Where television is concerned, Martha and I live in the stone age. Basically, we have no broadcast service of any kind. We have never subscribed to a cable or satellite service. And when the big "digital switch" occurred several years ago, we got one of those simple converter boxes for our analog set, but it died after a few months, and we never bothered to get another one.
Most of the time, our life moves merrily along without television. We have nothing against television; we would simply rather spend our time and money on other things. And I have to say I am frustrated with how complicated TV viewing has become. Anytime I'm at my mother's house and am trying to make sense of the relationship among her TV set, her cable box, her VCR/DVD player, and the universal remote, I wonder why anybody puts up with it. When I was growing up, changing the channel was a simple matter of turning a knob on the front of the set.
The only way Martha and I do watch TV is by streaming Netflix and similar Internet-based material. And seeing as how NBC is offering live streaming for every Olympic event on its website, I figured we had what we need to watch whatever we might want to see these next two weeks.
Sadly, no.
Today I went to nbcolympics.com to make sure I knew how to navigate the site ahead of tomorrow's C1 and K1 slalom heats, and found that a cable or satellite subscription is required for access to the stream.
Rats.
Well, for those of you who do have 21st-century TV access, the U.S. National Whitewater Center's website has easy instructions for viewing the live stream here.
Meanwhile, if you prefer to watch what's on actual TV rather than catch the live stream, the NBC Olympic website guides you through that endeavor here.
Here in Memphis, to my surprise, all the slalom coverage will be on good old WMC-TV Channel 5, our local over-the-airwaves NBC affiliate, and it will be shown during hours when I'm usually awake. But I'll have to go over to my mom's to watch it (Martha and I never replaced our digital converter box-- remember?).
Meanwhile, I should explain a couple more things about the upcoming whitewater competition for people who are not familiar with whitewater slalom. The trickiest thing will be recognizing the canoes, because a whitewater slalom canoe does not look like what most people think of as a canoe. The racers will be using closed-deck canoes that look a lot like kayaks. The easiest way to tell the difference between a kayak and a canoe is to look at the paddle: a kayaker uses a double-bladed paddle, while a canoeist uses a paddle with just one blade. The other major difference is that a kayaker sits in the boat with his legs extended in front of him, whereas a canoeist kneels.
The boats in an international slalom race must meet length, width, and weight specifications. K1s and C1s must be at least 3.5 meters long, and C2s must be at least 4.1 meters long. The minimum width (at the widest point) of a slalom kayak is 0.6 meter; of a single canoe, 0.65 meter; and of a double canoe, 0.75 meter. A slalom kayak must weigh at least 9 kilograms, a C1 at least 10 kilograms, and a C2 at least 15 kilograms.
Before the competition, all boats will be measured to make sure they meet these requirements. If a boat is too short or too narrow, the racer will have to augment its length or width with some sort hard-curing putty like that Bondo stuff you can get in auto parts stores. If the boat is too light, the racer will have to cement something to the boat to bring it up to weight (usually the object is affixed inside the boat beneath the seat to minimize its effect on how the boat performs).
Anyway, tune in however you can. Tomorrow's racing begins at 1:30 PM local time, which I believe is 7:30 AM here in the Central Time Zone.
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