Refresh

I love the Olympics.  LOVE them.

I love the huge triumph. The crushing defeat. The fact that 1/100 of a second "is apparently a huge crapload of time." (Thank you Jimmy Fallon.) The heartwarming human interest story. The world coming together for 17 days. A parent cheering. A coach looking proud. A record broken. An athlete looking terrified (or proud or bold or happy or humbled). National anthems. Camaraderie between competitors. The antics of Mary Carillo. Familiar heroes. Emerging stars. Inspirational commercials. The Olympic spirit.

I love it all.

The 2008 summer games were a lot of fun because I could watch so many of the events live.  (Including my favorite moment from Beijing -- Jason Lezak's anchor leg in the men's 4x100 relay.  I'll never forget that.)  The 2012 games have been different.  Between the time difference, my lack of cable at home, and NBC's broadcast strategy, I haven't had the opportunity to watch many things (especially "headline events") unfold live.  So I haven't been as addicted to the TV during daylight hours.

But then there's NBCOlympics.com. 

A section on the front page that lists all the medal events of the day.  And as each event occurs in London, the page is updated in the USA.  Even more awesome, if it's an event like gymnastics you can open the event page and it updates after each competitor completes their routine.

Last week I spent a lot of time watching that page.  Counting down the hours and minutes to the events.  Anxiously hitting "refresh" every few moments so I could get the results as soon as technologically possible.

And let me tell you, when Michael Phelps won his 18th medal I screamed "YES!" just as loudly as I would have if I could have watched it live.  (When he won his 19th an hour later, I gazed at my computer quiet pride that wasn't any less keen because all I saw was text on a monitor.)

When Danell Leyva and John Orozco were vying for men's all around gold, I felt my heart drop just as much for their pommel horse scores as I would have if I had seen their routines on screen.  (Does it mean I watch too much when I can tell that much from a simple 13.5 and 12.566?  On second thought, don't answer that.) 

Those are just two examples.

Even though I knew I would get a chance to watch the video, even though I knew WTOP would inform me as soon as I got in the car, I felt...compelled...to stay connected to the web page.  If a race was scheduled for 3:37, I was hitting refresh every minute by 3:38.  (Every 30 seconds by 3:39). If the gymnastics scores didn't update every minute, I wondered what was going on. 

I just had to know!

Refresh. Refresh. Refresh.

It got me thinking.  When was the last time I felt that driven to connect to God?  Sure, the connection is there. But when was the last time I hit "refresh"? What if I was that passionate about being as up-to-the-second with what he was doing?   

How might my life change?