Today was Alison’s first trip to Zhangjiakou, and she made an important self-discovery: It’s not the transportation to the venue that’s the issue. Getting around the venue is where she really gets lost. Will she find her way back to the press tribune?
We got to see Paralympic legend Oksana Masters in action today at Para Cross Country Skiing. Today’s schedule includes:
- Para Alpine Skiing – Super-G
- Para Cross-Country Skiing – Long Distance – Sitting
- Para Ice Hockey – Group play
- Para Snowboard Cross – Qualifications
- Wheelchair Curling – Round Robin action
RED ENVELOPE CAMPAIGN! This show does cost money to produce, and while our listeners have been extremely generous in supporting us through the Kickstarter campaign that got us to Beijing and also through Patreon patronage, we’re coming up on 2 ½ years until another Olympics, so to celebrate the Lunar New Year, we’re asking for donations of at least $8 — in China the number 8 is a lucky number symbolizing good fortune — to help us get through to Paris 2024. Go to flamealivepod.com/support to donate.
Thank you so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!
TRANSCRIPT
Note: While we make efforts to ensure the accuracy of this transcript, please know that it is machine-generated and likely contains errors. Please use the audio file as the record of note.
Beijing 2022: Paralympics – Day 3
[00:00:00] Jill: Ni Hao fans of TKFLASTAN and welcome to day three coverage of the Beijing 2022 Paralympics on Keep the Flame Alive, the podcast for fans of the Olympics and Paralympics. I am your host, Jill Jaracz. And through the plexiglass, I am joined by my lovely co-host Alison Brown. Alison ni hao. How are you me?
[00:00:26] Alison: Ni hao. I’ve been with you all day. So I think you know how I am. So we didn’t, we didn’t really intend to spend the whole day together going to the same events, but that’s just how the transport worked out. I can’t read a schedule and that’s what we ended up with.
[00:00:42] Jill: You know, the scheduling is tough because you have to look. Today we went out to the mountains, so that meant looking at the train app. And you also have to look at the My2022 app to get the bus schedule. And then if you want to be precise, you need to pull up a PDF that tells you how long the bus ride takes so you can plan out your route. We had a bus, hotel bus to the MMC.
[00:01:08] Alison: MMC to the train station bus, train, bus to the terminal, then from the terminal to the venue and then all of that in reverse. And then an additional two.
[00:01:25] Jill: One bus.
[00:01:26] Alison: Well, two buses round trip to the second venue. And then we’ve got an additional bus to go back to the hotel.
[00:01:35] Jill: Been on the bus a lot today. This most, what are the Olympics like in person? What are the Paralympics like in person?
[00:01:40] Alison: You spend a lot of time on the bus.
[00:01:42] Jill: That’s right. That’s right. You might be able to hear, it is the magical hour of vacuuming. It’s so exciting because we really haven’t had one yet during the Paralympics, because we’ve either taped early or yesterday we met the ladies who are the magical vacuumers and exchanged pins and gave them cookies. We didn’t exchange pins. We gave them some pins. We gave them some cookies. We used our magical interpreter volunteers to explain what we were, because it’s really hard to explain what a podcast is and they were all lovely and had a good time. So now we are here with vacuuming.
Okay. All right. Let’s get into what officiating or volunteer job would we want to do? What do you have today?
[00:02:27] Alison: Okay. So what I have today is not an officiating or a volunteer job that exists. It is a volunteer job that I need. I need a personal guide because I keep getting lost and I am not getting lost on the buses. I’ve been doing very well. I directed you from the wrong bus today to the right bus. I’m doing very well with the buses. I am getting lost within the venues. So I didn’t tell you this. When we were at cross country today and you left me in the stands because I wanted to stay and watch some more of the race. And you went back to the work room. I couldn’t figure out how to get back to the workroom. And I asked the volunteers and they were so, they’re so sweet. They’re just so amazing and really, really helpful. And I could not see where she was pointing. So she walked me over to the staircase because I couldn’t see the staircase. What you have to understand is that the work rooms are always in shoved someplace. So the stairs today were scaffolding.
[00:03:28] Jill: Yes, because this, the press tribune for the cross-country biathlon venue is temporary stands. So you have to climb up scaffolding stairs to get to it. And so it’s lost in the scaffolding in trying to get down.
[00:03:42] Alison: Couldn’t find the steps. She took me there. Then I went to the bathroom. Couldn’t find my way back to the workroom. Went to the wrong door. Couldn’t find you then today in the hockey venue, I, again, went to the bathroom, had toilet paper in the stall. Always so exciting when that happens now. And then I couldn’t get back again. And thankfully the lovely lady who was spraying the disinfecting machine, I saw the automatic disinfecting machine.
[00:04:09] Jill: I did too. I saw it spraying when I came back with my hand cheese.
[00:04:13] Alison: And thankfully when I saw her, I realized I had seen her on the way out. And I went back in, she gave me a lovely Chinese heart because I was apparently so happy to see her. She realized I was lost. So apparently of the 9,000 volunteers, I would ask one of them to please volunteer to take me to and from bathrooms or to and from the press room because I keep getting lost.
[00:04:42] Jill: Far out.
[00:04:45] Alison: And this is going to be interesting. Because tomorrow I am going out to Yanqing by myself.
[00:04:54] Jill: Get on the right bus in the right places. That’s all I ask.
[00:04:57] Alison: Buses are not my problem it’s bathrooms. I won’t drink anything.
[00:05:01] Jill: Oh boy. I can tell you that in Yanqing, an elevator is involved. Okay. Just putting this out there,
[00:05:11] Alison: Take a volunteer with me. I’ll just, I’ll just take one
[00:05:14] Jill: That one is a little complicated. And I only went there once, but it’s a little complicated to get around. So good luck to you. I hope I hope we have a show tomorrow night.
[00:05:23] Alison: I was going to say you might be doing the show solo tomorrow and I’ll be sleeping on the floor of the press room in Yanqing.
So what’s your job?
[00:05:33] Jill: My job is, we were back at para ice hockey tonight and I would like to be one of the goalie tenders. And what they do is that the goal has to stick into the ice so that it maintains some sort of stability. But when it’s time to Zamboni the ice in the intermissions, they come out and they have little buckets and little trowels or something, and they pour a bunch of ice or slop or something into the holes so that the Zamboni can go over them and make it icy. And then they come in and pound the pegs back in that the goal sits on. I would like that job.
[00:06:14] Alison: It seems very inefficient. It feels like there should be a better way to do that.
[00:06:19] Jill: Maybe we look into it, but, I think they’ve pretty much figured out what’s the fastest way. And they probably need the extra stability.You know, that thing gets knocked around a lot. So I don’t know. It looks interesting though.
Okay. Let’s look at today’s schedule. We started off with para Alpine skiing. Lots of super G action today. So for the men, it’s all, again, three classifications: standing, sitting, and vision impaired for both men and women.
Starting off with the men’s standing. Gold went to Liang Jingyi from China. Silver went to a Markus Salcher from Austria and bronze went to Alexis Guimond from Canada. In the sitting class for men, gold went to Jesper Perderson from Norway. Didn’t he win yesterday? No, it was a Swedish Jesper, right?
[00:07:14] Alison: No, it’s the same Jesper, but he got the silver because the silver medalist in this race, New Zealand’s Corey Peters, go Silver Ferns, won the gold yesterday, so they flipped.
[00:07:27] Jill: Wow. That’s pretty cool. As you said that, and then bronze went to a Morii Taiki from Japan. You have an interesting note here on Corey.
[00:07:36] Alison: Yeah. Corey Peters is is 38 years old. So he is no rookie at this, but he has not been able to compete internationally since 2019 because of New Zealand’s COVID restrictions. So if he left New Zealand, he wouldn’t be able to go home.
[00:07:51] Jill: Right. And there’s probably not a lot, well, there’s no competitions in New Zealand.
[00:07:56] Alison: And even if there were, they would have been shut down because nobody was coming in or out. So he’s been training, but he hasn’t been able to compete. Wow. And he’s got a gold and silver so far in his first competition back on the international stage in three years. So nice for him.
[00:08:12] Jill: That’s exciting. And he’s probably just so jazzed to compete again.
[00:08:16] Alison: He is. I read the interview with him, he’s thrilled to be back and he has been doing this a long time.
[00:08:21] Jill: And the men’s super G vision impaired class, gold went to Neil Simpson from Great Britain and his guide is Andrew Simpson, his older brother. Silver went to Giacomo Bertagnolli from from Italy with guide Andrea Ravelli and bronze went to Johannes Aigner from Austria with guide Matteo Fleischmann.
In the women’s standing super G, gold went to Zhang Mengqui from China. Silver went to Marie Bochet from France and bronze went to Alana Ramsay from Canada.
In the sitting class, gold went to Muraoka Momoka from Japan. Silver went to Anna-Lena Forster from Germany and bronze went to Zhang Wenjing.
[00:09:06] Alison: You said those three names yesterday in downhill in different order. Same women medalists in downhill and super G.
[00:09:13] Jill: Very nice. And then in the vision impaired class, gold went to Alexandra Rexova from Slovakia with guide Eva Trajcikova. Silver went to Menna Fitzpatrick from Great Britain with guide Gary Smith. And bronze went to Zhu Daqing from China with guide Yan Hanhan. You know, if I messed up Gary Smith, I would be in trouble.
So, the mountain had a little fun today.
[00:09:43] Alison: Right. So it did the, it was all different counts and roughly between 10 and 15% of any race DNF-ed today.
[00:09:51] Jill: Wow. And we were in here in the morning in the media center and it was on the feed and there was one of the men’s sitting class, I believe, took that one turn and just went to wide and could not get back on the course and went right into the fence, right into a camera basically. So hopefully he’s okay. And that was a little freaky to watch. I will say that.
S cheduling note for the super combined, due to high temperatures and high risk of snow melting, they’ve moved it up a day. So if, it was originally scheduled for March 8th and it’s now moved to March 7th. So already the weather is playing havoc in a different way to be quite honest.
[00:10:34] Alison: I know, it’s supposed to be 73 degrees Fahrenheit here on Thursday. We do not have clothes for this.
[00:10:40] Jill: I mean, I have a couple of t-shirts, but like a jacket. What do I do?
[00:10:44] Alison: And the weird thing is going to be, we’re going to curling and hockey, I think on Thursday.
[00:10:49] Jill: Yeah, and it was cold. And I mean, I’m dressed for the mountain. I don’t have a ton of layers on because it is warmer. So I do have my flannel lined pants on. I have two layers on top and I was chilly in hockey. I just think maybe I’m just too tired, but anyhow, I don’t know what to do for 70 degree weather.
[00:11:08] Alison: I don’t remember 70 degree weather. And what’s funny is when we go home, it’s probably going to be colder there when it’s been so cold here.
[00:11:19] Jill: Say it ain’t so. And so I could use some heat.
Moving over to cross-country. This is what we went to today. It was men’s 18. It was a long distance race today for cross country, so the men’s 18 kilometers sitting race. Gold went to Zhang Peng from China. Silver went to Mao Zhongwu from China and bronze went to Collin Cameron from Canada, who was warm enough to race in short sleeves.
[00:11:47] Alison: And I can’t remember who it was on the Facebook page said he looked like Steve Rogers from Captain America. This guy’s jacked and he’s got this shirt. And of course, because he’s so jacked, he’s wearing the short sleeve shirt that’s two sizes too small, like yes, go Collin.
[00:12:04] Jill: And then we saw the women’s 12 kilometer sitting. Gold went to Yang Honggiong from China. Silver went to Oksana Masters from USA and bronze went to Li Panpan from China. So this was funny because I read the little story about Oksana Masters, which I mean, when we saw her and she is just incredible, like she, you can see how fast she’s moving I think better in person than you can on TV and just the strength she has and the fluidity she has in her movement. It’s so efficient. And she was just passing people. She started last in the field because they do staggered starts. She started last, she finished first and they’re starting like 30 seconds behind each other. She really had to climb through the field to get to where she was.
[00:12:56] Alison: Because there’s only one class. You know, in the summer we talked about the many, many different classes. So there’s one class of sitting, one class of standing, one class of vision impaired. What they do is a factored time. So a second doesn’t pass as a second, depending on the level of your disability. So Oksana Masters has a hundred percent time. So a second passes as a second. Yang is 84%. So she gets a 16% time allowance for lack of a better word. So that even though Oksana Masters crossed the finish line first, because that factored time, she was actually behind Yang. So it can get a little confusing if you’re used to watching, like we were watching in the Olympics, biathlon and cross country where they have those staggered starts or, bicycle racing time trials, you just watch the time checks and it was very easy to keep track. It was just a little visually complicated. But if you’re watching the time checks it’ll make perfect sense.
[00:14:06] Jill: Right. And we had the benefit of a really good in-house announcer who was great at explaining things as they went along and they had a lot of time checks along the way.
Poor Oksana Masters. She said she could have raced faster because she really wanted to win gold. She had had, she’s had a silver in this event and she got silver and Sochi, she got bronze in Pyeongchang. She just was happy to be on the podium today, but, you know, looking back she’s like she was trying not to do the go out hard and then die. So I think for her that strategy, the race strategy she put in place with worked. She was able to pick it up a little bit at the end because she had a lot of, she had some gas left in the tank and she said she probably had a little bit too much because she got into the spot where she was really ready to make some moves and she didn’t have enough distance left to make the move she needed to make.
And in this course, it’s not very technical. So there’s not a lot of places where you can make up time, like on a hill or even on a downhill because she got really aerodynamic in her downhills too. There’s more, it’s a different kind of challenge than some other courses on the circuit.
[00:15:24] Alison: This was a lot of loops. They didn’t go out very far.
[00:15:28] Jill: No, they did not. They did like five laps of a three kilometer route.
[00:15:34] Alison: Right. So it was odd because usually they go out and come back in. And so they’re not doing the same terrain so many times.
[00:15:44] Jill: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the bonus of doing this loop is that you see more in person, I guess. I mean, there’s an area they turn kind of right in front of where the press tribune and the mixed zone is, which is off to the side and you can see them going across the center of the venue and they do go kind of out far then, and then they come back in, but there’s a lot more that the in-house crowd can see with this kind of race set up.
[00:16:17] Alison: And Kendall Gretsch was also in this race. She ended up fourth and she was back and forth like she was making up time and then losing time and making up time. And she was very frustrated at the end of that race. I saw her finish before I got lost and she was very disappointed with her time, which is frustrating.
[00:16:37] Jill: That’s too bad. Well, hopefully she’s got some more races left.
[00:16:40] Alison: They’ve got sprints.
[00:16:41] Jill: Okay. Well, there we go.
Let’s take a quick break to talk about our red envelope campaign. This show does cost money to produce, and you all have been super generous in supporting us through the Kickstarter campaign that got us here, through Patreon patronage, but we’re coming up on a lull in our cycle where we’ve got two and a half years until another Olympics and Paralympics and games time is when we get more listeners usually. And we’re really hoping that you all can help us crowdfund enough to get us some operating budget to get us through to Paris 2024.
So we’re celebrating the Lunar New Year with this red envelope campaign, because that’s what they do here in China. And we are asking for donations of at least $8, because eight is a lucky number here, symbolizing good fortune. So please go to flame alive pod.com/support to donate.
We understand that not everyone has the means. So if you don’t have the means at this time, tell a friend about the show because we still need to find more of our people. We love the fact that the Facebook group has grown a lot since the beginning of the Games and it’s become an even more fun place. The more of our people, the better.
[00:17:51] Alison: Subscribe, share, and review, right?
[00:17:53] Jill: Yeah, I know. I know.
[00:17:54] Alison: And I do want to mention if you’re catching up later and the Paralympics have ended, we are always up for a donation. You can still go to flamealivepod.com/support to donate to the show.
[00:18:09] Jill: All right. Para ice hockey
[00:18:11] Alison: Where we ended our day.
[00:18:12] Jill: That’s right.
[00:18:14] Alison: So two games, we did not see — Korea versus USA and Italy versus Slovakia. USA kind of made mincemeat of Korea nine to one.
[00:18:26] Jill: Wow. Ouch, ouch, ouch.
[00:18:28] Alison: And then the Italy-Slovakia game was much closer. Italy won that two to one. So the standings in Group A, the USA in first with two wins, no losses. Canada and Korea are both 0 and 1. They will play each other tomorrow to decide who moves on to the next round.
[00:18:51] Jill: Wow. It’s weird. It’s weird when you have groups and group play doesn’t seem like it’s very much to be quite honest.
[00:18:58] Alison: Well, there was supposed to be somebody else in this group. They decided to invade another country instead of play hockey.
[00:19:05] Jill: Ouch. In the other game we saw, it was China versus Czech Republic, China won five to two.
[00:19:13] Alison: China’s an interesting team in sled hockey. They are very aggressive, very aggressive
[00:19:20] Jill: Very intense
[00:19:22] Alison: Yes. I think it reflects their coach.
[00:19:25] Jill: Oh, okay.
[00:19:27] Alison: As I mentioned yesterday, their coach is Russian. It is Nikolay Sharshukov and this team plays like an old school Soviet team.
[00:19:38] Jill: Yeah. They’re bruisers. It’s very intense to watch them. They seem like they’re everywhere all over the rink. It seems like there’s way more than five people on the ice. Poor Czech Republic, just their passing game was non-existent. The shots on goal were like 21 for China and eight for Czech Republic. It was so one-sided. China got three goals within like three minutes.
[00:20:10] Alison: Yeah. Within the second period. Yeah. It was very quick. And two of those goals were quirky goals like, oh, that shouldn’t have happened. And that happened yesterday too. So it seems like when China gets on the ice, they make these weird things happen and take advantage of them.
But what was interesting was that captain of the China team got pulled from the line at the end of the game where they all shake hands. The ref comes over because they started to get into it. And that is so against hockey etiquette. I mean, that’s about as, as disrespectful as you can get to not properly acknowledge the other team.
I don’t know if you noticed the very sweet, very sweet, I have no idea if she’s very sweet, but the very, pretty, very petite Chinese woman standing on the sidelines with the Chinese team. She’s the interpreter for the very scary Russia coach.
[00:21:10] Jill: Oh wow. I will pay attention next time. Because I do want to see them play again. They are an interesting team to watch. Just that style of play and they’re gunning for victory and the Czech goalie, he, when he let two goals go by and he just was crushed at what was going on because some of them, they both looked like they could have been saved. He was down then his own player ran over his hand in a big skirmish in front of the goal. And you had thought that it was another, a repeat of last night.
[00:21:54] Alison: That the Chinese player slid into the goal, but the reason the Czech player slid into his own goalie was, gee, there was a Chinese player that kind of sideswiped him.
[00:22:05] Jill: Mm. Yeah. So that was, that was tough to see. Because it was not good. He had to be pulled out. He looks like his hand might have been cut, but hopefully he’s not too badly injured and can come back. They had, luckily there’s backup goalie. Um, you were able to find something, oh, this was great.
Alison: You always need a backup that’s right.
Jill: Because your Czech friend was there again, cheering like crazy from down the down the table in the press tribune.
[00:22:35] Alison: But he found the answer to my question, which was fantastic. So he came by today and he said, were you the person who asked me about the stuffed animal? And I said, yes. And it turned out that the stuffed animal was not, I buried the lead.
Because the stuffed animal was part of a whole setup that in fact, had, you called it an action figure, I called it a statue, on top of a chair and the stuffed animal was underneath the chair, but, the action figure goes with the team when they go to the dressing room, which is why I only saw the stuffed animal in the Czech flag sweater.
So what that’s all about is one of their coaches had to stay behind in the Czech Republic because of COVID protocol. From what my Czech friend said, he’s not vaccinated, so he could not come to China. So this action figure slash with his base of stuffed bear, I think, that was not clarified, but it is a stuffed animal with a Czech sweater is representing their missing coach.
The OBS got involved. That’s the Olympic Broadcasting Service. So everybody had banded together to find this answer. So I’m very pleased to share this.
The other thing I wanted to share with this game was several members of Team USA were in attendance. My guess is because they have not gotten much information about Team China and they are expecting Team China to come out of this group. So there was several of the players there and they were a little loud.
[00:24:15] Jill: Well, you talked about yesterday, how there was a big crowd. There were, again, a lot of spectators tonight. They pretty much filled their COVID protocol of spectators in the half of the arena. And they were very pro China. So waving their flags, doing some cheering, doing some clapping, but they were getting into the game.
[00:24:38] Alison: They seem to really understand what was happening, which was nice because it’s, I mean, there’s certainly not a hockey tradition as we talked about with the Olympics in China, but the fans really seem to understand how the game worked, which was, which was great to see.
[00:24:52] Jill: And you had talked yesterday, how there was not the typical brash yelling. But we got it tonight.
[00:24:59] Alison: Yeah. The USA team provided that. And at one point, one of the players yelled “T-bone” when two of the players collided, which then led to, and I could not tell which player it was because they were on, they were not in our closed loop area. They were in their own closed loop and they were far away. And you know, they’re not matching quite up to their pictures at the moment. But we saw a very animated conversation between a volunteer and this particular player where clearly he was explaining what T-bone meant. So I believe now that all of the Chinese hockey fans are going to start yelling T-bone, which would be fantastic and awful at the same time, because a T-bone hit is not good.
[00:25:47] Jill: No, and I believe that’s a penalty.
[00:25:50] Alison: Yes.
[00:25:51] Jill: Because of safety reasons.
[00:25:52] Alison: Well, it depends.
[00:25:53] Jill: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, but you know, if you T-bone the right way, that’s a penalty
[00:25:59] Alison: Especially with the sled. Yes. It’s a lot easier to do it when you are actually long enough to be part of a T.
[00:26:06] Jill: Right. Moving over to para snowboard, we had the snowboard cross qualification. This was a men’s cross, upper limb, lower limb one, lower limb two, and women’s cross lower limb two. We did two rounds today and then they’ll do knockout rounds tomorrow.
Brenna Huckaby, who was originally denied an opportunity to compete because of classification, she is in second place so far after a skidding out in her first run, but her second run was good enough to move on to the next round.
And then, our next book club book author is Mike Schultz and he qualified third in the men’s SB lower limb one competition. And just a side note, we will be discussing his memoir which has just came out this year. It’s called Driven to Ride. We’ll talk about that in late spring, early summer with Book Club Claire.
[00:27:01] Alison: So good luck to him. He’s sort of waiting for his TKFLASTANI citizenship.
[00:27:06] Jill: Yeah. Well, we’re waiting to talk to him.
[00:27:07] Alison: I know we’ve tried, but between, you know, between his and our Beijing trip. Yeah. So I say he’s applied. Okay. But he hasn’t taken the test yet and had his swearing in ceremony.
[00:27:21] Jill: And finally we had more round robin action in wheelchair curling tonight.
In the morning session, we had Slovakia versus Norway. Norway won nine to three. Slovakia scored three in the fifth end to get within a point. But Norway had got five points in the next two ends and then just ended it after seven. And China, Sweden beat China, five to one in seven ends. In the afternoon session, Switzerland beat Korea, eight to seven, and Switzerland here came from behind and they tied it in the eighth end and then got one point in the extra end to win it. So that’s a real big boost victory for Switzerland. Canada just rolled over Latvia 10 to 3. They got four. Canada, got four points in the first end, never looked back. Game ended after 6 ends.
[00:28:17] Alison: I’ve never seen it. I mean, not that I’ve watched that much curling, I’ve watched, you know, a couple of Olympics worth of curling, but to end two ends early is very unusual. Yes?
[00:28:26] Jill: I would think so. Yes, but there was just probably no way Latvia was coming back. Then, USA got its first win against Estonia nine to six. USA got three points in the second end, Estonia tied, but then US got four points in the fifth end. Estonia tried to come back. They came within two, but USA added two more points in the ninth end to, or in the last end, to seal the victory.
[00:28:52] Alison: So I hope that turns around their momentum.
[00:28:54] Jill: Yes. Yes, definitely. And then in the evening session, China beat Estonia, nine to three in seven ends. China scored three points in the first end and Estonia could never get a good counter attack going. So tough day for Estonia to be quite honest. They really got beat a couple of times.
And then, Korea beat Norway nine to four in seven ends. Korea scored early and often in this matchup. Norway got within one, but Korea got four points in the seventh to win the game. And then Latvia via beat Slovakia, eight to four in seven ends. And Latvia came back in the last three ends with six points there, and Slovakia tried in the eighth end, but they had to call it a game part way through.
So in this tournament, the standings are Canada and Sweden are both undefeated. Norway, Latvia are both two and one. Great Britain is one-and-one. Slovakia, China, Korea, Switzerland, USA are one and two. And Estonia is O and two. So what is our TKFLASTANI curler doing tomorrow?
[00:30:03] Alison: So Steve Emt and Team USA have two matches, one against undefeated Canada and the second against Norway.
[00:30:11] Jill: Canada will be interesting. I mean, they are really strong sofas.
[00:30:17] Alison: They are not here to play.
[00:30:18] Jill: Nope, nope, nope. We would like to thank today’s Kickstarter collectors, Mary Ellen Callahan, and the dulcet tones of Jason Bryant.
[00:30:26] Alison: And we also want to say thank you to our mascot for this half of the games. It is our lovely cat Riza. She loves everyone and everything and wants to be a part of everything all the time. Unlike her older sister Quinley who is a brown tabby, who hates everybody except Mama Claire. There are two kinds of cats in this world. There’s the cats who love everybody. And the cats that hate everybody.
Jill: And Claire has one of each, but the pictures we have of Riza you can see how much she loves everything.
Alison: We also do have a couple of pictures coming with Riza and Quinley together because for as much as Quinley seems to hate everything, I think she loves her baby sister.
[00:31:10] Jill: Well, that will do it for this episode. Tune in again tomorrow for an another day of competition from Beijing.
[00:31:16] Alison: Celebrate the games with us at our Keep the Flame Alive Facebook group, is the place to hang out with other listeners and Jill and myself when she’s not laughing at me. Jill is on Twitter. I am on Instagram. Both are @flamealivepod. You can also email us at flamealivepod@gmail.com or call or text us at (208) 352-6348. That’s (208) FLAME-IT.
[00:31:42] Jill: We will catch you back here tomorrow. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time, keep the flame alive.