Man and Superman in Lake Placid

A ham and cheese sandwich costs $3.50 in Lake Placid, N.Y. But since you can't eat snow, you consume and the marathon begins. You consume Lake Placid, the village, buying the food and the buttons and the stickers and the hats and the scarves. Everything that is officially Olympic costs $5. Two very high students walk down Main Street shouting, "You're walking on an Official Olympic Sidewalk, that'll be $5 please," and everyone laughs with them, like theirs is a big in-joke. Laughter fills the streets all the time in Lake Placid:

It's all a blur. You can hear the laughter, but the rest is too much to take in at once. Television tunnel-visions the real Olympics, the stuff that goes on in the streets. Stop for a second and two U.S. ski team members walk by. They are celebrities and they flaunt it, waving at everyone, smiling at all the women. There is music blaring from the speed skating rink. There are scalpers everywhere. You just want to know everyone here-all the athletes and athlete lovers and students arm in arm.

It's freezing beyond comprehension but it's perfect, like a big Hollywood production, full of appealing and unbelievable stimuli--too many faces and noises and victories and cameras and rumors and foreign languages and famous people--and too little real stuff like food and warmth and places to sit down. It's impossible to grasp. Watching it on television is easy by comparison.

***

Just a little past Albany, civilization disappears for good, except for the HoJos. The length of the trip to Lake Placid is overrated--it's really just five or six hours long--but in some ways it's a harbinger of the lines to come and the waiting. But it was warmer waiting in the car.

***

No one can drive into Lake Placid. You are bused in from the closest available parking lot, 40 minutes outside of town. When Lake Placid reverts, so will the parking lot: Lake Placid to a small resort once touched by greatness, the lot to an airport on the side of a mountain called Marcy. Marcy--it is a name heard again and again in Olympicville.

"Is this the line for Marcy parking lot?"

"How long is the line for Marcy parking lot?"

The first official Olympic words we heard were these: "The wait from Marcy parking lot will be two hours at the least."

Saranac is another parking lot. More buses go to Saranac than to Marcy. Buses are a big thing in Lake Placid.

***

The ride from Marcy to the events is 11 miles long, but the twisting back roads stretch the trip to nearly an hour. The passengers on the bus go crazy when we pass the flame, everyone squeezing to one side, pressing his face against the icy windows. No one says a word--it is more important just to look and absorb and think. The gasping starts when we pass the ski jumps. At first they look so steep no one knows what they are. A little blue speck is descending on the taller jump. He flies. The bus is silent. Then applause.

The busdriver has no idea where he is going but some people toward the front of the bus are trying to give him directions in their school-book French, and the driver inadvertantly smiles. He thinks we might be lost. The disorganized Official Olympic Organizing Committee hired Canadian drivers to fill in for the American drivers who walked out when the Committee hired Canadians. That's the story circulating in the bus and around town; the transportation mess is so confusing it's hard to blame anyone, but sometime during the weekend, the Committee officially blames itself.

But there are very few people who couldn't care less, except for the press, of course. "ABC tried to get a group of us to turn over a car for their television camera," a young woman from New Jersey announces to the Marcy and Saranac lines. "But we wouldn't do it." Applause and cheers. Lake Placid is actually a big love-in; everyone is in a good mood, slowly freezing to death smiling like Cheshire cats. And in perspective waiting in line is okay because you get to meet people and talk about the lines and the games, too, and Eric Heiden.

***

Everyone sees Eric. It is cool just to be in the same town with him. The people who don't have tickets for his events lean against the fence around the speed skating rink like refugees, shouting desperately every time he circles by. They love him madly; he is a hero. And it is clear that he loves them back. "Good luck, Eric," a random fan calls out as he whizzes by on a trial run, and Eric literally stops dead in his tracks and spins around and squints up at the crowd in the direction of the voice and smiles and waves vigorously. Everyone shouts and waves back. I can swear that he is waving at me.

***

Romania vs. Czechoslovakia is not the game we wanted to see. In fact, it is the game almost no one in the arena has bought tickets for. But the Official Olympic Ticket Committee misprinted about 400 tickets, leading many United States vs. Norway fans into the wrong arena at the right time. The police guarding the door to the right rink turn spectators away sternly, repeating, "I'm sorry, there's nothing we can do about it." They are authoritarian clones, faceless and infuriating among all the hope and faith. "Go to the Chamber of Commerce," is another one of their favorite lines.

"I paid for tickets to see the States play Norway," some one whines.

Transformed, a guard tells him, "Listen, you're just one of a million people the Olympic Committee has screwed today." The words are sacrilege in a way, jolting the spirit of the spectators within hearing distance, choosing to believe the ticket mess-up is an accident. Most people take the guard's cynicism as a joke, laughing all the way to the Romania-Czechoslovakia face-off.

The crowd is very quiet at first, not sure whom to root for, but soon the Romanians start losing, winning the crowd's sympathy. Some real hockey fans know that if the Romanians win this game, the United States will be better off in the standings, so the support of the mainly American crowd is unanimous. But soon, even for the novice hockey fan, it's clear that this is not hockey USA style. The emotionless players barely pause after they score a goal. This quiets the back-slapping American crowd a bit, but even towards the third period, it still looks like the fans care more about the score than the players.

After the Romanians are losing by a large margin, though, one gets angry enough to slug a Czech, who in turn grabs the Romanian's stick. The Czech goes to the penalty box. There he is, a real live Czech sitting just a few feet away. "Take a picture, take a picture of him." So I do. It's embarrassing; after all he's not an animal in the zoo.

American after American lines up to take pictures of the Czech in the penalty box. A little blond kid with a Kodak instamatic won't leave until the player looks up at him. The boy taps on the window insistently until the player turns and glares and the flash bulb nearly blinds him.

It's hard to believe this is happening: the game, the Americans cheering for the Romanians, the peanut vendors, the officials almost killed by a flying puck, the people from Rochester, the buck popcorn, the announcement of the U.S. -Norway score, the ice, the lights, the political implications, the meaning, the flash bulbs. How much did your ticket cost?

***

If you go to ice dancing you hear the same song 12 times and see 12 couples do the same figures. By the end, the performances have blended into one; costumes differentiate the couples, the British wear bright blue, the Soviets wear white and black, the Americans maroon. The ABC cameras are everywhere; people see this in their living rooms in Salt Lake City, Utah. And here we are watching it in person.

The brother of the top American skater sits in front of us, twisting around awkwardly to deliever a sermon on the politics of ice dancing. The awful truth: he predicts all the scores again and again, before his sister, Judy, and her dancing partner, Mike, perform. And when they do, they are oh-so-American. When they kiss in the middle of each figure, the crowd goes crazy with applause for cuteness. The American ice dancers were absolutely the cutest.

This is the way Judy signs my ticket: "Stay loose, Judy B.!!"

***

A lot of people leave the arena early to get in line. But if you stick around long enough, you'll see the athletes emerge. "Good game," people tell the Romanians fresh out of the locker room, and they stare right back, wondering what the hell that means.

After congratulating the athletes, the spectators quickly form three lines outside, and when the wait gets long enough, Saranac and Marcy and Whiteface start talking to each other. Then they start singing together. By the time the Saranac bus pulls in, the three lines are belting out "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" in rounds. Near the back of the lines, students are staging the Official Pretzel Tossing Contest.

***

Many official Olympic officials enjoy telling people who complain--the ones who missed events because of the transportation, the ones who received the wrong tickets, the ones with frostbite and no hotel--that the awards ceremonies are open to the public. They certainly are, and the public is there, 20 deep around the platforms, half and hour before hand, freezing in anticipation. It's a high school pep rally, but greater.

It's all a blur. Eri cHeiden accepts his medal and smiles and waves. People shout, scream, love. "We love you." Jumping up and down to see over the heads of the thousands of people standing in front of you, you realize the view is much better on television, but on the tube you can't feel it: the cold and the happiness. And the pride, pride in the USA, in Our Country. "We love you."

Then the music and the fireworks over whelm you and you feel something you don't expect, the shivers, and this time it's not the cold.

The lady next to me is crying, no kidding.