Olympic Lawn Mower Race

Last night I watched the Closing Ceremony of the Olympics. I made it as far as the athletes coming into the stadium. When I woke up this morning I had it in mind to blog about the ridiculousness of having a riding lawn mower competition in the Olympics.

I was certain I'd watched a riding lawn mower race last night where there was a big crash of dozens of lawn mowers with this guy from Kenya riding past the wreck and winning the gold medal. I remember thinking do they even have lawns to mow in Kenya?

So, this morning I Googled for images of last night's Olympic Riding Lawn Mower Race and was confused to not find any. And then I realized that I must have had a dream about the Olympic Riding Lawn Mower Race. And that there are no motorized competitions, as far as I know, in the Olympics. So, it had to be a figment of my bad imagination.

I did not watch much of the Olympics other than the opening and closing. Much of it seems ridiculous to me. Like one of the few things I watched was a men's gymnastic thing where a guy would flip himself off a vault and do twists in the air. He'd be judged as to how well he did his flips and twists and his landing.

The amount of time a guy would have to practice this bizarre feat in order to master it seems such a weird waste of effort. All so that you can compete at various events and possibly win a medal and the adulation of the millions of people who see this as a valuable, important activity.

Some of the Olympic stuff makes sense to me, due to it being things that humans actually do. Like run. Or swim. Or ride a bike. But to make a sport out of jumping on a trampoline and doing flips is just silly. Do they still have synchronized swimming? That one always seemed totally silly to me.

Anyway, I'm glad to see the Olympics go bye-bye for another 4 years, til 2012, when dozens of billions of dollars can be spent on it again, this time in London. I'll watch the opening ceremony, if I still have a TV, to see if the Brits top the spectacle the Chinese put on. I doubt that is possible.