Vancouver is an amazing city and luckily, growing up in the Seattle area, I was able to immerse myself into the culture at a young age, traveling back and forth across the border for skating competitions as a youngster.

It is not up to me whether I win or lose. Ultimately, this might not be my day. And it is that philosophy towards sports, something that I really truly live by. I am emotional. I want to win. I am hungry. I am a competitor. I have that fire. But deep down, I truly enjoy the art of competing so much more than the result.

I wanted to play football or be a boxer, but my dad didn't want that because of all the impact. But in 1992 I was watching short track, and it was obscure, but they looked like superheroes in their tight outfits, and I thought it was amazing. I wanted to do that. I made the national team at 14.

I have a scar on my left thigh, kind of almost near my knee. I essentially fell in the 2002 Olympics and when I hit the wall - because of the impact - my right leg kind of came in at like a knife-type angle and stabbed my leg with my own skate blade.

I've always thought photography was a bit of an adventure, so to come home with the film, develop it, then look at the results has more of a sense of excitement.

I'm a book guy first, and my education came from two encyclopedias. One was an encyclopedia of health, so I became morbidly obsessed with anatomy, and I thought I had trichinosis, an aneurism, jaundice! And then an encyclopedia of art.

In regards to core training, I try to incorporate the medicine ball whenever possible. As a baseball player, there is a lot of twisting and turning that I will do. Keeping my abs strong is as important as anything else.

Remove the predators, and the whole ecosystem begins to crash like a house of cards. As the sharks disappear, the predator-prey balance dramatically shifts, and the health of our oceans declines.