My first Olympics!

These pictures are from an 8-day road trip with my dad Norm starting 2/8/02
and including my friend Stewart Clamen who met up with us in Utah on 2/10/02.
My dad and I covered 1400 miles towing the trailer, and the three of us spent a cozy
700 miles of driving around the Salt Lake area, scrunched 3-wide in the pickup. Oof.

But the trip started for me a couple of weeks earlier, as I worked on
hooking up my large trailer to my small truck and hoping it would work out.
(22' trailer, S-10 shortbed pickup with V6, Lil' Rocker 5th wheel hitch,
Tekonsha Sentinel brake controller, some wiring, and some overload springs.)

It turned out great! The truck even earned a nickname, "Steve". Steve was the
little engine that could. We headed up Donner Pass at a roaring 45 mph, only downshifting
to 2nd gear twice, and arrived proudly in Utah the following day.

We attended 8 events and a ceremony in our 4.5 days of Olympics spectating.
In order: Hockey, Biathlon, medal ceremonies, Ski jumping, Luge, Alpine Combined
(downhill & two slalom runs, Bode Miller gets silver), Curling, Hockey, Curling.

We all had a great time. I'm so pleased that my idea of taking the truck & trailer
to Utah wasn't more than I could handle! It's not my idea of an easy shakedown cruise.
I'm relieved we never had to put on the snow chains and trundle along at 25mph or wait
out a blizzard ... in fact, we had sun the whole way except the last few hours of drizzle over
Donner Pass as we scampered for home.

Marc Ringuette, 2/20/02

(You can click on any of the pictures to see a larger version,
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