The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver are alive and rolling and quite honestly &- I wish I was ditching school right now to be there.

Let’s put this into perspective a little bit.

You know the shows you wait for every week, like “American Idol,” “Grey’s Anatomy” and “The Office”? That is the Winter Olympics with me, except I’ve been waiting three years and 51 weeks for the next episode to air.

How often do you get to watch bobsledding on TV? Once every four years.How often do you get to see the amazing sport of curling? Once every four years.Oh, and please do not hate on curling.

I’d get paid for playing shuffleboard on ice. I’d also go to the Olympics for our country for being really good at sweeping ice with a broom.

Even though I ran track in high school, almost all the sports in the Winter Olympics are way cooler to watch than the summer games. I’ll forget about track for a bit and watch speed skating because it’s basically track on ice, which is awesome.

I love watching skiing and snowboarding with a passion. I’ve been skiing since I was 11 and it’s been a dream of mine to race. And I’m not going to lie, I get a little jealous when I see all the skiers and snowboarders do 1260 nose grabs off a 90-foot jump.

For those of you who are not on the bandwagon, you need to be.

You’ve got American household favorites Shaun White and Apolo Anton Ohno, who both won gold in the 2006 games in Torino, looking for repeating gold medals this week.

The biggest storyline of this year’s Olympics is the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, who died instantly after a practice run on what racers call the “most dangerous luge course.”

It was good to see the whole world come together so quickly in times of tragedy, which makes me appreciate the games even more.

Alpine skier, and my future wife, Lindsey Vonn, has won back-to-back World Championships and is in five events.

Since crashing and bruising her shin in practice nine days before the games, the media has followed Vonn nonstop trying to see if she will be able to ski all five events. If she can ski through the pain, she definitely has a chance to dominate the Olympics much like American swimmer Michael Phelps did at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Even though Switzerland’s Simon Ammann won the first gold medal of the 2010 games in ski jumping, America will be watching these games during the day and night with family and friends to cheer on the USA so we can surpass second-place Russia in the total medal count and get closer to Norway’s 280 medals.

We can argue all you want about if the summer or winter games are better, but I’m like a little kid on Christmas day when I turn on the TV and watch the Winter Olympics. I support our country’s athletes because they are fulfilling a dream of mine.

Marshall Hampson can be reached at [email protected]