While the main reason I decided to take the long shot stab of winning a trip to the Vancouver Olympics was to help out a good cause, I must admit that the thought of escaping Hello kitty Hell for a couple of weeks also made it worth the effort. When I asked my wife to help, she agreed to give away a few of her things with the stipulation that if I did win, I had to pick up Hello Kitty crap that I found in Vancouver.

Apparently, Vancouver is the Hello Kitty crap capital of Canada from the emails and comments I’ve been receiving telling me about where I can do all kinds of great Hello Kitty shopping. I know this may come as a shock to some of you because you have obviously completely misunderstood the title of this blog, but what I really need is advice on how I can avoid seeing any Hello Kitty crap if I am fortunate enough to make it to Vancouver — not where I can find it. Just saying…

This next contest is for a Hello Kitty bento making set. Believe me, if you ever want to thoroughly embarrass somebody in front of their friends (and have their friends crack jokes about what they are having for lunch for the rest of their career), use this baby to pack a lunch for that person (unfortunately, I know this all too well from personal experience):

The Olympic contest is to help support and spread the word about lesser known athletes participating in the Olympics games. I’ve decided to participate by helping get the word out to people by creating Facebook fan pages.

We’re going to step this one up a notch and give five easy ways to enter this contest instead of just one:

1. Become a Facebook fan of Robel Teklemariam who is the lone athlete from Ethiopia participating in the Vancouver Olympics.

2. Write a message of encouragement to Robel Teklemariam either as a comment to one of the posts on facebook or on the wall. The message should be 10+ words in length (let him know you really care).

3. Write a message of encouragement to Clyde Getty either as a comment to one of the posts on facebook or on the wall. The message should be 10+ words in length (let him know you really care).

4. Write a message of encouragement to Tugba Karademir either as a comment to one of the posts on facebook or on the wall. The message should be 10+ words in length (let her know you really care).

5. Follow The Olympic Dream on twitter.

You can enter once or up to five times – whatever number of the above you want to do. For each of the above you do, leave a comment letting me know which one you have completed (so you can have up to 5 comments for this post) and each comment will be an entry into the giveaway. I will have a random number generated for the comments that qualify which are left below. The person’s comment that matches the number will receive the Hello Kitty bento making set.

The contest starts now and will end at 11:59 pm eastern (10:59 pm central, 9:59 pm mountain and 8:59 pm pacific) on Thurs January 28th. Open to anyone living anywhere in the world.

Update: There were 206 entries in this contest and the random came out as #66. Congratulations to Joy for winning and thanks to all for the comments that you left. Several of the athletes have commented how much the support means to them.