“Hello everyone and welcome to Winter X Games Ten! I am Frenchy, your smart-assed and somewhat sarcastic submixer for Venue B, the most exciting event of the X Games, except for maybe the motorcycles that do backflips, or the snowmobiles racing and jumping and landing on top of each other, or… well… there’s the snowboard park where kids seemingly defy gravity and injury to perform daring tricks… Hmm… our venue, six people racing on snowboards down a hill seems… well… slightly less compelling than all that.

But it is a beautiful day, and as you can clearly see the crowd is streaming in… wait… is that a stream or… seems more like a trickle. Huh? Where is the big crowd? Over at Moto X practice? Great.

Well, the microphones have fresh batteries, the cameras are ready, everyone is slowly freezing in place as we wait for the first qualifying run.”

The countdown begins:

“Riders ready! Ten Seconds!”

“Five seconds!”

Then, exactly one second later, BAMM! the gates drop, and the race is on. This happens every single time. In four years, I have yet to figure out how every second in Aspen seems to last for five, until the race begins. It’s one of the great mysteries of life.

The second run of the day was by far my favorite. As the six pack of racers flew down the hill, I followed the run down the audio console, opening the microphones closest to the action.

A lone fan, halfway up the mountain was close to one of the microphones as well. In fact, he must have been standing right next to it. As the racers passed, I opened that microphone. At the same instant, he yelled, “YEAH!!! GO YOU FUCKING PUSSIES!!!“

I don’t think anyone heard his off-color cheering, except me. I nearly laughed myself right out of HT-2. Ahh, the joys of live television!

And all those fucking pussies did go, until the event was over. Someone won the gold medal, but we were the real winners, because we got to leave hours before the night events of Venues A and C began.

One more day to go!

That day can be found here.

Author: frenchy