Weir Keeps Mom In High Fashion

As she waited for her son, figure skater Johnny Weir, Patti Weir stood outside the Palavela in jeans and hiking boots, smoking a cigarette and clutching a stylish brown Prada bag. She said it was one of many her son -- a shopping fiend whose 200 neatly wrapped designer sunglasses fill a six-drawer bureau at their home in Newark, Del. -- has purchased for her.

On this trip, besides buying himself shirts, jackets and shoes, he walked out of a shop with another purse for Mom. This handbag was denim. "A Louie," she said, referring to Louis Vuitton. Patti Weir, who grew up in a small town in central Pennsylvania, said she has developed a taste for designer fashion through her artistic son, who speaks fluent French and Russian and loves high culture.

She also, more reluctantly, gained some measure of fame through him: At the U.S. championships, Weir, 21, described his mother as wild and crazy, saying she rode on the backs of motorcycles as a teenager and was caught smoking in the bathrooms at 13. He also said she was "getting drunk" after he won the U.S. title. (She later explained that she had merely sought out champagne to celebrate with friends.) She plans to carry on similarly this week.

"Yes, I'm going to have a drink when it's all over," she said. "I'm letting the press know that already. I might have two."

-- Amy Shipley

Hell on Wheels

---

Maybe we should have realized something was amiss before we even left Sestriere.

In case you haven't heard, attending an Olympics -- particularly to cover them -- involves a great deal of travel by bus. If that Steve Martin-John Candy movie "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" had been filmed at the Olympics, it would have been called "Buses, Buses and Buses."

So yesterday morning, I joined other journalists in setting out from Sestriere, home to much of the Alpine skiing, to San Sicario Fraiteve, down the road apiece and site of the women's downhill. The bus driver headed down the hill from the press center in Sestriere -- and missed his first turn. He pulled off a nifty eight-point turn to get pointed back in the right direction, and we were off again.

The problem: He didn't know where he was going. He got us to the general vicinity of San Sicario Fraiteve, but he wasn't familiar with the drop-off point. He stopped in one area, was urged to move on, wound his way down a hill, saw a parking lot full of buses -- and parked.

We waited for him to consult with someone. He did, briefly. And then he turned off the bus.

From the front: silence. We waited a bit. A German journalist who knew some Italian approached him and came back to us with the word: "He is very angry. We must walk."

It was the poor guy's first day on the job. Apparently, he hadn't been given proper maps or directions or instructions.

And as we began our trudge up the hill to the venue, we looked into the bus, and the poor man sat quietly, his head in his hands, as if he would cry.

-- Barry Svrluga

A Family Affair

---

The Olympics packed Turin, but many of the visitors never will see the inside of an Italian home filled with the natives' true passion for food and, of course, family. The good fortune is mine to have family who, from the day I arrived, have called to make sure that I am well but more important, to ask when I am coming to dinner.

Last night, after a walk up Via Nizza only 15 blocks from the Main Media Center, dinner was served. The evening was filled with good conversation about family, life and food. Each course was better than the last, with local and Calabrian specialties and homemade wine. The time flew, and eight courses and four hours later, it was time to go . . . but not without a promise to come for dinner tomorrow.

-- Jill Grisco