Opening Ceremonies for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics were last night.

And I was not there.

The last Olympics I didn’t cover? Calgary 1988.

I covered two before, and 11 after — including six Winter Games among the total of 13.

And how do I feel about not being in Vancouver?

Numb. And not from the cold.

I like the Olympics as much as the next fellow … and more than just about any of us living on the Arabian Peninsula, where winter means highs of 75 and lows of 60.

But I’m not crazy about the Winter Olympics. Here’s why:

–It’s a freak show. The great mass of humanity cannot identify with any event on the winter schedule because they require ice and snow. Which just doesn’t exist in a wide, heavily populated swath of the globe that stretches from the Philippines to the southern half of China, across to Southeast Asia, south Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, the Mediterranean, all of Africa and then over to all but an Andean slice of South America and the upper half of North America.

That’s a lot of people, people, who don’t really know what this is about and can hardly even imagine it if they were watching — and they won’t be.

–The events are bogus. The IOC has essentially been inventing winter events for decades now, and the legitimate pursuits (skiing, bobsled, long-track speedskating) have been overwhelmed by trash sports. To wit: All the snowboard events, all the aerobatic events, the skeleton, short-track speed skating, luge doubles, snowmobile-racing (OK,  I made up that last one) … and about 1,440 days out of every four years nearly no one cares about any of them. Not even people who yodel or live in Finland.

And I now will confess some journalistic issues, now that I am out of the equation.

–A significant fraction of people covering the Winter Olympics are faking it. A week ago, a lot of them were at the Super Bowl watching a sport they understand. A month from now, they will be covering the NCAA tournament. But for the next 17 days they will pretend to be experts on biathlon, triple axels, ice-dancing, and ski-jumping. I was one of those guys, and faking it is not fun, and it is little relief to know most of your audience doesn’t know what it’s looking at, either. Anyway, the winter world is too weird for all the drop-in journalists (which is to say, most of them) to really be experts. But we will pretend, all the same.

–Winter really isn’t fun. Even if Vancouver doesn’t seem to have enough winter for the Olympics. Those of us from the warm-weather zones remember Winter Olympics as 17 days when we had to budget time to get dressed … when we shivered a lot and wore clunky boots and sat in puddles of melted snow and listened to people sneeze in the media room. If I wanted to live like that, I’d move to Detroit.

–The mega-event of a Winter Olympics, women’s figure skating, is Just Plain Crazy. Tiny young women trying to do acrobatics on a slick surface, with money-crazed parents and coaches, political judging, kiss-and-cry rooms and a “mixed zone” (you reporters know what I’m talking about) that is an hour of standing shoulder to shoulder with 100 other reporters in about 10 yards of space, trying to catch the whispered inanities of a 5-foot 17-year-old while someone from a midsize metro breathes in your face. Big picture? Figure skating is a sick sport. Sick as in unhealthy, and it chews up and spits out people in a way that reminds me of the National Football League. And that’s your big event.

So, will I miss the Winter Olympics?

Not a chance.  Actually, I wouldn’t have minded missing two (Turin and Nagano) of the last three, but if you have a credential and someone will send you to Italy or Japan … you have to go. But a confession: There was not a day at gray, dreary Turin that I didn’t think, “Maybe someone who cares ought to be here instead of me.” And the only reason I didn’t act on that … was 1) that I was in Italy and 2) even not having fun I believed I did a better job than whoever my replacement would have been. (Not every baseball writer loves all 162, I guarantee you, but you want the ball writer at the ballgame, now don’t you? And the guy who has covered lots of Olympics probably ought to be at the Games.)

I was glad to be at Sarajevo, in 1984. That was the most exotic Winter ever. Predominantly Muslim Bosnia as home to the Olympics … a Communist country (pre-breakup Yugoslavia) … a three-day blizzard in the middle of it all. I have vivid memories of the whole thing even now. And the idea that the city was nearly destroyed only a few years later makes it more poignant.

I loved Lillehammer, in 1994. It never got above 26 degrees the entire time I was there, but I saw the aurora borealis, and Norway was completely into the event and had some just amazing venues (the upside down Viking ship; the hockey arena in a cave).

And Salt Lake was fascinating because it was in Utah, just up the I-15 from where I lived, and a guy I knew pretty well (Derek Parra) won a gold and a silver medal in speedskating.

But most Winters? No thanks. Really. And that includes the next one, Sochi.

Summer? That I will miss. Any of them. No matter where. Not seeing London 2012 will hurt.

But not winter. Especially not in Canada. In a city that is Seattle-meets-Big Bear Lake.

Go ahead without me, guys. I will read about it in the papers. Or maybe not.