Introductions

My name is Steve Robie and I am an Olympiholic. But no twelve step program for me. I'm happy being an Olympic addict for life. My family and I are in the final stages of preparing for our trip to London for what will be our 11th Olympic Games. Through this blog, I hope to give you an idea of what it's like to attend the Olympics as a spectator. But before I start, some introductions are in order.

When not attending the Olympics, I’m a Materials Scientist who uses X-rays to analyze solid materials. I hold a PhD in Analytical Chemistry from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Like many Americans, I grew up watching the Olympics on TV, but attending RPI was important in the development of my Olympic addiction for several reasons. First, I was in graduate school when the 1980 Winter Olympics took place in Lake Placid, NY, about four hours drive from the RPI campus in Troy, NY. This was close enough to encourage a few of us to attend the Olympics for the first time. The other reason was that while I was at RPI, I met my wife-to-be, Beth, who tolerates, and in large part finances my addiction. Since then, we have attended nine more Olympic Games including six Winter Olympics (1988 Calgary, 1994 Lillehammer, 1998 Nagano, 2002 Salt Lake City, 2006 Turin and 2010 Vancouver) and three Summer Olympics (1996 Atlanta, 2000 Sydney and 2008 Beijing).

My wife of 29 years, Beth, is an Obstetrician and Physician administrator. She loves to travel and likes sports, but is definitely not an Olympic addict. A long time ago, we made a deal. She agreed to tolerate my addition as long as we took enough time while at the Olympics to learn something about the people and culture of the Olympic host city. Our experiences have been much richer as a result.

The final member of the family is our 14-year old son Sean. It is too soon to know whether he inherited his dad’s addiction, but he has already attended six Olympics. Okay, the first one has to have an asterisk because Beth was pregnant with Sean when we attended the Winter Olympics in Nagano in 1998. We kid Sean that this is why he has loved eating sushi since he was little!

I am not sure when I began writing journals about our Olympic travels, but Nagano was the first one that I still have.  Since then I’ve tried to write these journals in real-time so that our friends and family could share our Olympic experiences while they are still occurring. I hope to do the same this time. As it turns out, writing journals is in my blood. One of my distant ancestors, James Harshaw, was an Irish farmer who wrote in a journal every day for more than 30 years. The Harshaw diaries remain one of the few documents describing life in Ireland around the time of the great potato famine. In addition to James, my mother Marjorie and cousin Bill both have been blogging for years.