- - - - - - - - - - T A B L E_T A L K Riders share their experiences and thoughts on traveling by motorcycle in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Lost in Nagano By Cintra Wilson Our correspondent's innocent search for the men's slalom turns into an amazing half-day odyssey (02/20/98) Figure skating shocker By Jonathan Broder Lipinski upsets Kwan to take the gold. What happened? Skating expert Christine Brennan analyzes events on -- and off -- the ice in Nagano (02/20/98) Flying away By Cintra Wilson I sold my soul to the scalpers to watch mechanized super-teens Michelle and Tara kiss ass? (02/20/98) Flying away By Gary Kamiya Triumph on the slopes -- and parties all night long (02/19/98) Scalpers, skiers and cultural schizophrenia By Cintra Wilson Our woman in Nagano checks out deluxe slopeside port-o-lets, "child hornet" snacks and other Olympic oddities (02/19/98) Browse the Feature archives		____________Tara and Michelle are great ____________and I am a worthless protozoa ____________clinging to their skates. Tara Lipinski performs her gold medal routine during the free skate competition at White Ring Arena. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BY CINTRA WILSON | NAGANO, Japan -- I take it back about Michelle Kwan, all the nasty things I said about her not having a soul. She's great, and I'm mean and bad. I'm having a crisis of conscience here in Godforsaken Saku, alone in my hotel room with the bottle of whisky Gary left me. I'm a malicious person who has nothing nice to say about anybody, particularly not legendary athletes. Even my friends are angry with me. Japan and the Winter Olympics have exposed me as misanthropic, with deep reserves of snideness. Christ, I wouldn't even talk to the desperately lonely middle-aged expatriate lady, some woman in a filthy pink coat who'd married a Tokyo businessman years ago and spoke at me in English all quickly and greedily like she was trying to score sex or crack off me. She kept following me around the train station and inviting me to take a public bath with her and inviting herself to look me up when she got to New York. "Oh, we'll have LOTS to talk about on the train. I'll have to tell you all about my accident, in detail. I haven't told many people about it, but I'm sure that YOU'LL understand," she said, grasping my arm. "Sit here," I said, when I found an open seat on the full train. "But ... can't we find seats closer together?" "I'll talk to you in Nagano," I said. I lied. I ditched her at Nagano Station. I ran like hell. Although generally harmless, she scared the shit out of me. I am unavailable for such friendship. If I really loved mankind, wouldn't I at least have given her my e-mail address? You think that's bad: In the rain, I tried to snake a nice Japanese guy's taxi by running down the street and flagging it before it got to the taxi stand. I didn't think the taxi stand mattered. I had been out there for a while and it was raining like hell. I was going to make the taxi stop for him, I told myself, and ask him if he wanted to go to Nagano Station. Everybody wants to go to Nagano Station. The taxi ended up passing me by and picking him up anyway. I ran back to the taxi stand, realizing that jumping the order was futile. At the taxi stand, an old lady tried to snake me out of the next cab by crowding it and edging toward the door. "I was here first," I said to an old lady in the rain. She peered at me through the water-streaked window after I got in, like I was some kind of purse-snatcher in the back of a squad car. Well, she wasn't that old. In any case, there's nothing like spending a little time in Japan to make you feel like a rude, braying, amoral monster thoroughly undeserving of human kindness. Two big things went down yesterday, besides my deep regrets: the big Czech-Canada hockey game and the big women's ice skating finale. N E X T+P A G E+| Maple leaf fever PHOTOGRAPH BY CLIVE BRUNSKILL/ALLSPORT Archived images are provided by Allsport Photography USA, Inc. all rights reserved, any redistribution, resale, re-print or other use is strictly prohibited without written consent from Allsport Photography USA, Inc. directly.