Fear and Loathing at the Olympics

I hit the road before the pageantry comes to a close, trading in the banners and flags for the red, white, and blue of mesa, cloud, and sky. I leave the other worldly atmosphere of the sports festival, dropping down below the snow line at Green River and rolling back onto the country I'd flown over in that little six-seater. Neil Young is singing "Long May You Run" on the stereo, and I've got one more AAA tow in this old Saab before it finds its final resting place in Colorado.

The Olympics are inspiring. Even with their corporate logos and elite price tags. What's most inspiring, perhaps, is the decency of regular people, scoffing at security protocol and lending a hand to a weary traveler, letting common sense take precedent over regulations. And since most of us know defeat far better than victory, we're inspired by the losers, the dedicated perfectionists who spend a lifetime learning the same things we found out about ourselves too long back, that we would leave Salt Lake once more without a medal. When the biggest stories of the Games are controversies separating silver from gold, it is refreshing to find those athletes who can find triumph in the journey completed, know pure joy in a personal best, and find the healing pleasure in the grain of the game.

OWEN PERKINS

Salt Lake resident and happy employee of the Olympic superstore Melyssa Bonnell shows off the gear.

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I have no intention of working on my triple salchow, and I'm not about to pick up skeleton racing. Okay, I've got some new images to fill my mind's eye as I slalom my way down a bump run in the Rockies, and I've picked up a pointer or two for the bar room version of curling I play every blue moon or two. But I've got a backpack full of inspiration from Planet Utah, from the growing family tree I discovered to the reaffirmation of human rights and a commitment to peace, from the discovery of new cultures to the new perspectives on the landscape and heritage of the American West. On the slopes and in the canyons, on the ice and around the song circle, the bug bite of excellence sinks its teeth beneath our flesh.

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