconds.

I was up next and I wanted to push the sleigh with Nathan, but they would not let him go twice in a row so the commentator started asking if anyone else did not have a partner. I was terrified thinking that I was going to have some child with me and that I would have no chance at the gold because I would have a child pushing with me.

A few seconds later, some girl in line came up and said she also did not have a partner. If my memory serves me right, the girls name was Julie, she is from SLC, and she is a paramedic about my age. When the commentator saw that I was going to have this girl my age push with me he made some dating jokes.

To help you understand why and how I injured myself in this competition, let me describe what was going on in my mind. First of all I was very determined to win and I was trying to find every possible edge in trying to get the best time possible. One problem we saw with other people pushing the sleigh was that they quit pushing before they got to the red line that was on the ground. They would quit pushing early because if you crossed the red line on the ground you would be disqualified. You would disqualify you even if you crossed the line with the momentum of your body. Also I wanted to give all I could give to the red line so I was going to give it a huge shove right up to the red line.

The only solution I could come up with that would allow me to push the sleigh to the very end and not cross the red line was to take a diving leap and skid my body to a stop on the rubber matting on the ground.

When I got up from the ground I looked up at the timer and I was so amazed that we had the exact time that Nathan and Mandy had of 3.02 seconds. I was so excited that we were all probably going to get the gold together and share the gold in victory.

A few seconds later, they told us that the timer was not reset and that the time on the board was actually Nathan and Mandy’s time. So Julie and I had to go again. And because of this I had to take another diving leap which injured me even more the second time. I injured myself mostly because I had a hole in the knee of my pants and the rubber matting did a number on my flesh.

When I looked up at the time after our second push the time on the board read 3.00 seconds. When I looked up I also saw Julie clinging onto the siding trying not to fall across the line. I think she was as crazy as I was trying to do all that she could to the end to try and get the gold.

So Julie and I went up to stand on the podium in the first place position and the commentator said that we should take the time that was left with the 4 groups that were left to go to get to know each other.

After the 4 groups went Nathan and Mandy took silver and Julie and I took gold. We received Coca-Cola gold and silver pins for what we had done.