around fine he was annoyed he said by news media alarmism about terrorist threats and thirdworld conditions i havent felt threatened at all he said ive been drinking water out of the tap reports about bad food had also proved inaccurate schiau said we were told there is no seasoning and theres plenty of seasoning she said i got on some more buses and went down the mountain and back up again which was apparently the only way to get to the next site the rosa khutor extreme park scene of the womens halfpipe the extreme park is meant to be the cool spot where the vibe is more authentic and extreme where the athletes pretend that they have wandered merely by chance into an international competition and that nothing not even their pants falling down can harsh their mellow to tell you the truth the whole thing the aggressive nonaggression the surferdude vocabulary the baggy and unattractively beigecentric team usa uniform began to harsh my own mellow such as it was listening to the announcer a fan of the present participle but not of the g that generally goes at the end was like sitting through an ultimate frisbee game in college with the stoned hackysack player down the hall keepin it real the announcer said apropos of the australian competitor torah bright steppin up the degree of difficulty he said in connection with mirabelle thovex of france and then regarding thovexs teammate clemence grimal grabbin a stalefish there imagecreditdoug millsthe new york timesexcuse me thats what it sounded like to me said sally mackenzie who was visiting from australia i really only understand it when they say how many times they went around in fact the move is known as grabbing a stalefish and involves clutching the back of the board with your back hand the day was wearing on and i decided to skip crosscountry and biathlon taking place at the two sites i had failed to reach earlier in the week there seemed to be some problem about how to get to sanki sliding center where the luge was going on so i crowdsourced the question the crowd voted for the cable car it went somewhere that unfortunately turned out not to be the sliding center but rather a crucial transportation hub that was nowhere special on its own the port authority bus terminal of sochi i got on a bus that took me to a parking lot that was also not the sliding center but was next to something just as nice this was the village of rosa khutor pronounced hooter as in the restaurant and it has a nearmythical status among my colleagues as a kind of shangrila nestled up the hill with better hotels and better restaurants than we have down in our complex in gornaya karusel which tries its best but was built last week and is set along the highway our village was coming to life even as we lived in