You're right Jurek. Once we got to 10:30pm it looked as if the festivities were still going strong. We were enjoying it and would have stayed with it if the coverage had continued. Very clever comedy bit at the beginning when they spoofed themselves over the torch malfunction. It came off well.

Enjoyed the alpine skiing events the best. Having spent some time at both Aspen and Vail I was lucky enough to witness jr. national alpine down hill one year at Vail and another national downhill at Aspen. The speed these skiers are going is unreal. At Vail the course was on a trail that I had skied many times but for the race it was pool table smooth and sprayed with water to ice it up. At the bottom of the face a ski patrolman had a hand held radar gun and was clocking the racers. 82 mph was tops while I was watching and these were junior racers. Insane.

Boy, it is really evident that there are a lot of mixed tastes of what everyone liked or disliked about the the Olympics. That's good. Variety is what makes the world go 'round. I really loved watching the Olympics. There were some boring and repetitive events, like cross country and bobsled. It was exciting, however, when the USA won the 4-man event. I can't believe how many people like curling. To me, it's like watching shuffleboard. Okay to play, really boring to watch. And I'm Scottish. I love the downhill and slalom events and that last game between the USA and Canada was outstanding. I don't watch it except during the Olympics, but all of the ice skating events were fantastic. What a sour grapes Russian skater.

I don't understand what one writer didn't like about the nationalism shown by the NBC announcers. It's one of those times when I feel ultra proud of the athletes from my country, just as I would expect the announcer from my home town to be biased towards my home team. I wish the whole world could be run like the Olympics. Cheer for your side, but be respectful and friendly with the accomplishments of the rest of the world. And money( at least in theory ) is not what drives them. It's for the love of the game and competition.

NBC did the same thing with the closing ceremonies at the Salt Lake City Olympics. I watched the closing fireworks up on the mountainside on TV, and also watched them out the window. Poof! The Olympics were over as far as NBC was concerned. Meanwhile the fireworks continued outside.

The local NBC affiliate received so many complaints that they showed the closing ceremony, including the entire fireworks show, 2 nights later.