Waking up at five in the morning is never something to volunteer for…unless you’re going to go do something extremely fun, and this was one of those cases. Mrs. Decker’s journalism class, some of the GTV crew, and Mrs. Ostrander all met at the school on Friday, December 13th, at 5:45 in the morning to meet a small bus which was taking us to the Olympic center on Mount VanHoevenberg to see a leg of the FIBT World Cup Bobsled and Skeleton series. After a little bit of waiting for people to arrive, and waiting on my mom to come with snow boots and snacks… we were on our way at 6:06 am.

Around two and a half hours later, we all made it, got the tickets, dropped off some canned foods, and started making the 25 minute trek uphill. Parts of the hill were steep and somewhat tiring. I suppose the big boots and heavy clothing didn’t help either. Did I mention it was around 8 degrees Fahrenheit? We took a brief break at the finish line to watch Korea and a few more countries come to the finish line, and then continued our hike up the mountain. We walked a few more minutes and came to a large curve on the bobsled track; this is where we met a journalist, Naj Wikoff, who writes for The Lake Placid News. He immediately came up to us, took out a recorder and camera, and started asking various amounts of questions. He asked things like, “Why are you here?” and took a special interest in one of our German Exchange students, Kathi Moser. Turns out he is of German ancestry. After some photo ops and getting to know Mr. Wikoff, we finished up our walk, trailing behind groups of small students from the elementary school in Lake Placid, and finally made it to the top of the hill to the starting line! At the starting line, we saw Naj Wikoff again, and he took Kathi up to let her meet the German Bobsled team!

After watching a few starts and concluding from the size of the calf muscles on the athletes that the pushing is hard work, we finally met up with my dad, Alex Milton, to continue our journey. Because we were all so cold, he took us to a little house to warm up, eat some snacks, chat, and watch the last few races of the 2-manned bobsled on the television. Then walking down the hill, which was way easier then going up it, we stopped at the finish line again. After hopping a fence, we saw most of the athletes up close… and we even got to meet one of the American Bobsledders, Dallas Robinson. Also, we were introduced to a big man in the Bobsled world, was John Morgan, an actor in the hit movie, Cool Runnings, bobsled commentator for the last eight Olympic Games, and bobsled athlete for the U.S. National team in 1978 and 1979.  The whole group was fortunate enough to go to the television compound, where my dad works, and saw what goes in to creating the television network and broadcasting an event like this. We also stopped in the pressroom and observed the gathering of journalists reporting on the games to different international news outlets.

Finally it was time to go down the mountain to get warm, eat some food, go to the bathroom and relax for a while. After a little bit of that, we took the last few minutes we had left to watch some of the women’s skeleton which is soooo freaky! And very, very fast as well.

Unfortunately after that, it was time to go back to Galway–the bus ride back wasn’t too bad. We cheerleaders had a game, and doing makeup on a bus is not as easy as it would seem!

Being in Lake Placid for this event, we were fortunate enough to meet so many important people in the broadcasting world. We got to see a reporter up close, see television cameras, see a television truck, and all the things that make a big event like this go world wide. It was an amazing experience and taught everyone so much in what goes in to a production… and we still didn’t even get to see all of it!