Cupertino to Newry, Northern Ireland (Olympic Days 1-2)

Our Olympic journey begins today! We catch a late afternoon flight from San Francisco to London (Heathrow) and then connect to a flight to Dublin. From Dublin, we take what is surely the most expensive rental car ever (>US$600 for just 3 days) north to Newry in Northern Ireland.

We woke up at 2:30am local time to begin compensating for the 8 hour time difference between California and Greenwich Mean Time. The added bonus was that we had time to pack since there hadn't been enough time to do that this week.

Speaking of packing, one of the things that we've included in past journals is a list of all of the electronic gear that we are hauling along. Between the three of us, we have:

1 iPad with wireless keyboard

2 Kindle e-readers

3 iPhones

2 iPod

Did I mention that I could hit Apple's world headquarters from my front porch with a brassie? ;-)

Packing was tricky because of the expected weather. Over the past three weeks in the United Kingdom, we've seen temperatures as low as 8-10C (46-50F) and as high as 26-28C (79-82F) with pouring rain our bright sunshine. An added challenge is to make sure that all of the bags weight less than 23kg (50 lbs) so that we don't pay extra for heavy bags. Remember that I have to put all of these Olympic pins somewhere. We decide to bring a bunch of fairly light clothes that can be layered as necessary. Sean, who has been growing like a weed for the past 6 months, discovered that he no longer had any pants that he fit into. Gee, maybe this is why his Mom asked him to try on his clothes last week. His response was "I'll just wear shorts". Beth and I immediately get the mental image of Sean walking around in a cold, driving rain in his shorts. Our guess was that Sean probably wouldn't think that this was such a good idea at that point. So, off to the store Beth and Sean go to correct this problem - good thing we don't get picked up by the airport shuttle until 12:30pm. Finally, we manage to move our stuff around to keep all of the bags under the limit.

Then it was time to sit down and watch the Opening Ceremonies. As always, we enjoyed it very much. Here are some of our favorite moments:

The boys choir singing England's Green and Pleasant Land - I've like this song since I heard it played by Emerson, Lake and Palmer a long, long time ago.

I am sure that the Queen skydiving with James Bond will be the one moment that everyone remembers from this Opening Ceremonies. It was certainly NBC's favorite moment. I liked this too - it showed that Elizabeth has a sense of humor while her later official opening of the Games was quite terse.

I also liked the Doves on bikes segment. Long time Olympic fans will remember that the organizers always use to launch the "Doves of Peace" at the end of the Opening Ceremonies. But as TV quality got better, viewers were able to see some of the doves getting cooked by the newly lit Olympic cauldron. Since then, organizers have tried dove-shaped balloons, but this was much better.

At about the same time, there was an excellent cover of the Beatles song "Come Together" by the band Arctic Monkeys.

This was easily the fastest parade of nations that I've seen since the Olympics expanded to their current size. I had heard that most of the coaches and officials were being excluded to speed things up, but I saw plenty of these people and things still moved along rapidly. Maybe it was the up-tempo music?!

As always, I liked all of the interesting uniforms, from the Bermuda shorts to the flowing robes of some of the Arab nations to the bright colors of the African nations. My award for the most unusual outfits went to the members of the Czech Republic who came into the Olympic stadium wearing shorts and bright blue boots.

I really liked the symbolism of planting the flags of the nations on the hill representing Glastonbury Tor (Tor is a Celtic word meaning hill or rock outcropping).  

Leading up to the Opening Ceremonies, there was a lot of talk about whether US flag bearer, two-time gold medal winning fencer Mariel Zagunis, would dip the flag to the Queen. Ralph Rose, the flag bearer in the 1908 Games in London refused to dip the flag to the King. There is a lot of mythology about this, but the most likely answer is that many of the American athletes had Irish roots and in this Games, Irish athletes were forced to compete for England. Then there were a couple of Olympics where the US did dip the flag, then beginning with the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, they have not dipped the flag. Interestingly, NBC did not mention the talk about whether Mariel would dip the flag and in fact, did not have the cameras on the US team when they got around to the part of the stadium where the Queen was seated. It was only this morning that I read a story saying that the US Olympic committee had instructed Mariel not to dip the flag.

The one moment that really choked me up was when the Amsterdam flag was brought into the stadium (it is called the Amsterdam flag because it was first used at the 1928 Amsterdam Games). The flag bearers were all stellar people including the Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, Conductor Daniel Barenboim and Noble Prize winner Leymah Gbowee. Just before they got to the ramp leading to the flagpole, they stopped. Suddenly, former boxer and icon Mohammad Ali gets up. He has already had one major Olympic moment lighting the torch at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games when he was already suffering from Parkinson's disease. Now he has another as his wife helped him reach out and touch the flag as it went by.

We expected some sort of nod to English humor so it was no surprise when the actor who plays Mr. Bean showed up in the orchestra during a bit about Chariots of Fire, a great movie about some of the athletes of the British Olympic team during the 1924 Olympics. I have sort of a love/hate relationship here - I find a lot of it initially really funny, but they tend to run the skits so long that it is nearly painful by the end. But I enjoyed this one.

I also enjoyed the way that football star David Beckham brought the Olympic torch to the stadium in a speedboat. While the torch has been carried by almost every method of transportation imaginable during the torch relay that has preceded the Opening Ceremonies at every Olympics since 1936, this is the first time that I can remember that one of these alternative methods was used to get the torch to the Olympic stadium.

We all enjoyed the musical segment although I must admit that I had never heard of any of the bands after the 1990's. It was nice that the organizers gave a nod to The Beatles with the live performance by Sir Paul McCartney. When he started singing "Hey Jude", I thought "Man, his voice is totally shot", but then I thought he just totally choked up with the magnitude of what was happening and it took him a few minutes to regain his composure. On the other hand, the local talk radio the next day also decided that his voice was shot.

Finally, I thought that the way that they lit the cauldron (and in fact constructed the cauldron) was brilliant. First, I thought that giving the honor of having the kids representing the future of sport light the torch in front of most of the living British Olympic medal winners was a great idea and got around the problem of who to choose to light the torch. I also thought that the way that the individual Copper bowls merged into the Olympic cauldron showed great imagination. I had seen a volunteer marching into the stadium with each team carrying one of these large Copper bowls, but had no idea what they were for. But when I saw them all laid out when the kids lit their torches, I knew what was going to happen - and it was beautiful. In the end, after all the talk about how London would never live up to the Opening Ceremonies put on by the Chinese four years ago, they produced an entertaining and uniquely British Opening Ceremony that people will remember for a long time.

Now on to the business of getting to Europe for the Games. Our shuttle bus came right on time for a really bumpy trip to the airport. We even got there soon enough that we could upgrade our seats to Economy Plus, which provided more legroom that Sean and I could really use. Going through security was the usual adventure when carrying hundreds of Olympic pins. I laughed and told the TSA agents that I would have been shocked if they had not asked to search through my pin bag.

The flight itself was pretty uneventful except for where a 3-year old girl completely melted down when told it was time to go to bed and screamed at the top of her lungs for nearly an hour. Our strategy of getting up at 2:30am seemed to work reasonably well as we were all tired when we got on the plane and were able to get some sleep.

Olympic security was certainly in evidence as our plane was met by a security guy in a flak jacket with machine gun. Since we were getting on another plane to Dublin, Ireland, we were directed into a warren of passageways that were intended to get us to our connecting flight. There are five terminals at Heathrow airport and unfortunately, we were directed by a helpful volunteer to the wrong terminal. This would not have been a big problem except that we had to go through security again - and that meant another search through my pin bag. By the time that they went through all of the pockets in the bag and checked for either drugs or explosive residue (not sure which), we were starting to be concerned that we would miss our connection. Finally, we were directed toward the correct terminal (which involved a bus ride through the bowels of several terminals). From the terminal entrance, we went up a level where we got to go through something called biometric security where you look into a camera and a technician records your image. Then back down a level and into another walk through security (and pin bag check) yet again. Then we went through another biometric checkpoint where they make sure that the person holding the boarding pass still looks like the person who had the boarding pass when they first recorded the picture. By this time, we were very secure and getting a little late to board our plane. We looked at the departure board and were greeted by a message saying "Wait at Gate 8". Hmm, gate 8 turned out to be gates 8a, 8b, 8c, 8d and 8e; none of which were boarding our flight. After sitting there until after the plane was supposed to have begun boarding, our gate was changed to 7, where we waited some more. Eventually, we were told that an engineer was on board making repairs (something no one wants to hear when getting on a plane) and that we would be told something when they had a departure time. After about an hour, we were told that we would be boarding - and were directed down a staircase onto a bus. The bus took us out onto the runway to what looked like an airplane parking lot. I guess this is how the airport deals with having more planes than they have available gates. This particular British Airways flight had a special paint job for the Olympics that we thought was designed to look like a dove.

The flight was only about a hour, most of which I spent looking at the inside of my eyelids. We got our bags and went to Hertz to get our car. There was a problem - we think it was because we were going to drop the car in Belfast, Northern Ireland rather than bring it back to Dublin.  After a while on the phone, the agent told us to walk across to the car park, walk all the way to the left and a man would be waiting for us with the car. We found the location and waited...and waited. Finally a guy brings a dripping wet car. He leaves and we realize that the car did not include the GPS direction system we paid for - and we got the key stuck in the ignition and could not get it out. Back to the rental counter. He gave us a GPS system and told us to wiggle the steering wheel and it would come out. Back to the car and off we went.

Driving on the "wrong" side of the road hasn't gotten any less nerve-wracking than the last time I did it in New Zealand in 1995. I remembered not to get a car with a manual transmission - I can drive a car with a stick, but not with the opposite hand! But I have a lot of trouble figuring out where left side of our car is - I'm constantly going off the left side of the road. Then there are the traffic circles. Like the ones in Massachusetts that I grew up with, the cars in the circle have right-of-way. Unlike those, the cars are going clockwise. I also can't figure out what the speed limit is. I thought it was 100 km/hr (62 miles/hr), but cars were flying past me in the fast lane. Even at 120 km/hr (~75 miles/hr), most cars are passing us. Oh well, I'm happy to putter along in the slow lane as long as no one is sitting on my bumper.

As we drive, we start to understand the Irish weather. We had been following the weekly weather in Newry and it looked like it was raining an average of six out of every seven days. I was picturing weather something like Seattle with weeks and weeks of gloom when it rains, it lasts for days. But it quickly becomes clear that this is not what happens in Ireland. We go through three or four cloudbursts followed shortly by sunshine. So, if you don't like the weather, just wait.

The most interesting thing to happen was when we crossed over the border from the Republic of Ireland into Northern Ireland (one of the four parts of the United Kingdom with Scotland, Wales and England). We expected a customs checkpoint or some huge sign saying "Now Entering Northern Ireland". No, the only indication that we had left Ireland was a small sign that said "Distances now shown in Miles". Hmm, I thought that the United Kingdom went metric some years ago??

Despite the driving difficulties, we make good time. It takes us only a little over one hour to get to Newry. Our GPS system cannot seem to deal with a street address with no street number. Fortunately, my mother sent driving directions after she arrived in Newry and those worked fine.

We walk into the lobby of the Canal Court Hotel and hold the door for a guy coming in behind us. I am wearing a hat I bought in Sydney that is covered with Olympic team pins. After I check in, the guy following us in asks if I am Steve Robie. It turns out that this is Walter Malcomson, who owns the bed and breakfast. He has been sent to find us and guide us back to the B&B to pick up Mom for our trip to dinner.

We quickly change clothes then head back out and meet Walter who is sitting in the hotel restaurant drinking coffee. The B&B is pretty easy to get to except for making a righthand turn across the A1 motorway - the  main route between Dublin and Belfast. We greet my mother (it has been 2 years since we have seen her) and her friends Dick Thompson and his wife Jane and Dick's son Steve and his wife as well as Walter's wife Joan then head out for our first experience driving in the country.

The first thing that happened was that I missed a turn I was supposed to take and my mom said, no worries, we can take the next right. We take the right and keep driving and driving. Things are not looking familiar to my Mom who has been over this route many times. We look at the GPS system and it shows us in the middle of a large blank area with no roads (including the one that I am trying hard to stay on). Finally, we reverse course, go back to the correct turn and eventually make it to our destination, the home of Mom's friend Mourna Crozier called Lisnacreevy House. Mourna and her late husband rescued this abandoned estate many years ago and have been restoring the house and rest of the property ever since. It actually gave us a fair idea of what one of the estates would have been like during the time of the Great Famine.

Mourna knew about my Olympic obsession so she wanted to know what we thought of the Opening Ceremonies. We told her that we enjoyed it very much and she agreed - saying that she stayed up to watch until it ended after 1am.

Mourna's son Matthew gave us a tour of some of the outbuildings and then we sat down to an excellent meal. Conversation was wide-ranging including topics like Irish anthropology and the poor state of American politics. But by the end of the evening, Beth and I were having definite difficulty staying awake. I didn't want to try Braille driving so we said our goodbyes (I gave Mourna one of my US Olympic team pins) and then headed back to Newry for the evening. It has been a great, but very long day.