Manchester, England, UK
We were told by one of our British friends that Great Britain passed the USA in the medal count…
…if you take into account medals per capita, that is. Apparently, that’s a thing here.
Wandering around Olympic London is fun and all:
[fgallery id=9 w=500 h=450 t=0 title=”London Olympics 2012″]
But like we said in the last article: WE GOT TICKETS TO A GAME BABY!!!!
It was supposed to be a women’s soccer battle royal, Boston Tea Party style, with Team USA facing the host nation: Team GB. However fate, and Canada, had other plans…
(PS – In case NBC hasn’t covered this story, like many others we have been told it has ignored, GB = Great Britain which is how the UK enters the Olympics. It doesn’t enter as “England” because, hey funny fact that we really should have be told in school, Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland are not just former countries that are now territories of England; they in fact (partially) retain their own governments and are considered separate entities from England proper. They have their own flags and everything. Like how California is separate from Texas though we’re both subject to the American federal government. So if the UK entered the Olympics as “England”, Scotland couldn’t play on the team and whatnot. Which would be a big freaking deal, since one of their biggest medal winners of all time is Scottish. We’re still not sure why they don’t use the “United Kingdom” but we digress…)
Anyway, it ended up not being overly relevant as our maple leaf neighbors up north had other ideas about who should lose the quarter-final match and face team USA in the semifinals.
Now we have to say that it’s tough being put against the Canadians. Come on they’re our neighbors and we actually do like cheering for our fellow “Team North America” members. (Even when they wear the wrong freaking colors!!) But in the end only one team could move on to play for the gold medal and though we have, over the past few years, come to love a lot about our fellow nations of the world; we’re still card carrying members of Team America and we’ll be darned if a freaking Canadian is gonna out cheer us!
So what does a loyal supporter of team USA with a wardrobe consisting of what amounts to about 3 changes of clothes wear to a no holds barred North-American style Olympic throw down?
Blue people. That American wears every piece of blue cloth he can lay his hands on.
Tiffany decided she could still adequately support the nation of our birth without looking like a giant Willy Wonka inspired berry nightmare.
The atmosphere was charged up with Canadians, Americans and a Brazilian, (seriously, in the whole stadium. One) not to mention a lot of Brits caught up in a snarl of familial obligation to those overseas, all coming together over sport, bragging rights and, oddly enough, a lack of beer:
It’s been a few days so as we understand it NBC finally clued you all in to the fact that we won what ended up being an insanely close game. (And went on to take the gold even!) What they probably didn’t cover as much was the free flag face painting (WITH SPARKLES!) , star-spangled tights or the fan rally songs. If you ever wondered how well our athletes get supported at the Olympics, here’s what the game looked like looked like from Team USA’s side of the stands
Football is a far superior sport to horse racing. Mainly, at least from our perspective, because the athletes involved are able to dispose of their own poop!
Greg and Tiffany are traveling around the world on sailing yachts and keep a video blog of their (mis)adventures. If sailing to Tahiti on a 44 ft sailboat, 3-day delays for wine tastings, getting pooped on by seagulls, opening coconuts with dull machetes, sailing past tornadoes and ukulele Christmas carols are for you, then check them out at www.CoastGuardCouple.com!
