Note: Since the Olympic Schedule begins with Day 1 the day after the Opening Ceremonies so we have two Day 0. Sorry for the confusion.
When we arrived at the gate for our flight to Rio de Janeiro, we discover that the Team USA Gymnastics team is traveling with us. We see Simone Biles, who is very likely to win at least one gold medal, Madison Kocian and mens' team member Sam Mikulak, but it is likely that there were others that we didn't see or recognize. That they are all on our flight makes a certain amount of sense because women's team director Martha Karolyi's ranch is located in Huntsville, TX - about 30 miles north of Houston. All of the people waiting to board broke into applause when they, and their families were allowed to board before anyone else. But they were only a small fraction of the number of athletes on this flight. We saw other people wearing the team uniforms of Canada, Germany and Egypt to name only a few. Additionally there were countless other support people. For example, the guy sitting directly in front of me was a french guy who is the synchronized swimming choreographer for the Czech Republic team.
Once on the plane, we noticed that everyone got a little Team USA swag since United Airlines is a longtime Team USA sponsor. We got Olympic eyeshades and red, white and blue socks to wear on the flight. Pretty cool, but I would have traded it in a second for a couple extra inches of legroom. I amused Beth and Sean by managing to take off my shoes and put on the socks without leaving my seat - a lot like trying to change clothes in a phonebook (note to our younger readers - a phone booth was a small room with a pay telephone! The flight itself was pretty long, about 10 hours 15 minutes. We flew more or less easterly passing over the end of Florida and the Dominican Republic before entering South American airspace over Venezuela. I can't say that we saw much out the window because we were trying hard to look at the insides of our eyelids. I was fairly successful in getting some sleep despite the lack of legroom, but Beth and Sean ended up spending a lot of the evening playing games on the seatbacks in front of them.
Everything was going smoothly as we got off the plane and started the long walk to passport control until we ran into this:
It took us quite a long time to figure out what was going on. We discovered that there were three guys at the end of the line who were collecting fingerprints for everyone coming from planes. Once we finally got to that point, we passed through passport control with no problem - I even managed to give away my first pin to one of the supervisors. Once we picked up our bags from the carosel, we had to put them through X-ray machines before going through customs. The operator backed up and re-scanned my suitcase and backpack which combined had at least 1,000 Olympic pins. She let us go without a bag search, but at least she was paying attention.
We walked out of customs and expected to see someone from Kingdom Sports Group holding a sign with our name on it. Unfortunately, there was no one there. One of the Olympic volunteers was able to find us a taxi, or a guy who was willing to take us to Ipanema. It was not clear to us that he was a taxi because there was no meter or sign on the roof of his car. Our driver was probably around 70 years old and was quite friendly. Unfortunately, he spoke no English and the only Portuguese words we currently know are Ola (hello) and Obrigado (thank you). But based on the road signs, he took us in a pretty direct route to the hotel.
Along the way, we see a car that has been pulled over by a military truck and there were at least 4 soldiers pointing assault rifles at the car. They are certainly serious about security. From what we can see from the car, the coastline around Rio is the only flat ground. There are serious looking hills and mountains quite close by. The area near the airport looks a lot like a third world business area - lots of factories and apartment blocks packed in next to each other. Up ahead, we see a tall mountain and on the top is the Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) - an huge art deco statue and voted one of the new 7 wonders of the world. We hope to get up to the top later in our stay.
We enter a huge tunnel under the Cristo statue's mountain. About halfway through the tunnel, we are passed by four motorcycle police who are going really fast somewhere. More indication that Brazil is really taking Olympic security seriously. When we come out on the other side of the tunnel, it was like stepping into a new world. Here there are parks and lots of people walking around. We see what has to be the rowing venue off to the right and signs to other Olympic venues ahead.
After a few more turns, we arrive at the Hotel Vermont in Ipanema. I'll try to figure out whether the hotel is named after the US state in New England or green mountain in French. Kingdom Sports Group provides hotels and Olympic tickets for a lot of African countries so we are not surprised to see a bunch of African looking people in the lobby when we arrive. Maybe they have pins, but for now, I'm only interested in washing my face and brushing my teeth. We head to the elevator for a ride to our room on the 6th floor. The elevator says that it can hold 5 people, but only if they are very friendly. Just the 3 of us feels a little claustrophobic. We are on the 6th floor (out of 10). This is a very skinny hotel - perhaps two rooms wide and much deeper. There are only 6 rooms on each floor with two elevators and a spiral shaped staircase.
Although we all would like to take a nap, we convince each other that it would be better for us to acclimate to the time zone by getting exposed to the sun and staying up as long as possible. We find a fast food place that has English menus, but no English speaking waiters. Fortunately, a friendly diner helps us to make sure that they take credit cards and we sit down to lunch. Beth had a tapioca pancake with butter, Sean is looking pretty wrecked and decides to have only an açai smoothie (açai is a dark purple berry from the Amazon that Sean says tastes a little like a boisonberry with a different aftertaste). I have a salmon, cream cheese and arrugula sandwich. It is all great!
Next stop is to buy tickets for the Metro subway that will take us to the main Olympic Park in Barra da Tijuca tomorrow morning. Beth has figured out that there is a Metro station nearby so we head off. We find the station and stand in line to get three 7 day passes. While we are standing, we are helped by a volunteer who speaks quite good English. He tells us that the vending machines only take debit cards and we left those at home so we have to stand in another line to pay cash. From what we've seen so far, it does not appear that the Brazilians mind standing in line. Mission accomplished, we head out of the station. Overhead, we can see the frigate birds (huge tropical birds that keep themselves fed by stealing food from other birds) circling. This convinces me that we should take a quick 3 block detour and check out Ipanema beach before heading back to the hotel. Even though it is winter here, the beach is busy. Here is a view:
It doesn't look very busy, but that is because this beach is miles and miles long. As you can tell from the woman just to left of center, the Brazilian people are not body-conscious. In fact, in a few minutes, we see people of all shapes, colors, ages and sizes wearing skimpy bathing suits. But we are pretty pale body-conscious people so we decide to head back to the hotel and get out of the sun.
We take a quick nap and I work on my illegal pin project for a while before heading out for dinner. We decide to dine at what is called a kilo restaurant. It is a buffet where you pay based on the amount of food you take. When Sean has gone to soft-serve ice cream places like this, he has usually found that his cost is higher than he would like. But we are all fairly conservative, even though there are a wide variety of foods we've never tried and the total cost worked out to less than $20/person including desert.
By this time, we are all seriously fading, but we want to watch at least part of the Opening Ceremonies. My favorite part is at the beginning. This is where the host country gets to tell the world what the host country things they should know about them. It is always interesting to see what they choose. We really liked the parts with the Amazonian people living with nature and their spin on Portuguese colonization in helping to build the modern Brazil. I also liked the emphasis on global warming and the need to save the world. I will be interested to see how this plays in the US, but it should have been a clear message to the US that the rest of the world considers this a major problem. I thought that having each of the athletes plant a seed to produce an Olympian forest was a nice touch.
We did not make it through the parade of nations, but I stayed up long enough to see a friend of mine, Chris Spalding, march into the arena with the team from Guam. Chris is a physiotherapist who has been donating his services to mostly Pacific island nations for the last 20 years or so.
As I write this, I'm already at the end of Day 1 (Aug 6th) and falling behind as usual. I'll do my best to keep up with the action, but I hope that you'll enjoy it even if the information is a little dated. Stay tuned!
Steps for the day - 7,302
We walked out of customs and expected to see someone from Kingdom Sports Group holding a sign with our name on it. Unfortunately, there was no one there. One of the Olympic volunteers was able to find us a taxi, or a guy who was willing to take us to Ipanema. It was not clear to us that he was a taxi because there was no meter or sign on the roof of his car. Our driver was probably around 70 years old and was quite friendly. Unfortunately, he spoke no English and the only Portuguese words we currently know are Ola (hello) and Obrigado (thank you). But based on the road signs, he took us in a pretty direct route to the hotel.
Along the way, we see a car that has been pulled over by a military truck and there were at least 4 soldiers pointing assault rifles at the car. They are certainly serious about security. From what we can see from the car, the coastline around Rio is the only flat ground. There are serious looking hills and mountains quite close by. The area near the airport looks a lot like a third world business area - lots of factories and apartment blocks packed in next to each other. Up ahead, we see a tall mountain and on the top is the Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) - an huge art deco statue and voted one of the new 7 wonders of the world. We hope to get up to the top later in our stay.
We enter a huge tunnel under the Cristo statue's mountain. About halfway through the tunnel, we are passed by four motorcycle police who are going really fast somewhere. More indication that Brazil is really taking Olympic security seriously. When we come out on the other side of the tunnel, it was like stepping into a new world. Here there are parks and lots of people walking around. We see what has to be the rowing venue off to the right and signs to other Olympic venues ahead.
After a few more turns, we arrive at the Hotel Vermont in Ipanema. I'll try to figure out whether the hotel is named after the US state in New England or green mountain in French. Kingdom Sports Group provides hotels and Olympic tickets for a lot of African countries so we are not surprised to see a bunch of African looking people in the lobby when we arrive. Maybe they have pins, but for now, I'm only interested in washing my face and brushing my teeth. We head to the elevator for a ride to our room on the 6th floor. The elevator says that it can hold 5 people, but only if they are very friendly. Just the 3 of us feels a little claustrophobic. We are on the 6th floor (out of 10). This is a very skinny hotel - perhaps two rooms wide and much deeper. There are only 6 rooms on each floor with two elevators and a spiral shaped staircase.
Although we all would like to take a nap, we convince each other that it would be better for us to acclimate to the time zone by getting exposed to the sun and staying up as long as possible. We find a fast food place that has English menus, but no English speaking waiters. Fortunately, a friendly diner helps us to make sure that they take credit cards and we sit down to lunch. Beth had a tapioca pancake with butter, Sean is looking pretty wrecked and decides to have only an açai smoothie (açai is a dark purple berry from the Amazon that Sean says tastes a little like a boisonberry with a different aftertaste). I have a salmon, cream cheese and arrugula sandwich. It is all great!
Next stop is to buy tickets for the Metro subway that will take us to the main Olympic Park in Barra da Tijuca tomorrow morning. Beth has figured out that there is a Metro station nearby so we head off. We find the station and stand in line to get three 7 day passes. While we are standing, we are helped by a volunteer who speaks quite good English. He tells us that the vending machines only take debit cards and we left those at home so we have to stand in another line to pay cash. From what we've seen so far, it does not appear that the Brazilians mind standing in line. Mission accomplished, we head out of the station. Overhead, we can see the frigate birds (huge tropical birds that keep themselves fed by stealing food from other birds) circling. This convinces me that we should take a quick 3 block detour and check out Ipanema beach before heading back to the hotel. Even though it is winter here, the beach is busy. Here is a view:
It doesn't look very busy, but that is because this beach is miles and miles long. As you can tell from the woman just to left of center, the Brazilian people are not body-conscious. In fact, in a few minutes, we see people of all shapes, colors, ages and sizes wearing skimpy bathing suits. But we are pretty pale body-conscious people so we decide to head back to the hotel and get out of the sun.
We take a quick nap and I work on my illegal pin project for a while before heading out for dinner. We decide to dine at what is called a kilo restaurant. It is a buffet where you pay based on the amount of food you take. When Sean has gone to soft-serve ice cream places like this, he has usually found that his cost is higher than he would like. But we are all fairly conservative, even though there are a wide variety of foods we've never tried and the total cost worked out to less than $20/person including desert.
By this time, we are all seriously fading, but we want to watch at least part of the Opening Ceremonies. My favorite part is at the beginning. This is where the host country gets to tell the world what the host country things they should know about them. It is always interesting to see what they choose. We really liked the parts with the Amazonian people living with nature and their spin on Portuguese colonization in helping to build the modern Brazil. I also liked the emphasis on global warming and the need to save the world. I will be interested to see how this plays in the US, but it should have been a clear message to the US that the rest of the world considers this a major problem. I thought that having each of the athletes plant a seed to produce an Olympian forest was a nice touch.
We did not make it through the parade of nations, but I stayed up long enough to see a friend of mine, Chris Spalding, march into the arena with the team from Guam. Chris is a physiotherapist who has been donating his services to mostly Pacific island nations for the last 20 years or so.
As I write this, I'm already at the end of Day 1 (Aug 6th) and falling behind as usual. I'll do my best to keep up with the action, but I hope that you'll enjoy it even if the information is a little dated. Stay tuned!
Steps for the day - 7,302
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