Time to pack away my Olympic decorations

Just like that it's all over. You wait, you wait and you wait and when it comes it's great. But then it only lasts two short weeks and then nothing again. Not for another four years.

The Winter Olympics are like Christmas - only without gifts. As soon as the 'festive season' is upon us I unpack all my verbal decorations. The 'salchows', the 'prone shoots', the 'Back Full-Double Full-Fulls', the 'lying shot', the 'backside wall', etc. all get taken down, dusted off and proudly displayed.

I talk like I know what I'm talking about. Of course every Olympics I pick a few new words to add to my collection. You can't fool me on a Wu-Tang now.

Within a day or two of the games opening I'm talking about sports I haven't thought about in four years. I'm hearing athletes' names that I never heard before or that I heard and forgot all about. Those ones are like old friends dropping in after a long time away.

Over the two weeks the excitement and the momentum keep building. There's a lot of talk of silver and gold (& bronze too) adding to my verbal decorations. By Wednesday of the second week I'm no longer just going upstairs, but going up 'classic style'.

But it all finishes up so quickly. After a tremendous gold medal hockey game (with the wrong result), it was all over. No more biathlon, no more curling, no more speed skating. No more giant slalom. Nothing.

Nothing left now other than the sad task of packing away all the 'triple axels', 'Gundersen equations', 'sliders', etc. until Sochi 2014. Only 1438 days to go.