Sweet Home Chicago

The 2016 Olympics gets a home in just a few hours. Everything around here seems to ask "We back the bid" do you?

I don't know.

I was raised in a family that is obsessed with Olympics. Some of my earliest memories revolve around watching the LA Olympics in 1984, and I got to stay up late to watch Greg Louganis in Seol in 1988. Lots of summertime was spent watching Barcelona and Atlanta in 1992 and 1996. And I corrupted my roommate with hours and hours of Sydney during Hello Dolly in 2000 (we even decorated hats in front of it). I didn't have TV during Athens in 2004, but I would head down to the Ale house to eat or drink and watch upon occasion (like shot put in Olympia!!). Sam and I both watched quite a bit of Beijing last year. That is just the summer games!

BUT, it is one thing to watch it on television. I have always hoped to attend a games, but like on vacation. Like hey lets go to London AND see some Olympics while we were on vacation and doing other vacationy things. Where we went for a few days around our event tickets and then headed out to elsewhere in the vicinity.

Hosting the Olympics in your own city is another thing. It is threeish weeks of likely Public Transportation nightmares. Right now I am walking distance to my job, will that still be true in 2016? Who knows? The tourists, officials, athletes, etc that it would bring to the city would be awesome in theory and likely a pain in my life's ass. But I think it would be good for the city, and I think we would do a good job. Of course I could maybe even get a job working for the Olympics. That would be cool.

On the other hand, if we still live in the same place downtown, we likely could rent our place out for the two weeks and take a sweet ass vacation far away and subsidized by said rental. That would be awesome too (although kind of lame to miss the Olympics in my backyard). So I am not sure I back the bid (and for totally petty selfish reasons, so sue me).

In a few hours that might be a moot point.