MERIBEL, France -- Sometimes your moment comes right on schedule, when you are young and ambitious, ready to snap it off with your teeth. And sometimes, you wait for that moment a long and winding time. The big leagues never call. Your life stops in truck driver towns. You begin to wonder, as you pass another birthday looking out the window of a bus, whether perhaps you are meant to be no more than this, some sort of lyric in a bad country song.
ALBERTVILLE, France -- Before I explain why Christopher Bowman is about as real as an Easter egg -- and nearly as fragile -- let me confess something to you, Michelle:I'm a man.And being a man, I will never appreciate figure skating the way women do. Sorry. It's in the genes. Like hair loss. We're just different.WHAT WOMEN WISH: That for one magic moment, they could be like those figure skaters, gliding over the ice as the crowd calls their names.WHAT MEN WISH: That there was a sequel to "Animal House."
ALBERTVILLE, France -- Let's put the Olympics on hold for today and talk about the Mike Tyson rape conviction, because even over here, on a snowcapped French mountain, some things are pretty obvious:
VAL d'ISERE, France -- Being the first skier on the Olympic downhill is like being the first float in a parade: People wave, but they're looking over your shoulder. They're waiting for the good stuff that comes next.
Mitch Albom writes about running an orphanage in impoverished Port-au-Prince, Haiti, his kids, their hardships, laughs and challenges, and the life lessons he’s learned there every day.