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Summit Up 7-31-12: Enduring our daily Mt. Doom-like weather

Summit Up
Helen and Don Gerstein of Frisco had their SDN in front of the Parliment Building in Tallinn, Estonia. Don writes: 'Estonia is formerly part of the Soviet Union and became independent in 1991. It is located in north-eastern Europe on the Bay of Finland. Tallinn, its capital, was founded in 13th century. The Parliment Building sits in the Old City section of the city. We were in Tallinn on June 30 as part of Baltic Sea cruise.'
ALL |

Good morning and welcome to Summit Up, the world’s only daily column that now has a drug-free cure for insomnia: women’s water polo.

Yes, although we’re avid fans of any and all sports in the ‘Lympics, we have to say the matchup between the ladies of China and the ladies of Spain we accidentally watched part of Monday morning failed to excite. We’re not sure if the men’s water polo is any better, but the bottom line is you just can’t really see too much of what’s going on. We’ve no doubt that, for the players themselves, it’s very exciting. It may even be rather exciting for those in the audience, but on television, it looked like a bunch of young ladies in shower caps splashing around in the pool. Sometimes we could see the ball, but you can’t really see the footwork taking place, and the splashing water blocks out a lot of the hand action.

(17 angry and ardent supports of water polo enter)



WATER POLO FANS: You suck! You have no idea how great this sport is! It’s the most exciting thing ever, and way better than boring old swimming which, may we remind you, has no ball or goal – just people swimming in a straight line. BOORRRINNNG!!

Yes, well, OK. There are plenty of sports that don’t get the prime-time treatment. Like the lady who shoots skeet, who has won like 97 medals and shot 99 out of 100 targets – an amazing accomplishment, but we can’t even tell you her name.



(Enter 94 angry skeet shooting fans)

SKEET FANS: Her name is Kimberly Rhode and she’s won a medal in five consecutive Olympics – an American record. Yet hardly anyone saw her feat because all NBC showed was women’s gymnastics and swimming which are BOORRRINNNG because you don’t even get to use a gun in these events.

That’s true! It makes us wonder why there isn’t a summer ‘Lympics version of biathlon. Maybe they could combine the 400-meter backstroke race with a speargun addition. You could add some small sand sharks to the water, and everyone has to spear one of ’em at the 200-meter mark before they can carry on. Obviously, if you accidentally shoot one of the other swimmers in the butt, you are DQ’d or docked time or something. If you get bitten in the ass by one of the sharks, you either get bonus points or points deducted – we’re not sure which makes the most sense.

Hell, we’d pay to see that! C’mon, IOC, add a speargun-swimming shark biathlon to the 2016 lineup for Rio! We suggest it replaces water polo.

(17 angry and ardent supports of water polo: You suck blah blah blah!)

Yeah yeah yeah, tell it to the judge.

***

Rabid Lord of the Rings fans are excited about two things. One is the premiere of the first of two films based on The Hobbit, coming in December. And the other, we must surmise, had to do with the truly LOTR-style weather that gathered over Summit County Sunday afternoon. We happened to be over at Dillon Ridge when the clouds were massing over the Tenmile Range, and we have to say we’d never seen Peak 1 look more like Mt. Doom at that particular time. We drove across the dam wondering if that was such a good idea as lightning flashed and thunder crashed all around us, and by the time we got to Frisco it was hailing, raining like an entire animal shelter’s worth of cats and dogs and the temperatue had dropped like 20 degrees (which Harry Potter fans will tell you typically means a Dementor is in da house, although we didn’t spot any).

It was something, but s’farzwe know, no ill effects were suffered as a result of the hail-infused Sunday afternoon gully-washer. At least we hope not. We did see some little sailboats still out on the lake just before it hit, and they didn’t appear to be fleeing for shore – which is certainly what we would have been doing.

Anyway, extreme weather can be highly entertaining so long as you’re not caught out in it! Remember to be safe out there, folks, and if you’re up a-hiking some mountain – be it Mount Doom or Mount Royal – get to safety as quick as you can if lightning starts up. Generally better at this time of year to get that stuff out of the way in the morning or early afternoon.

So say we.

We out.


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