With fairly regular access to the Sochi Games, on TV in the office, here in Abu Dhabi, or on the NBC website, at home … I find myself watching more than a little of this silliness.

And watching it reminds me of the six Winter Olympics I covered, as a credentialed reporter.

When you have been part of the “Olympic family” (and credentialed journalists are considered such), albeit on the other side of the “mixed zone” barrier … you watch this stuff and feel like you have been there. Same song, new verse.

And then I begin to think of things that went on at the six I covered, and now I’m going to list a few of them, chronologically, before they become even dimmer in my mind. This is off the top of my head; little or no research.

Sarajevo, 1984. A long time ago now. Before they blew it up during the breakup of Yugoslavia, which was only a few years in the distance. (Nearly every venue was destroyed.)

An eye-opener. I had been to Britain, but Sarajevo was nothing like that. I was in a (more or less) communist country for the first time, and spent about two weeks in something like real winter for the first time. And I heard the call to prayer for the first time. It seemed inordinately exotic.

What I remember: The eternal trip from New York to Sarajevo via Zagreb (where we stopped for lunch, bizarrely, in some Austro-Hungarian relic of a hotel), the hours and hours waiting for the “special media train” to Sarajevo, the breakdown in discipline among several U.S. writers, who were roaring drunk by the time the train got to Sarajevo, the wee-hours arrival, the chaos at credentialing and housing.

Coming back from the second day there, and someone at the door of the apartment house saying they had moved my stuff to a new room. Never quite meeting my roommates in the new gloomy, Soviet-style apartment, but they were from East Germany, and both of them smoked, and one of them coughed up a lung every morning.

Having the hockey beat assigned to me in the Gannett/USA Today meeting (seven of us), and then covering the first hockey game I ever saw — Canada 4, the U.S. 2, the day before Opening Ceremonies. (Do you believe in miracles? No!) I was late; I underestimated how long it would take me to get through security. Forever.

The three-day blizzard which jumbled the schedule, jumping into a cab during a snow storm, just ahead of a little guy I recognized as Scott Hamilton as the cab pulled away, going out to alpine skiing wearing tennis shoes and two pairs of socks and being amazed/appalled that the “media area” was a square patch of snow surrounded by ropes and standing there for hours.

Seeing Torvill and Dean and being underwhelmed, seeing Katarina Witt and being overwhelmed, or something not far from it. Relieved that Scott Hamilton won the gold a few days after I took his cab. Bill Johnson with a surprise gold for the U.S. in the downhill.

An event that lasted only 12 days, probably because it had only 39 events — compared to the 98 now.

How pitiful opening ceremonies were — during daylight in a shabby soccer stadium, finding the place where Gavrilo Princip stood while assassinating of the Archduke Ferdinand (immortalized by footprints placed in the pavement), buying a poorly made sweater from a nasty character in the open air market, and realizing when I got home it had a huge tear in it.

The American reporter, who did not have a seat on the charter back to NYC, losing control, inside the plane, and shouting, “I’m not going to stay in this (deleted) country one more minute!” Among other things. And someone on the plane giving up his seat to let that guy on.

To be sure, being there was a tense, weird, oppressive experience. Joy was a rare commodity. But highly memorable. I remember this one better than any other, and not just because it was my first.

Calgary, 1988. Didn’t go. Could have, chose not to. Calgary? I was sure it would be dull, and it was, aside from Dan Jansen falling down a lot. No regrets.

Albertville, 1992. In France. Arriving into Geneva and taking a long, long bus ride over the border to Albertville, a drab little town. Opening ceremonies were interesting but the venue was temporary, and we walked back to the media housing with Brian Boitano, who was working for USA Today.

Sharing a room in a hotel, just across the Isere River from the media center, with a guy who snored and had sleep apnea. For several days I feared he would die; after that, I hoped he would.

This was the Olympics, I am almost sure, where chocolate milk was distributed free in the media center, and I must have had gallons and gallons of it. Also the Olympics where the insiders in our office would carefully plot lunch and dinner at some other French restaurant they had heard about.

Going out to lunch in Meribel, a little city with one of the tamer slopes (Val d’Isere was where the serious stuff went on), and that name sticking in my head long enough to remember it when Michael Schumacher had his awful fall, last December.

Making a trip up to La Plagne, where the sliding sports were held, and being impressed (in a scary way) by the bus climbing up and up and up a very narrow road to the high plain where the luge was held.

Other than that … not much. I remember stopping in Lyon for a day or two, after the Games. But I have almost no memory of anything that went on there. When I rank my  Olympics, Albertville tends to finish near the bottom.

Lillehammer, 1994. By far the best Winter I went to. Norway lives the Winter Games, especially this part of Norway, which is semi-rural. The first place I really came to associate cow bells with cross-country skiing.

Two-plus weeks there and not once did the temperature rise above 26 degrees Fahrenheit. The medal ceremonies in the little town. Working all night and walking back to the little wooden four-plex I shared with three colleagues. If I put on the heat in my room, it was too hot; if I didn’t run the heat, I was freezing, no matter how many clothes I wore to bed. A colleague whose face all but froze, while covering skiing, and was unable to form any words when given the go-ahead to ask a question.

Staying up so late so many nights (Norway, six hours ahead of NYC) that I often ate breakfast before going to bed, which is just not healthy. Dan Jansen’s surprise victory in speed skating. The upside-down Viking ship venue. The hockey arena inside a cave, the coolest competitive venue I will ever see. It was a bomb shelter, built into a mountain; in case of nuclear war. With massive doors.

Nancy Kerrigan versus Tonya Harding, which was nuts. An enormous story.

So, things going on, great people, great organization, tremendous venues. The Olympic flame being lit by a guy who carried it down the ski-jump slope. Outstanding across the board.

Nagano, 1998. My first time in Japan. The very long bus ride from Narita, the big new airport outside Tokyo. Absolutely no recollection of where I stayed, which is odd.

The first Winter with the NHL guys playing, which was a big deal; Michelle Kwan, who was local, for me, not quite winning the women’s figure skating. (Tara Lipinski snagged the gold.)

Not knowing about the snow monkeys, and being convinced it was something like a “snipe hunt” … and never going to see the monkeys who do, in fact, live in the snow, or at least the hot volcanic waters out in the woods. The Buddhist temple where good luck was assured if I rubbed some portion of a statue and made a donation.

The event seemed a little reserved, a little too embarrassed to have fun, and fun, it was not.

Salt Lake, 2002. A bit weird. 9/11 had happened just a few months before, and the venues were like armed camps. Security was very tight, and lots of guys with automatic weapons were always in view.

Lots of relentlessly cheerful (and mostly Mormon) volunteers. Taking the ride up to Park City to see the luge. Spending a lot of time at the speed-skating venue, in a nearby suburb, where a local guy, Derek Parra, won a gold and a silver, the culmination of his long quest to win an Olympic medal, which had begun a decade earlier when he was sure that roller-skating would become a Summer Games event.

Opening Ceremonies at the University of Utah football stadium, where I was in the second-to-last row, and we were freezing (a recurring them for a Californian at a winter event), and a couple of us came out of the stadium early to watch the rest of the event from the warm press center. Staying in a hotel room with a hot tub, which I never used.

I have a positive memory of this. Mostly good venues, organization fairly solid, the security thing being less oppressive as we went along. Oh, and having a McDonald’s McFlurry nearly every day of the Games. Pretty sure I haven’t had one since.

Turin, 2006. Another dreary one. Like Albertville, in the sense that the city was soggy and gray and cheerless, but things apparently were more fun up in the mountains. My colleague was right up on the border of Italy and France, and he slept in Italy and got his laundry done in France.

Michelle Kwan dropping out of the competition with an injury, the American woman, Lindsey Jacobellis, who fell while hotdogging at the end of the snowboard-cross, costing her a gold medal; the media center being the former Fiat production plant.

Also, the first Olympics in which every newspaper reporter posted everything immediately, so as to get it on line.

Not a great Olympics. Italy is fun; Turin was not.