CanuckInUSA

Please don't take this the wrong way. I am really not trying to slam someone's efforts in the Olympics. But maybe Vanessa Vanakorn should have stuck to being a World Class violinist because she isn't that good of a skier when it comes to competing on the world stage. She finished in last place out of all the people who completed both runs in the Women's Giant Slalom event today, 50 seconds off of the combine two run pace of the race winner Tina Maze and 11 seconds slower than the 2nd to last place finisher. Now I am aware of the challenges of Alpine Ski racing, the courses do get chewed up especially for the late starters and Vanessa had the 87th of 90 start position on the first run of the Women's Giant Slalom and started 67th of 67 skiers on the 2nd run (race winner Maze started 1st on the 1st run and started 30th on the 2nd run). But you only need to watch the video of all the racers to see that Vanessa is a pretty tentative and cautious. Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

I am in the same predicament right now. The lock on the passenger side of my Jeep Wrangler is buggered up and because if one door can get messed up, you know the same problem can occur on the other door. So for the last year I have just been leaving the Jeep unlocked and I don't really keep anything valuable in it that could not easily be replaced. Also years ago while living in the Vancouver area. Whenever I would go visit Jaap (a jumper from the area) who lived in the Gastown district adjacent to Hastings and Main (crack capital of Canada where hundreds of homeless drug zombies roam the streets), I would leave my Jeep unlocked. I figured if some junkie wanted in to either try to steal something or to find a place to sleep in, it would be better to just leave the doors open as opposed to coming back to find one or more window smashed. Of course it never happened but I wasn't sure what I would do if I arrived back at the Jeep to find some junkie passed out in it. Call the cops? What else can you do? If they refuse to leave. But it never happened. PS: I once was a victim of an apartment break in where my place was trashed. So I do sympathize with the OP if she and her significant other feel violated with this event. Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

It's been reported that the girl in the video has been arrested. I am not against people doing these sorts of jumps, but you need to be smart about posting things on YouTube. There is little difference in posting a video like this and posting a video of driving a car or motorcycle at extreme speeds on the public roads. Nothing good can come of it. You will get caught because the police do monitor YouTube. Plus the best BASE jumps are when the only people who know about the jump are the jumper(s) and any possible ground crew. There is always the chance that some 3rd party person could witness a BASE jump, but why would you advertize to the world by posting the jump on YouTube? If someone is jumping at a legal site, then by all means post away. But if you are jumping at a questionable exit point, keep the jump to yourself. Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

Agreed. The webstreams whether they are live or recorded are the way to watch the games. You can watch them on your own schedule and all video of the events from the games comes from the same source. All the video footage comes from the Olympics Broadcasting Corporation. It's just the audio that the various national networks piggy back on top of. As a former ski racer (nothing hardcore, just local club level stuff) I thoroughly enjoy all the Men's and Women's alpine racing. Yesterday was the Women's Super Combined race and while the racer I was cheering for Slovenia's Tina Maze made a small mistake on her slalom run costing her a medal by only a tenth of a second, the quality of the racers whether they are competing for wins or bringing up the rear is outstanding. The FIS does a good job in ensuring only qualified athletes are allowed to compete and thus reduce the chance of injury. However the same could not be said for a new event. The snowboard slopestyle events were good. But the ski slopestyle was not so good. At least Women's ski slopestyle. The top girls seemed to have good skills, but those at the back of the pack looked like they were just learning how to ski. On top of that there were some nasty crashes with a number of girls hurting themselves. If the competitor was too fast off of the jump they crashed and burned and if they were too slow they also crashed and burned. I don't want to slam these girls, but something was very wrong with this event. The Men's Ice Hockey tournament starts tomorrow and a number of different countries can win this one. Canada, Russia, USA, Sweden, Czechs and Finland. Whoever's goalie gets hot will likely take home the glory and bragging rights. Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

You a goalie? Cool. Good goalies are always a valuable commodity to have around. Back when I was young buck playing some pretty competitive hockey myself we would always let our goalies play for free and the rest of the positional players would pay a little extra to ensure our goalies were happy (of course the goalies were never really happy, goalies are a strange lot ... haha). Summer hockey was great. It's when all the players are home for the off season and still looking to stay in game shape. In the summer of '89 I hooked up with a group of really talented players, mostly college caliber with a couple of pros home from Europe. But we had one NHLer playing with us. Normand Lacombe who played for the Edmonton Oilers. It was a real wake up call for the rest of us to see where we stood against an NHLer. One of the pros who played in Europe was faster than Normand, but Normand was the complete package. He had the size, he was a great skater, he could obviously handle the puck and he by far had the best shot out of all of us and Lacombe was just a 3rd line NHLer. I can only imagine what it must have been like playing with someone like Gretzky. Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

I used to ski patrol at Lake Louise and whenever the White Circus (the World Cup) came to town I would volunteer to work the races because not only could you see the best skier racers in the world up close, every once in a while we got to rub elbows with them and perhaps show them some of the lessor known local favorite runs when they were free skiing. I could sort of keep up to the women but there was no hope in hell with matching the pace of the men. Those guys were seriously fast. It was amazing to watch and yes I was also jealous of their abilities. But these guys and gals have sacrificed a lot to get to the elite levels of competition. Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

Live? Really? because it's 11:00 pm in Sochi right now. I was not aware that the Olympics athletes competed in the middle of the night during the games. Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

Congrats on the medal. Silje is a hottie, but we (Canuckleheads) have more than one hottie at these games who are winners. We have the Dufour-Lapointe sisters. Not only did Justine Dufour-Lapointe just win the gold in womens moguls and her sister Chloe taking silver. But there is a slightly older third sister Maxime who was also competing in the same event and paved the way for her younger sisters in their Olympic skiing careers. Wait a sec: isn't Silje Norendal from Norway? Jenny Jones is the Brit who won the bronze. Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

Huge compound? Huh? it was one family living on a mountain. Yes Randy Weaver was not the sharpest crayon in the box for some of his actions prior to the initial raid. But the Feds purposely went after him and these groups you speak of joining Ruby Ridge only acted after the shit had hit the fan. Just bringing this all up because you say you have your own slice of mountain and you claim that you can defend yourself on your mountain. If you come under the radar of the US government, your destiny likely won't be any different than the Weaver family. Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

Randy Weaver thought the same of that small slice of mountain in Northern Idaho now known as Ruby Ridge and look what happened to him and his family. Of course he was dumb enough to allow the authorities to trick him into selling them some illegal weapons. But the guy really just wanted to be left alone on his mountain and the Feds still went after him and people died. Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

I stayed up late last night to watch the Men's Downhill Race live. It was pretty good. The course is definitely challenging and long which tested the competitors (though it is no Hahnenkamm from Kitzbuhel). I won't tell you who won in case you want to watch the race and haven't seen it yet. But the race has been over for more than 7 hours now, and Americans still need to wait a good 8-10 hours before NBC shows it to them and then of course Americans will only see about 5-7 racers out of the field of 50 racers whereas I saw about 45 of the 50 competitors race (TV commercials meant I did not get to see all 50 guys). I wonder if Americans are aware of the sub-standard "anything but live" coverage they are always spoon fed by NBC. Maybe that is why a lot of people here do not talk about the Olympics. Maybe they are aware of the garbage NBC feeds them. Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

Added to this, Canadians are slightly more free than their Americans cousins, though it is debatable as to how free Canucks really are. Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

Very few. But they also tend to go too slow. Driving too slow can be just as dangerous as driving too fast. Back when I called Mile-Hi Skydiving my home DZ, after an end of the day Safety Meeting and driving back home to Boulder on the Diagonal, I had to remind myself that I was on a highway and was expected to travel at the very least the minimum posted speed limit. It goes both ways here. People are still impaired. LOL ... did I just out myself? Haha ... I am clean now, honest. Test me. But I could drop a few high profile names (which I won't of course) of some folks who also attended some Safety Meetings. Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

The Seahawks have an excellent shot at repeating next year. But a lot will depend on what the opposition does. It's easy to over look a team when they are reaching for the top. But once they are on top, the other teams make personnel changes geared towards unseating the top dog. But I will give the Seahawks credit. This team (at least in my mind) ranks in the top five all time defenses and they just might be the best since the modern game is gear much more towards allowing the offense to succeed than the game did years ago. But it is difficult to compare teams from different eras playing under different rules. That '85 Bears defense was awfully good as was the Steel Curtain of the 1970s. The difference between the Bears and Pittsburgh was Chicago only won that one year. The Steel Curtain won four times in a six year span. If the Seahawks were to go on and dominate the game with their defense for the coming years, then they likely will become the best. Time will tell. As much as I wanted Denver to win, I have always known defense wins championships. Enjoy your win, I can't say your team didn't earn it. Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

Where in that article did you get the impression that football was NOT a team game? That whole article was talking about Seattle's defensive game plan and ultimately the execution of this game plan. Yes the QB is the most high profile player on the field and if you can get into the QB's head, you stand an excellent chance of victory. But the QBs are only one player and football always has and always will be about the team effort and this effort extends well beyond the players who are on the field on a given play. The team effort starts with the game plan the coaching staff devises the week before the game and the plays the teams practice during the days leading up to the game. The team effort then extends to the decisions the coaching staff makes with their play calling during the game as the game evolves. Then of course the team efforts factors in the decisions and actions all the players make on the field. If one player makes a poor decision, if one player misses their assignment it can and often negatively effects the play of all the other players on the field. Seattle came up with a suburb game plan and executed it almost to perfection. It was one of the best efforts we have ever seem in the history of the game. For that Seattle must be given immense credit. Football is a chess game and a contact sport all in one. It's all about deception. Make the other team think you are going to do one thing when in reality you are going to attempt to do something rather different. If you ever figure this out, maybe you will stop being such a whiner towards the sport and accept the game for what it is. Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

The '85 Bears defense is without a doubt one of the all time great defensive teams in league history. But they were only dominant for that one year. Why is it that nobody talks about the '86, or the '87 Bears teams. It's not like their defense was decimated by free agency in the '86 season. No the reason why the '85 team was so successfully that one year was because their 4-6 defensive was new and nobody could figure out how to counteract all the pressure the 4-6 defense put on them during the '85 season. But by the time the '86 season rolled around, some teams had figured out how to beat the 4-6 defense and the day of the Bears dominance soon came to an end. What we witnessed last night by Seattle's defense was a similar dominant high pressure defense. Only time will tell if Seattle can keep this team under contract and continue their winnings ways in an era of free agency player movement. But for this year this Seahawks defense dominated, just like the Bears defense dominated the '85 season. Oh and American Football is a team game. To place the blame on Denver's loss on one player like you have is a joke. Then again recently you did criticized the sport for allowing the game clock to run down while the play is stopped and yet Soccer and Rugby do the exact same thing. Do you even know the rules of some of these sports? Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

Sorry to hear about your cat. Our pets are more than just pets. They are members of our families. Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

Broncos stunk up the joint from the get-go. Starting from the opening kick off which should not have been run back. Then the safety on the 1st offensive play and it went downhill from there. It was a Super Bore. However, Seattle's defense was rather ruthless, and was rather good. I sit here and wonder, is this Seattle defense even better than the '85 Bears defense? I know some people will say "sacrilege, the '85 Bears will always be the best no matter what". But what we saw today was no accident. Defense wins championships and this 2013 Seahawks defense made the statistically best offense in NFL history look bad. Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

I drive on snow and ice for at least 5 if not 6 months of every year and this season I am still driving on less than good, actually rather old all season tires. Despite my less than good tires, I manage to not get into accidents (knock on wood). Why? when there are plenty of other drivers here who are subjected to the same winter driving conditions I am and yet many of them still get into accidents. It's about feeling the grip you have at any given moment in the seat of your pants and adjust your driving for this grip (or lack of grip). Ultimately it's the driver's responsibility, but I also put partial blame on the automakers for building modern cars where a smooth ride is more important that feeling the grip levels through your rear end. In winter time I drive a '99 Jeep Wrangler which has absolutely no modern amenities (there is nothing automatic in my Jeep) and you feel everything in this vehicle. It's not the best vehicle for the highways, but it sure does give you good feedback to what is going on with your tires and the road surface. However with all that said, when the roads become slick and slippery, slow down and leave a little extra distance between yourself and the vehicle in front of you regardless of what vehicle you drive. That's just common winter driving sense. Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

LOL http://urbanlegends.about.com/b/2011/04/19/420-meaning.htm Denver is in Colorado who recently legalized the recreation use of weed. Seattle is in Washington State who also recently legalized the recreation usage. It's the 420 Bowl ... Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

Kansas City Chiefs don't have a good defense? Huh? Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

I guess you have not followed F1 these last few years with the advent of DRS (the Drag Reduction System), KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System) and tires that fall off the cliff after X number of laps. In the last few years there has been tons and tons of passing in F1 at all points of a race. The purists say this is artificial racing. But one thing it has done is do away with processional racing (something that was a problem in years past). Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

It's called a race track and you don't need to be in an actual race in order to use your vehicle on a race track. Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

Gotta like girls who ride their own bikes. Be smart, be safe. Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

Canada did not exist in 1814. British forces with the help of some loyalists and some Indians took Washington. Try not to worry about the things you have no control over