2016 Rio Olympics: The Glass is Full

To me the 2016 Olympics showed your attitude, you saw what you wanted to see.  To set the stage for my Rio adventure, I spent two days visiting with Family and 8 days on beautiful beaches driving up from Sao Paulo to Rio.  Lets just say I was feeling pretty good about life, and it kept getting better because of the Olympic Games.

Rio is one of the most Beautiful cities in the world, I do not even see how this is disputable.  Every beach has a huge rock mountain that looks like it is from a pre-historic age, lush green vegetation, white sand beaches and for the most part clear blue water (I did not say clean).  There were many writers and columnists complaining about many things I will address later, but I never heard them say we are in one of the most beautiful cities on the entire planet.  How could you ignore that; attitude.  Their glass was empty.

If you wanted to turn the Olympic games into a negative, you could.  The lake by Olympic Park stunk, I personally walked by it after getting my entire family out of a cap early, we got lost and smelled a horrible odor from the lake.  Look family, I got you lost in Rio and now smell this, I was not the best dad at that moment.  Zica, (probably would be dangerous if you were looking to get pregnant), Crime (what city of 6 million people does not have crime, also there were military and police on every street corner),  Political unrest (all politicians are perfect, Right? ),  Expensive Hotels and tickets, the fear level kept getting higher and higher, and turned out to be greatly exaggerated (except when I drove in Rio, my fear level was high, they drive crazy).

Live in the moment, experience life!  The negative writers saw what they wanted to see and what they thought would sell.  I took the trip of a life time and we lived to tell about it.  We saw Olympic stadium get to crazy noise levels when the Brazilian women beat Sweden 5-1in soccer.  We watched Honduras hold on against an Algeria soccer team playing its heart out.  We walked by the largest outdoor cocktail party in Rio called beach volley ball, the stadium was not empty, everyone was dancing and waiting in line to buy more beer.  Seriously, the volleyball stadium had a DJ and was a party.  I wish the DJ was at swimming, because he would have blown the roof off the swim venue when Katy Ledecky broke the world record in the 400 free (yes, we were there) and then the Men's 4x100 free relay, not knowing if Phelps or Irvin would be on the relay (they should have put both).  We had been trying to start USA chants the whole night and it finally caught fire, about 1/4 of the crowd was from the US at swimming and the place was Rocking for the Relay.  This was by Far the most exciting swimming event.  When Nathan Adrian said he was coming down from the relay, it is because the entire crowd was chanting USA right before he dove in and then erupted even louder when he won.  Sorry, morning prelims in the 100 free is anti-climactic. 

I might be drinking the Olympic Cool-aid, but my glass was Full, Overflowing.  The trip of a life time with the people I love.  Sign me up again.