Watching the London Olympics on TV and feeling the aching in my bones, perhaps rifle marksmanship is the only event left for me to compete for gold in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro.
Basketball is out since I can’t hit a three-pointer and can no longer jump more than five inches high. My only option would be to replace Coach Mike Krzyzewski. Gymnastics seems unlikely considering how painful my rotator cuff feels after a one-handed football catch — worthy of the ESPN highlights reel — last week on the beach. All of the running events had to be scratched from my plans after spraining my toe … walking in the surf.
The spirit is willing but this body is aging. In 2016, I will be four years older, causing me to doubt my trip to Brazil.
All the events that require a certain amount of physical strength and agility seem beyond my grasp.
Those little gymnastics girls were certainly amazing. They have nothing to fear from me, but I did want to be with them when the beautiful Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, visited the American gymnastics team in the stands.
Maybe if I could deliver North Carolina to Mitt Romney in the November election his wife would let me use her horse in the dressage competition. I am still capable of staying in the saddle.
Only this week did I learn that U.S. medal winners get a cash prize from the Olympic Committee: $25,000 for gold; $15,000 for silver and $10,000 for bronze. That gives me even more incentive to work on my marksmanship.
It was a pleasantly boring beach trip last week. No grandchildren this time to keep us hustling about, building sand castles and collapsing exhausted every night.
Our biggest worry was picking a seafood restaurant for supper, sometimes a difficult decision at Myrtle Beach, home of hundreds of diners.
I read a historic novel, “Grey Riders” by Sharon McCrumb, which includes the story of the Shelton Laurel Massacre in Madison County in 1863 which I wrote about a month ago. The column jogged Patsy Crenshaw’s memory of the book she had read without realizing the massacre had actually happened.
I worked the very easy crossword puzzle every morning in the Raleigh News & Observer and picked up some information along the way:
• The non-native coyotes now invading North Carolina are killing foxes and red wolves.
• Bakers are having trouble with newly down-sized cake mix boxes because a cake mix is no longer a cake mix to be added to many old family recipes. “Tempest in a cake mix box,” read the headline.
Odd considering our drought, it rained almost every day …