About 30 minutes before the start of the closing ceremonies of the best Olympic Games Salt Lake City has ever held, a cold front of rain mixed with snow passed beyond Olympic Stadium and gave way to a picture-postcard sunset reflecting off the snow-covered Wasatch Range.
And so for 17 charmed days it went. Clouds occasionally appeared during the Games of 2002, but then they quickly disappeared. Just exactly who owed Mitt Romney all those favors, anyway? Boston doesn't want him to return and run for governor, they want him to throw them an Olympics exactly like this one.
What city wouldn't? For two weeks and three weekends Salt Lake was, well, blessed. Five months after the worst terrorist attack on American soil, an Olympic Games came and went in peace and in the black. The only thing that blew up were a few Russian tempers, and that's OK because these days the Russians are on our side.
Did it end the war on terrorism? Did it ensure world peace? Did it cure cancer and credit-card debt? Nope. But it was a great time that came at a great time. How can you not feel a little better about humanity when a Czech aerialist manages the first five-twist flip in Games history to win a gold medal, when Canada finally wins another hockey gold medal, and then wins another one; when the Scots finally win curling, when a Croatian woman skier wins four medals, and when Jim Shea slides down the skeleton track with a picture of his late gold-medal granddad in his helmet?
And when America, for 72 years the winner of Miss Congeniality at the Winter Games because it always shows up and doesn't win much, explodes for 34 medals, which is only 21 more than anytime in history?
At the risk of sounding biased, provincial, self-congratulatory, insufferable and anti-Russian . . .
. . . nice job, Salt Lake.
And Ogden and Provo and Snowbasin and West Valley City and Kearns and Park City and the Heber Valley.
The entire Olympic corridor, take a bow.
Have there been better Olympics? Oh, probably. There have been hundreds in history, some reportedly contested in the nude, which thankfully was before the Winter Olympics were invented. They've been held in Olympia, in Athens, in Rome and just about everywhere in the modern world. Comparing Olympics is as subjective as comparing figure skaters. A lot of it has to do with where you're from.
But I've covered eight of them since the Deseret News first sent me to Los Angeles in 1984, and while I've enjoyed every one, I have never been to one any better organized or more sports-oriented than this one. Or any more fun. And that includes Sydney, the place that invented fun.
Of course I thought we might not pull it off.
It was kind of a rough in-run ? to use ski jump jargon. The early bidders were nothing if not overzealous and uptight, and working with the organizing committee wasn't always like working with Aunt Bea, but then the Games came and 24,500 volunteers trotted out to their stations in their blue, gold and green parkas, and everything just worked.
I didn't meet all 24,500, but every one I met was upbeat.
Like the volunteer at the E Center metal detector, who earnestly said "Oh, I'm sorry" to everyone who set off the buzzer.
And from the volunteer behind her, "Thanks for playing!"
People were almost happy to get frisked.
Then there was volunteer Kathy Anderson at Deer Valley, who made a competition out of successful passes through the metal detector.
When I went through and didn't trigger the beeper, she said, "21! Yeah! 28's the record."
I say, hurry and round up the volunteers and put them in all the airports.
The net result: More than a few heavy hearts Sunday night when the Olympic flag was passed to Italy and, at 8:34 p.m., when the Olympic flame was doused.
So what now? Back to work?
Move to Torino?
Buy Roots stock?
Nothing really left to do but enjoy the memories and give credit where it's due. Like someone did at a portable lavatory at the Park City venue just before the end of the Games.
On the paper stuck to the wall to check off regular maintenance service, on the line below "Serviced With Pride" someone had penciled in: "Mitt R."
It ain't braggin' if you've done it.
Lee Benson's column runs daily during the Olympics. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.