Rio 2016

I've really enjoyed watching the Olympics again this year.  Held in Brazil, the story lines leading up to the Games were the high crime rate and the financial and infrastructure instability in Rio.  All the facilities were barely completed in time (as seems to be the case with every Olympics), and there have been no significant issues with security or crime, so that's good.  The events themselves have been pretty great, as we saw Usain Bolt dominate again and win gold in his three events, and Michael Phelps won more medals including more golds, as both those athletes concluded their Olympic careers (Phelps said that last time, but it's probably true this time).  Simone Biles had more hype than maybe any gymnast ever, and she backed it up by showing that she might be the greatest gymnast ever, easily winning the floor exercise, vault, and the all-around, as the "Final Five" US women cruised to the team gold. Katie Ledecky also did her thing in the medium and long distance swim events, destroying her competition and setting more records.  Mostly it was me watching as many events as I could, which was really helped this year because of Google Fiber, because I now have access to the second and third tier channels (NBC Sports, for example), on which a lot of the interesting events are held.  For example, the other day the main NBC channel was showing a really long bicycle road race.  They were on like Kilometer 8 out of 30.  Boring.  But on one of the other NBC family channels, they were showing handball, which is the coolest sport I'd never seen before.  I loved it!  And I love watching archery or the short course kayaking or anything else that I don't normally get to see that's interesting.  I love learning about the rules and the scoring and then rooting for my team (USA) in this case to win.  So from that standpoint it was a much more satisfying Olympics than in years past.  But that passion is mostly limited to me.  Meghan watched a few events and the kids would watch some if it were a short race and I could tell them whom to root for.  Here you can see all three kids intently watching a swimming race.  So it happened, but not often.  But overall it's been a great Olympics, but now it'll be another four years until we get to see these events again.