Tuesday May 8th: Road to the Olympics

Today Max and I got up early and drove to the Cheyenne Mountain State Park. Upon arrival we prepped the visitor’s center building and proceeded to organize one of the ranger’s office shelves. We were slightly disconcerted about the fact that our project up to date had mainly consisted of different forms cleaning organization rather than learning how to patrol and run a state park. We decided that a discussion would have to take place with our sponsor in order to make sure we would be doing what we had decided upon in our conversations prior. We finished up work and gave my uncle a call, he told us to meet him downtown. We met up near the campus of Colorado College and he informed us that he was going to show us the Olympic Training Center. The OTC at Colorado Springs is one of three in the United States. The OTC consists of numerous gymnasiums, natatoriums, weight rooms, and a museum like section dedicated to the remembrance of exceptional Olympians and memorabilia they used in previous Olympic Games. The OTC Colorado also has living quarters and a five star kitchen attached to serve and house and Olympians in training. My cousin, Andrew, is a budding Olympic athlete; he is on the road to the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia for figure skating. When back in Colorado, Andrew trains and lives at the OTC. Being ranked among the top three in the nation, Andrew qualifies to live at the OTC. We got a nice tour of the facilities and viewed one of the promo videos for the upcoming Olympics. Overall, it was a very cool place to go, where else can you see gold medalist athletes meandering around like their at home? We left the OTC and went back to CC’s campus. Max and I tossed a football around for about an hour, we met a few nice kids who let us in on a soccer game with them. We left the campus and came home, relaxing for the night, and ready for more adventure in the following days.