Weather and the Olympic Games and Hurricane Irene

Having experienced Hurricane Irene at the South Jersey Shore this past week am reminded how weather effects so much during the Olympic Games. The preparation before the games and the ripple effects after the games.

With Irene warnings were given more than three days beforehand. Fears, mandatory evacuation, and sandbagging were in full force. Absecon Island looked like a ghost town when my brother and I rode bikes on the boardwalk during the eve of Irene. Everyone was given notice to leave. In the old days, when I was a child we were given five hours. The weather reporting is so advanced, no doubt the olympic committee is grateful and although none of the games were hit by a hurricane there are some stories worth noting. Warm weather in Canada melted the snow but because of advance planning, the games went on because of the "imported" snow.

Necessity encourages creativity and during the summer games the heat is sometimes unbearable.  During the '92 games in Barcelona one of the businesses, I believe it was a bank, helped hundreds of spectators protect themselves from the heat.  They handed out folded paper hats.  They hats could be twisted and folded into a small pocket and when unfolded they popped out to make an incredibly great white paper hat.  Too cool.  (I stilll have one of these clever inventions :)

Parking Ticket in Park City and the Olympic Spirit

During February of 2002 my son and daughter worked in Salt Lake City during the games. Don in food concessions and Marion, who had been shift manager at the Starbucks at Ritz Drive in Monarch Beach, California during her college days, asked for a transfer during that busy exciting month in Utah. I drove over for a week with a good friend Shirley Lind. It was only about a ten hour drive from Dana Point. One night we filled the car to its capacity and drove up the mountain where Park City was humming with olympic activity. Although the printed information brochures said that there would be public parking, almost everywhere we went said "no parking". Finally we saw a large "Public Welcome" banner hanging outside one of the hospitality houses, drove in their lot, and parked. After a fun night our group headed for the car and bingo, a parking ticket on the windshield made this high flyin' olympic heart of mine drop VERY low for a day or two. It was over a hundred dollars; a big one for my budget, a very big one.

Sheez, it must have been the olympic spirit that helped to bring this one to a happy ending. It just flowed through me and although I never wrote about unfair tickets prior to this, I wrote. I gave a clear concise explanation of what happened to the city commission of Park City and they emailed back that they reviewed and verified my information and everything was hunky dori!