fall: at your feet.

Today was a mildly unseasonable day here in the Springs.

When I say "unseasonable" I mean that it's just past mid-October and it was over 70 degrees.  This, of course, is two weeks after our record low temperatures and one week after an ice storm.  Way to go, Colorado weather.  Way to go.

Because of the lovely weather we're having, I decided that instead of going to the gym (which is a place I don't necessarily enjoy anyway), I was going to go for a walk.  No one else wanted to go, so I just went and thought.  It's nice to have technology-free, uninterrupted thoughts sometimes...even when I come home and rehash my thoughts for you using technology.  You can't bottle up feelings and thoughts and smells the way you can during a walk.  It's not even worth it to try.

However, some particular sights on my walk stood out to me.  Maybe because fall is my favorite season, and maybe because I find myself from time to time feeling stuck between my youth and my still impending adulthood.  Yes, I am technically an adult.  There are just certain responsibilities that I feel go hand-in-hand with adulthood, and somehow my fall walk got me thinking.

When you are an adult, you have a yard.  When you are a child, you have a yard (even if it's your parents' yard).  I live an apartment.  I share this small strip of lawn with 12 other apartments, just on my side of the sidewalk.  I do not have my own yard.  I do not have a lawn to mow.  I do not have enough room to make a real snowman.  I do not have leaves in a yard, nor do I have a rake to put the leaves in a pile.  Not that it matters, since my dad never liked us to rake the leaves - it kills the grass! he'd say, which never seemed like a good reason not to rake the leaves since the grass just died in the winter anyway.  It makes sense now.  Raking leaves seems fun when you're little.  But I have no yard and subsequently, no leaves.

When you're an adult, you have a house.  When you are a child, you have a house.  Obviously if you have a yard, you have a house to sit in the yard. 

When you have a house and a yard, you can decorate for holidays.  I saw numerous houses today decked out for Halloween, with "graveyards" and skeletons and pumpkins.  I saw a house with a huge ghost draped from the door over the window.  When Halloween is over, Christmas season sets in, and there are lights to string on trees and snowmen to build and wooden reindeer to set up in the yard.

When you live in an apartment, there is limited space in which to decorate.  No way to drape a ghost over my window, two floors up.  No way to string lights on the trees.  No yard, remember?

It's not just about a house and a yard.  I want a dog.  Dogs, big dogs, require more space than a 700ish square foot apartment can provide. 

No house.  No yard.  No dog.

But this, my friends, is the best part about a walk in the fall.  I walk by a park, and there were pee-wee football teams practicing, reminding me of all the days and nights spent at football games throughout high school and college.  I walk by houses with decorations and mentally make a note to someday have those decorations on my house (or maybe not!).  I walk by trees, jutting out at the sidewalk from someone's yard, and I can smell the rich pine smell reaching up to my nose.  I walked through the grass and crunched some leaves under my Asics.  Fall is all around; it's not limited to your house or your yard.

Even though I'm without some of my favorite aspects of fall again this year, like the cider mill, or the jack-o-lanterns spread around our driveway, or football games at my alma mater, I can still see the leaves - they are a-changin'! - and smell fall smells and carve a pumpkin, even though this year it'll be on layers of newspaper in my apartment living room.

I doubt I'll ever fall out of love with fall.

have love, will travel.

Wanderlust.

I have been stricken with wanderlust.

Actually, I have always had it.  When I was young, we went camping around Michigan.  I love that state, and I have seen so much of it, as my dad saw every trip as an opportunity to chart a new route.  We rarely took highways when there were backroads that would lead us to the same spot.  I can thank him for my sense of direction, that's for sure.  We also took a trip to Florida when I was nine, to visit grandparents and obviously spend some time at Disney World.

In high school, I was fortunate enough to take school trips (field trips?) to Spain and Hawaii.  Both were part of classes I was enrolled in, and although they were optional trips, what better opportunity to go to faraway places?  A foreign country and a state that's far enough away to seem like a foreign country were just what I needed - I was hooked.  

But after the last trip in 2004, I stayed put.  Let's be honest, traveling is expensive, especially when you consider the cost of plane tickets, hotels and even rental cars.  As a college student, there wasn't time to flit around the world.  I had classes to go to, a job that pulled me in full-time during summers and not much extra time for the one thing I really wanted to do.  What about all the countries I hadn't been to yet?  What about new cultures to experience?  My host family in Spain fed me pig ears (a delicacy in Spain) for my 17th birthday.  The McDonald's on Oahu served pineapple with it's meals.  What was I missing out on?

I'll quiz you.

Between 2005 and 2008, I flew on a plane:
A.  3 times
B.  4 times
C.  1 time
D.  0 times

If you guessed C, you'd be right.  In three full years, the only time I ever flew was in December 2008, when I flew home for Christmas.

In 2009 alone, by December 31st, I will have had 16 different flights. SIXTEEN.  That's just a little more than one flight a month, on average.

So, as adults, do we end up traveling more?  I have to fly back "home" to see my family and my friends since I've moved away, sure, but is it common for a young adult with a more stable living situation to take more trips and see more of the world?  I am going to go out on a limb and say yes, but traveling is different as an adult is different than taking a trip with your parents or with a class in school.  You're on your own.  Book your own ticket, your own hotel, your car.  Maybe you'll stay in a hotel alone.  Maybe you'll drive 1,200 miles alone.

Think about that.  But realize that no matter who you are, and where you go, being an adult is actually a journey in itself.  We enter the age of an adulthood like we enter a new city: somewhat tentative, but always alert and with our eyes open to whatever is out there that we haven't seen before.  I don't know what cities I will go to next, or how I will get there (physically or financially!), but I don't know where life will take me either.

The great thing about wanderlust is that it's not limiting.  Hopes, dreams, wanderlust - all part of the same heart you need as you experience new things.  You have an open road.  You get to have open mind.

Where will it take you?

i've got spirit (how 'bout you?)

Today has come and gone.  October 2, 2009.  The day of the vote for the host city of the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.

Congratulations to Rio de Janeiro, who will be the host - a first ever for South America.

I can't pretend I'm not disappointed.

Rio had just as much of a chance as anyone.  I actually would argue that their odds of winning were better.  As much as I supported Chicago's bid, I was realistic.  Somewhere deep down, I knew it wouldn't be in the U.S., and that Rio would be the victor.  It's funny how sometimes a gut feeling can be so right.

There are so many reasons why Chicago could have won.  Obviously, there are even more reasons that it was theirs to lose.  Personally I'd be interested to know what factors the International Olympic Committee voters took into account as the 97 of them voted in that first round.  I'm sure the Chicago delegation feels the same way.  Like a bad breakup.  Was it something we said?  Something we did?  Just tell us...we'll fix it, we promise!  Of course it doesn't work that way.  It's over.

The vote actually takes place rather quickly.  97 countries represented in the IOC.  Push a button.  Vote.  IOC President takes the floor.  Chicago eliminated.  Boom.

Immediately the vote goes to the second and third rounds, but not without the Chicago supporters left standing with their mouths open, wondering where we could have gone wrong.  We were supposed to be in those rounds! Chicago!  We were considered one of the front-runners, along with Rio, and it was supposed to be close!  I even said that the other day: it'll be close.  It wasn't close, not even a little bit.

There were speculations.  Thoughts like, we just had the games in 1996, and in 2002, so it's someone else's turn.  Or that somehow President and Mrs. Obama had some negative impact on Chicago's bid (when in reality, President Obama's involvement probably hurt him more than anything).  Those more educated on the specifics of the Olympic Movement knew that it probably had more to do with the relationship the United States Olympic Committee had been testing with the IOC over the past few months.  Maybe it was a little of all of those things.  I doubt we'll ever really know, unless one of the IOC voters breaks his silence.  Doubtful.

For me, I saw Chicago as a way for us to prove we could still host a games.  A quality Olympic Games that could be respected, remembered.  Games that left a good taste in your mouth.  You might ask why that even would be an issue, what with our hosting summer games in 1984 and 1996, and winter games in 2002.  Believe me - it is.

When Atlanta hosted the Centennial Olympic Games in 1996, it was supposed to be phenomenal. 100 years of Olympic greatness.  We are America, and we could handle that.  Never mind that we beat out Athens in the fifth and final round.  Never mind that Athens had been going for a sentimental bid, since they had hosted the first modern Olympic Games in 1896.  We won, and we were going to prove we could be the best.  And we weren't.

Everyone's familiar with the bombing in Centennial Olympic Park on July 27, 1996.  A bomb went off, and someone died.  Over 110 people were injured.  But...Olympic spirit prevailed, and the Games continued. What you might not be familiar with is the reaction to the Atlanta games by then-IOC president, Juan Antonio Samaranch.

In Samaranch's 21 years as the President of the International Olympic Committee, in each closing ceremony he participated in, he would proclaim that each Olympic Games was "the best Olympic Games ever" - except in Atlanta.  That's right.  The Atlanta Games are the one Olympic Games in 20 years that Samaranch could not bring himself to pay such a high compliment.  You can see it in this video of the 1996 closing ceremonies where he can only say that these games were "most exceptional."  If you continue to watch (don't worry, I cut right to the chase, so it's not too long), you can hear the announcers covering the closing ceremonies mention that Samaranch did not call Atlanta the best games ever, as he had in the past.  It stung.

So knowing this, 2002 would do so much better...right?  Before we were even close to hosting in 2002, a long-time member of the IOC accused other members of the IOC of accepting bribes.  Salt Lake City was right at the center of the allegations, which proved to be true.  Another blemish.

I like to think Chicago could have overcome these issues.  Chicago could have been our shining beacon, once again guiding other countries and the world's best athletes into the United States, into what may have been the best bid ever put together by a U.S. city.  Chicago has some fantastic youth programs in place, for lesser known sports. Those (hopefully) will continue, despite the outcome of this vote.

I watched Chicago's presentation live, when I should have been sleeping.  My passion for the Olympic Games overshadows many other things, and I had to see this.  And even though I only watched Chicago, and not the other bids (because hey, I had to work in the morning), I liked what I heard.

One of the thoughts that stuck with me most was something said by Chicago 2016 Director of Sports and Operations, Doug Arnot: "We know that concrete and steel do not build sport.  People build sport."

We often times lose sight of this.  People are what the Olympic Movement is all about.  Athletes.  Spectactors.  Dreamers.  The Olympic Spirit lives on in each of us, no matter where the games are held and what politics might try to drag our spirits down.

So bring on Vancouver.  London.  Sochi.  And now Rio.

It doesn't matter where the Olympic Games are held, just that they are held at all.