Gay Games Cleveland - August 2014
We had been waiting for a long time to finally be part of the Gay Games experience. This trip was extra special because we were able to share it with our friends, Betty and Cindy. Prior to even leaving, we did lots of planning and practicing table tennis which was to be our sport. Cindy and I also put together an amazing playlist inspired by all the artists in the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame.
So we finally left on Friday morning, August 8th. I had volunteered to drive first as we headed out of town in Cindy's Ford Escape. We immediately got the music going and what a great time we had on the drive. We played musical seats as we took turns driving and then moved to the back seat to dig into our snacks or take a quick nap. We stopped for lunch at a non-nondescript Taco Bell/Pizza Hut in New Lisbon Indiana. Our drive took us past Indianapolis, Dayton, and Columbus. We stopped in Ashland Ohio at an awesome place for cheese and chocolate.
Once we arrived, we quickly went to check-in and get our credentials. There were lots of great booths there including the National Park Service. It turns out that the Cuyahoga Valley National Park is near Cleveland. We checked everything out and finally after a long day of travel, we had our first cocktail of the trip, sitting midst the booths, and others getting their credentials. We had taken our photos before the trip so our credentials included that photo, your sport and was to be worn around your neck throughout the games. It was a ticket to ride public transportation for free. We also got green bracelets that would give us 10% off at any participating restaurants.
After becoming official participants in GG9, we finally made it to the hotel and had dinner. Our other friends, Karen and Debbie made their way down to join us.
Saturday, we had the very special opportunity to see Greg Louganis speak. The lunch was held at the Cleveland Club which is tied to the Foundation which was the premiere sponsor of the Games. Carol and I had chicken baked in graham cracker crumbs. Betty and Cindy went with the Cesar salad. Greg's talk was really good and he definitely reminded us how key it is for us to have allies. They showed us a preview of a documentary he is helping to create. After the lunch was over, as we mingled outside, Betty met someone who was talking about this great movie he had seen on You Tube that inspired him to write a song that he was using for his ice skating routine. The song is called "Your love matters and so does mine" and the movie was Betty's history of the Gay Games that she had created some time back. How amazing that was and it inspired Betty to think about adding on to the videos to reflect her Gay Games experiences since.
After this, it was time to head toward Progressive Field, the Cleveland Indians baseball stadium where we were staging for the Opening Ceremony march into the basketball stadium which is called the Quicken Loans Arena. Team St. Louis actually started our walk at the Hilton hotel and then walked to several other locations to gather up our other team members as we made our way to the stadium. There is an underground tunnel that runs from baseball to basketball so a long part of our march was then to be through that tunnel. There were 48 states from the USA and 50+ countries represented. I know Mississippi was not there but not sure what other state was missing? We had lots of chance during this time to meet others and exchange pins.
The opening ceremony was amazing. There were cheerleaders, the Pointer Sisters, Greg Louganis, a video welcome from President Obama and more. The senator from Ohio who opposed DOMA when it wasn't cool and his wife who writes about LGBT issues each spoke. We all agreed that was a very inspiring part of the event. The place was packed and it is just almost indescribable, it was so amazing.
Afterwards, we had dinner at a Southern style restaurant called Stonetown, at 627 Prospect. They served interesting items such as a friend green tomato BLT and a lobster quesadilla.
Sunday, we spent the afternoon at the Village. We met some very interesting people that day. There was the couple from New Hampshire. She was a retired NH police officer and her wife was a teacher. We chatted with the Cleveland K-9 officer who appeared to be gay because he blew us off after some cute boys walked up. There were lots of shopping booths. One interesting one was offering RV campsites that had a location in Saugatuck Michigan and another in Florida. Each place was about 1/3 gay so it did sound appealing.
At some point, Betty, Cindy, Carol and I all got away to have the most amazing dinner at Brasa, which is a Brazilian steakhouse. We left the village to find something to eat and ran into one of the many super nice residents of Cleveland while riding the trolley. He led us to this restaurant and introduced us to the owner. How amazing. We each had the classic Brazilian rotation meat dinner experience. We had some great drinks as well. Betty was drinking Stella. Carol and Cindy did wine while I tried the golden margarita and later a classic mojito.
We came back to end the night at the Village with Karen and Debbie. The rainbow laser lights coming from the Science Center and rainbow lights atop the Terminal Tower made for great scenery and photo opportunities.
Monday morning, we were up early for a quick breakfast at Starbucks and then on to Dave and Buster's where the Billiards tournament was being held. For lunch, we had calamari with banana peppers, which was kind of weird. Our appetizer were pretzel bites which were washed down with margaritas. Being a spectator is not easy. Right away, Debbie found that she had been moved to the competitive division, even though she had entered the rec division. This did seem very odd since others in rec were professional pool players. After the first round, she was moved to the rec division.
In the evening, we headed to Jacob's Pavilion for the White Party. We had a blast. I did notice that the gay men who are athletes in general do not seem to dance like typical gay men, with exceptions of course. It rained all evening but we were under cover. We took seats at one of the very limited tables. Eventually someone told us that the tables and the seats were reserved but we took our chances and just moved over a bit. We were right, the reserved groups never showed so we got to stay in place and never had to move back to the stadium seating. While we were sitting there, we noticed this huge ship, maybe 150 feet tall that passed behind us on the river that led to Lake Erie. Late in the night, Boy George came out to DJ. He looked great. The only downer was that on the way out, Cindy lost her phone.
Tuesday, we had breakfast the hotel buffet and then the six of us took the shuttle to the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame. What a place with so much to see. I was excited to see a handwritten song by Sheryl Crow. There was a very interesting display of musical history from a regional perspective. After I walked by this, Betty caught up with me and said, "come back, there is something I want you to see." She took me back to another handwritten song. This one was called "Carol" and was written by Chuck Berry. She said, "I was there when he wrote that. I knew Carol, she was this white girl that he was dating." Wow!! The song was from 1958, the same year he came out with several of his big hits. She said he had just gotten out of prison and was in this little bar trying to rehabilitate his image. He had served time for having sex with an underage girl. We all bought lots of cool stuff and agreed that we could easily come for a second visit, there was so much to see. One favorite was the section that covered concerts and festivals.
After we left the museum, Karen wanted to go back to the place we had eaten after the opening ceremony since we had raved so much about the fried green tomatoes. Some of the new things that were tried included the buttermilk fried chicken, the fried catfish, grits, mac and cheese, and tempura vegetables. I finally got to try a Great Lakes beer which was pretty good. It is a local Cleveland thing.
That night, we had tickets for the Lake Erie cruise which had been sold as a fund raiser for the LGBT center in Cleveland. There was a crazy long line for drinks as the boat was very full. It was a rainy night and we were not able to stay up on the deck for very long. One of the things that really struck me as we enjoyed our three hour cruise was the diversity I saw. There were obviously people from the games and locals and it was wonderful to see how well everyone mixed and got along. Lot of typical "gay music" for dancing. At one point, the rain held off a bit and we were able to go out on the deck to photograph the awesome skyline views. We also ran into a St. Louis friend, Marcia Daab who had come to photograph the dancers.
Wednesday, we slept in a bit and had coffee in our room. For lunch, we walked over to 4th and Prospect and found an interesting place with outdoor dining called Hodges. They had great happy hour prices and we had chorizo stuffed dates with maple syrup. Wine bottles were half off so for $16 we had a really, really nice chardonnay. I had a brie and apple sandwich on multi-grain bread. Carol had the lobster roll. Each came with tater tots and aioli sauce. While were eating a group from France came in and we congratulated one of them that had one the gold medal in golf.
We then headed to the Renaissance to watch our fellow teammates compete in darts. Along the
the way, we ran into Betty and Cindy. Once we got there, Karen and Debbie were already watching. Our guys, Tom and John ended up playing some guys from KC. Those guys were very chatty and very drunk. They were also amazing players. We had to keep moving as the play moved from one dart board to another. As we all collectively moved, one of the KC guys said something about "his lesbians" and Tom made it clear that we were "his lesbians". It was a lot of fun but also a beautiful day outside so we were glad to leave the dark dart room and continue exploring Cleveland. Carol and I ended up walking all the way down to the Football stadium in an effort to get close to the water. By then, it was getting a little warm so we decided to ride the trolley back. We met some women from the Netherlands. The one gal was a swimmer. We asked them about gay life in their country, which we assumed was perfect and they said that despite all the legal protections they have, there has been a bit of anti-gay feeling in some areas and there are part of Amsterdam where you could be in danger if you walked holding hands. We were shocked.
Thanks to the trolley, we ended back on Euclid, where we had been earlier in the day. We had a fantastic dinner at the Nauti Mermaid, a Key West style restaurant. We had conch ceviche, crab cakes, mojitos, and we sat outside. While sitting outside, there were lots of other participants and it was fun to people watch. We saw a big group of the rodeo girls in the boots and cowboy hats.
We finished off our evening back at the Village. While sitting on a bench, enjoying the beautiful sunset over Lake Erie, we met another international athlete, Britta from Germany. She was also a swimmer. She is a teacher and planning to come to the Out games in Miami as they are allowed days off for international sport competitions. She told us that she is only out to a few of her colleagues at work and definitely not to the students.
Thursday morning, we continued our weekly Starbucks traditions. We had enjoyed the caramel macchiato so much that we bought the mix to bring home. Cindy also bought her sister some Starbucks coffee cups. Some of my favorite breakfasts there included the bacon Gouda on a croissant, the almond croissant, and the cheese danish. After feeding ourselves, we went to watch singles TT and get a sense for what to expect on Friday. There was a lot to see with men's and women's singles going on. We knew there was a competitive and a hobby division so we tried to guess who was who. We felt better after we watched and were ready to do our best tomorrow and leave it at that.
From there, we went down to the LGBT center. The center director, Phyllis Harris was quite impressive. She and Betty talked extensively on how similar Cleveland and St. Louis are in many ways. But at the same time, they had their center first and other community organization grew up around it. They had also just received a major 1.5 million dollar anonymous donation. After leaving the center, we had lunch at the Barley House on 6th Street. They had truffle fries and amazing burgers.
That night, we headed to Akron to see the Indigo Girls. What a blast that was. Her opening act was Hannah Thomas. Next up, we got to see the local artist that also performed at the Opening Ceremony. Anne E. Dechant is a big deal in Cleveland but actually also performs in Nashville and has done Lilith Fair. The Indigo Girls rocked as usual. This was Cindy's first time seeing them so sharing that was very cool. Speaking of cool, it was downright chilly and we used Cindy's picnic blanket to cover us all and took a great selfie of us snuggling in the blanket. And yes, this was August but the whole week was cool and this evening it was right around 58 degrees.
Friday was finally the day for us to compete. We headed over to Case Western to start warming up. We felt pretty good about our basic table tennis skills but doubles was a whole other game. There was to be a round robin and we would play five teams. There was a doubles team from DC, one from Fort Wayne Indiana, a pair that was placed together with one from New York and the other from Cincinnati. And then there was a pair from New York city. The final pair was from Russia. We didn't win any matches but we didn't get clobbered either and it was a lot of fun. We may want to get serious about this and try again at the Outgames. Once we returned, Betty and Cindy were watching 60 minutes and saw one of the male TT competitors. It turns out he is a famous cartoon illustrator and editor for the New Yorker, Bob Mankoff.
We left TT and headed to see if we could catch part of the Dancesport competition. The dancers were the biggest contingent from Team St. Louis. Our friend Sharon got us inside and we were able to see several groups dance, including Anne and Sonia as well as Carol and Laura. We saw three winners on the podium and all three were from Team St. Louis. They did the medal award like the Olympics and so we heard our own National anthem. Then for the next medal award, the sound system stopped so the crowd sang the National Anthem. Wow, chills!!
With our wonderful week was coming to an end. The four of us had a fabulous lunch at the House of Blues. Some of the entrees included fish tacos, a basil flat-bread, and then we enjoyed some cocktails. We sat outside and met some women who had won the gold in bowling. We also watched the filming of a commercial. We guessed it was a promo for the 2018 Gay Games. The women who were posing as a couple looked a bit uncomfortable with it all. We also didn't really think they were the most realistic looking lesbians ever but hey, they were models so who are we to complain?
It was a wonderful lunch but bittersweet since our wonderful Cleveland experience was coming to an end. We will always equate Cleveland with top-notch hospitality and friendliness that we had never experienced before. The city got behind the Games and made it a huge success. I hope positive things continue for this wonderful city.
We had our closing dinner back at the hotel. I had the Rock-n-Roll Reuben and Carol had the pan seared Atlantic salmon.
Saturday, we drove home and shared some of our observations from the week. One thing we all noticed was there was a big police presence around the games with bomb dogs and techs everywhere. We all felt the police where there to protect us. There were no issues that any of us experienced so it must have worked as a deterrent. There were a very few protesters on our first day but hardly noticeable.
We had lot of French atheletes at our hotel. They were by far the biggest contingent from Europe since Paris is the host in 2018. There was low attendance and we got the impression during the week it was related to the location being Cleveland. But they surely missed out on a great city.
We also reflected back on our chance encounter with Paul Mart who along with Dr. Tom Waddell. We ran into Paul on the trolley and he told us great stories. He said he was 97 years old and was competing in weight lifting for his age group. He told us about being a stunt man in the movies. He shared stories from his youth and how he thought he was the only one that felt the way he did as a young gay man. It was an honor to meet him. We later met up with Terry who is part of the Gay Games Federation. He knew Paul well and shared some stories from the past as well. How cool was that.
We also commented on the fact that Cleveland has the biggest outdoor chandelier in the world.
We absolutely felt super welcome in Cleveland and Akron as well. Of course, the representative from Akron said what some of this is always about, "spend your money". This is a huge positive for the community as gay people are known for being generous at spending money.
So we finally left on Friday morning, August 8th. I had volunteered to drive first as we headed out of town in Cindy's Ford Escape. We immediately got the music going and what a great time we had on the drive. We played musical seats as we took turns driving and then moved to the back seat to dig into our snacks or take a quick nap. We stopped for lunch at a non-nondescript Taco Bell/Pizza Hut in New Lisbon Indiana. Our drive took us past Indianapolis, Dayton, and Columbus. We stopped in Ashland Ohio at an awesome place for cheese and chocolate.
Once we arrived, we quickly went to check-in and get our credentials. There were lots of great booths there including the National Park Service. It turns out that the Cuyahoga Valley National Park is near Cleveland. We checked everything out and finally after a long day of travel, we had our first cocktail of the trip, sitting midst the booths, and others getting their credentials. We had taken our photos before the trip so our credentials included that photo, your sport and was to be worn around your neck throughout the games. It was a ticket to ride public transportation for free. We also got green bracelets that would give us 10% off at any participating restaurants.
After becoming official participants in GG9, we finally made it to the hotel and had dinner. Our other friends, Karen and Debbie made their way down to join us.
Saturday, we had the very special opportunity to see Greg Louganis speak. The lunch was held at the Cleveland Club which is tied to the Foundation which was the premiere sponsor of the Games. Carol and I had chicken baked in graham cracker crumbs. Betty and Cindy went with the Cesar salad. Greg's talk was really good and he definitely reminded us how key it is for us to have allies. They showed us a preview of a documentary he is helping to create. After the lunch was over, as we mingled outside, Betty met someone who was talking about this great movie he had seen on You Tube that inspired him to write a song that he was using for his ice skating routine. The song is called "Your love matters and so does mine" and the movie was Betty's history of the Gay Games that she had created some time back. How amazing that was and it inspired Betty to think about adding on to the videos to reflect her Gay Games experiences since.
After this, it was time to head toward Progressive Field, the Cleveland Indians baseball stadium where we were staging for the Opening Ceremony march into the basketball stadium which is called the Quicken Loans Arena. Team St. Louis actually started our walk at the Hilton hotel and then walked to several other locations to gather up our other team members as we made our way to the stadium. There is an underground tunnel that runs from baseball to basketball so a long part of our march was then to be through that tunnel. There were 48 states from the USA and 50+ countries represented. I know Mississippi was not there but not sure what other state was missing? We had lots of chance during this time to meet others and exchange pins.
The opening ceremony was amazing. There were cheerleaders, the Pointer Sisters, Greg Louganis, a video welcome from President Obama and more. The senator from Ohio who opposed DOMA when it wasn't cool and his wife who writes about LGBT issues each spoke. We all agreed that was a very inspiring part of the event. The place was packed and it is just almost indescribable, it was so amazing.
Afterwards, we had dinner at a Southern style restaurant called Stonetown, at 627 Prospect. They served interesting items such as a friend green tomato BLT and a lobster quesadilla.
Sunday, we spent the afternoon at the Village. We met some very interesting people that day. There was the couple from New Hampshire. She was a retired NH police officer and her wife was a teacher. We chatted with the Cleveland K-9 officer who appeared to be gay because he blew us off after some cute boys walked up. There were lots of shopping booths. One interesting one was offering RV campsites that had a location in Saugatuck Michigan and another in Florida. Each place was about 1/3 gay so it did sound appealing.
At some point, Betty, Cindy, Carol and I all got away to have the most amazing dinner at Brasa, which is a Brazilian steakhouse. We left the village to find something to eat and ran into one of the many super nice residents of Cleveland while riding the trolley. He led us to this restaurant and introduced us to the owner. How amazing. We each had the classic Brazilian rotation meat dinner experience. We had some great drinks as well. Betty was drinking Stella. Carol and Cindy did wine while I tried the golden margarita and later a classic mojito.
We came back to end the night at the Village with Karen and Debbie. The rainbow laser lights coming from the Science Center and rainbow lights atop the Terminal Tower made for great scenery and photo opportunities.
Monday morning, we were up early for a quick breakfast at Starbucks and then on to Dave and Buster's where the Billiards tournament was being held. For lunch, we had calamari with banana peppers, which was kind of weird. Our appetizer were pretzel bites which were washed down with margaritas. Being a spectator is not easy. Right away, Debbie found that she had been moved to the competitive division, even though she had entered the rec division. This did seem very odd since others in rec were professional pool players. After the first round, she was moved to the rec division.
In the evening, we headed to Jacob's Pavilion for the White Party. We had a blast. I did notice that the gay men who are athletes in general do not seem to dance like typical gay men, with exceptions of course. It rained all evening but we were under cover. We took seats at one of the very limited tables. Eventually someone told us that the tables and the seats were reserved but we took our chances and just moved over a bit. We were right, the reserved groups never showed so we got to stay in place and never had to move back to the stadium seating. While we were sitting there, we noticed this huge ship, maybe 150 feet tall that passed behind us on the river that led to Lake Erie. Late in the night, Boy George came out to DJ. He looked great. The only downer was that on the way out, Cindy lost her phone.
Tuesday, we had breakfast the hotel buffet and then the six of us took the shuttle to the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame. What a place with so much to see. I was excited to see a handwritten song by Sheryl Crow. There was a very interesting display of musical history from a regional perspective. After I walked by this, Betty caught up with me and said, "come back, there is something I want you to see." She took me back to another handwritten song. This one was called "Carol" and was written by Chuck Berry. She said, "I was there when he wrote that. I knew Carol, she was this white girl that he was dating." Wow!! The song was from 1958, the same year he came out with several of his big hits. She said he had just gotten out of prison and was in this little bar trying to rehabilitate his image. He had served time for having sex with an underage girl. We all bought lots of cool stuff and agreed that we could easily come for a second visit, there was so much to see. One favorite was the section that covered concerts and festivals.
After we left the museum, Karen wanted to go back to the place we had eaten after the opening ceremony since we had raved so much about the fried green tomatoes. Some of the new things that were tried included the buttermilk fried chicken, the fried catfish, grits, mac and cheese, and tempura vegetables. I finally got to try a Great Lakes beer which was pretty good. It is a local Cleveland thing.
That night, we had tickets for the Lake Erie cruise which had been sold as a fund raiser for the LGBT center in Cleveland. There was a crazy long line for drinks as the boat was very full. It was a rainy night and we were not able to stay up on the deck for very long. One of the things that really struck me as we enjoyed our three hour cruise was the diversity I saw. There were obviously people from the games and locals and it was wonderful to see how well everyone mixed and got along. Lot of typical "gay music" for dancing. At one point, the rain held off a bit and we were able to go out on the deck to photograph the awesome skyline views. We also ran into a St. Louis friend, Marcia Daab who had come to photograph the dancers.
Wednesday, we slept in a bit and had coffee in our room. For lunch, we walked over to 4th and Prospect and found an interesting place with outdoor dining called Hodges. They had great happy hour prices and we had chorizo stuffed dates with maple syrup. Wine bottles were half off so for $16 we had a really, really nice chardonnay. I had a brie and apple sandwich on multi-grain bread. Carol had the lobster roll. Each came with tater tots and aioli sauce. While were eating a group from France came in and we congratulated one of them that had one the gold medal in golf.
We then headed to the Renaissance to watch our fellow teammates compete in darts. Along the
the way, we ran into Betty and Cindy. Once we got there, Karen and Debbie were already watching. Our guys, Tom and John ended up playing some guys from KC. Those guys were very chatty and very drunk. They were also amazing players. We had to keep moving as the play moved from one dart board to another. As we all collectively moved, one of the KC guys said something about "his lesbians" and Tom made it clear that we were "his lesbians". It was a lot of fun but also a beautiful day outside so we were glad to leave the dark dart room and continue exploring Cleveland. Carol and I ended up walking all the way down to the Football stadium in an effort to get close to the water. By then, it was getting a little warm so we decided to ride the trolley back. We met some women from the Netherlands. The one gal was a swimmer. We asked them about gay life in their country, which we assumed was perfect and they said that despite all the legal protections they have, there has been a bit of anti-gay feeling in some areas and there are part of Amsterdam where you could be in danger if you walked holding hands. We were shocked.
Thanks to the trolley, we ended back on Euclid, where we had been earlier in the day. We had a fantastic dinner at the Nauti Mermaid, a Key West style restaurant. We had conch ceviche, crab cakes, mojitos, and we sat outside. While sitting outside, there were lots of other participants and it was fun to people watch. We saw a big group of the rodeo girls in the boots and cowboy hats.
We finished off our evening back at the Village. While sitting on a bench, enjoying the beautiful sunset over Lake Erie, we met another international athlete, Britta from Germany. She was also a swimmer. She is a teacher and planning to come to the Out games in Miami as they are allowed days off for international sport competitions. She told us that she is only out to a few of her colleagues at work and definitely not to the students.
Thursday morning, we continued our weekly Starbucks traditions. We had enjoyed the caramel macchiato so much that we bought the mix to bring home. Cindy also bought her sister some Starbucks coffee cups. Some of my favorite breakfasts there included the bacon Gouda on a croissant, the almond croissant, and the cheese danish. After feeding ourselves, we went to watch singles TT and get a sense for what to expect on Friday. There was a lot to see with men's and women's singles going on. We knew there was a competitive and a hobby division so we tried to guess who was who. We felt better after we watched and were ready to do our best tomorrow and leave it at that.
From there, we went down to the LGBT center. The center director, Phyllis Harris was quite impressive. She and Betty talked extensively on how similar Cleveland and St. Louis are in many ways. But at the same time, they had their center first and other community organization grew up around it. They had also just received a major 1.5 million dollar anonymous donation. After leaving the center, we had lunch at the Barley House on 6th Street. They had truffle fries and amazing burgers.
That night, we headed to Akron to see the Indigo Girls. What a blast that was. Her opening act was Hannah Thomas. Next up, we got to see the local artist that also performed at the Opening Ceremony. Anne E. Dechant is a big deal in Cleveland but actually also performs in Nashville and has done Lilith Fair. The Indigo Girls rocked as usual. This was Cindy's first time seeing them so sharing that was very cool. Speaking of cool, it was downright chilly and we used Cindy's picnic blanket to cover us all and took a great selfie of us snuggling in the blanket. And yes, this was August but the whole week was cool and this evening it was right around 58 degrees.
Friday was finally the day for us to compete. We headed over to Case Western to start warming up. We felt pretty good about our basic table tennis skills but doubles was a whole other game. There was to be a round robin and we would play five teams. There was a doubles team from DC, one from Fort Wayne Indiana, a pair that was placed together with one from New York and the other from Cincinnati. And then there was a pair from New York city. The final pair was from Russia. We didn't win any matches but we didn't get clobbered either and it was a lot of fun. We may want to get serious about this and try again at the Outgames. Once we returned, Betty and Cindy were watching 60 minutes and saw one of the male TT competitors. It turns out he is a famous cartoon illustrator and editor for the New Yorker, Bob Mankoff.
We left TT and headed to see if we could catch part of the Dancesport competition. The dancers were the biggest contingent from Team St. Louis. Our friend Sharon got us inside and we were able to see several groups dance, including Anne and Sonia as well as Carol and Laura. We saw three winners on the podium and all three were from Team St. Louis. They did the medal award like the Olympics and so we heard our own National anthem. Then for the next medal award, the sound system stopped so the crowd sang the National Anthem. Wow, chills!!
With our wonderful week was coming to an end. The four of us had a fabulous lunch at the House of Blues. Some of the entrees included fish tacos, a basil flat-bread, and then we enjoyed some cocktails. We sat outside and met some women who had won the gold in bowling. We also watched the filming of a commercial. We guessed it was a promo for the 2018 Gay Games. The women who were posing as a couple looked a bit uncomfortable with it all. We also didn't really think they were the most realistic looking lesbians ever but hey, they were models so who are we to complain?
It was a wonderful lunch but bittersweet since our wonderful Cleveland experience was coming to an end. We will always equate Cleveland with top-notch hospitality and friendliness that we had never experienced before. The city got behind the Games and made it a huge success. I hope positive things continue for this wonderful city.
We had our closing dinner back at the hotel. I had the Rock-n-Roll Reuben and Carol had the pan seared Atlantic salmon.
Saturday, we drove home and shared some of our observations from the week. One thing we all noticed was there was a big police presence around the games with bomb dogs and techs everywhere. We all felt the police where there to protect us. There were no issues that any of us experienced so it must have worked as a deterrent. There were a very few protesters on our first day but hardly noticeable.
We had lot of French atheletes at our hotel. They were by far the biggest contingent from Europe since Paris is the host in 2018. There was low attendance and we got the impression during the week it was related to the location being Cleveland. But they surely missed out on a great city.
We also reflected back on our chance encounter with Paul Mart who along with Dr. Tom Waddell. We ran into Paul on the trolley and he told us great stories. He said he was 97 years old and was competing in weight lifting for his age group. He told us about being a stunt man in the movies. He shared stories from his youth and how he thought he was the only one that felt the way he did as a young gay man. It was an honor to meet him. We later met up with Terry who is part of the Gay Games Federation. He knew Paul well and shared some stories from the past as well. How cool was that.
We also commented on the fact that Cleveland has the biggest outdoor chandelier in the world.
We absolutely felt super welcome in Cleveland and Akron as well. Of course, the representative from Akron said what some of this is always about, "spend your money". This is a huge positive for the community as gay people are known for being generous at spending money.
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