Welcome to the blog of our trip to the Games of the XXXI Olympiad in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - the first Olympics to be held in South America and our 12th trip to the Olympics!
Zika and Pollution and Crime oh my (sung to the "Wizard of Oz" song Lions and Tigers and Bears oh my!)! It has become a tradition for the press to pile up negative articles about an upcoming Olympic Games and Rio 2016 is certainly no exception. And to be honest, Rio does have more than it's fair share of problems, including government instability, economic collapse, crime, enormous income inequality, infectious diseases, threatened ISIS terror attacks and rampant corruption. But it also has tremendous natural beauty and a population that loves to party and is passionate about sports. It is my hope that by the end of the next three weeks, the later will far outweigh the former. Mark Purdy, the sports columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, in his last column before leaving for Rio (his 14th Olympics) said: "The Olympic Games generally succeed because, despite all the other stuff going on in the world as well as the issues that can plague the games themselves, the vast majority of humanity wants it all to succeed." I completely agree.
But we are not going into this adventure wearing rose-colored glasses. Despite a drop in the number of cases of Zika in Rio state from 3,000-3,500 cases/week early this year to 30 cases/week in June and Beth and I being well past reproductive age, we'll be wearing long pants and long sleeve shirts every day as well as applying DEET to all exposed skin. Sean, at the time of this writing, is still weighing the cost of the discomfort of wearing long clothes when he would rather wear shorts and a t-shirt versus the estimated 15 in 6+ million chance of contracting Zika. We're also going to keep our pockets empty and put our valuables (money, tickets, passports, etc.) in pouches hung around our necks with cut-proof wires. We are also going to leave our jewelry and iWatches at home and try to appear as anonymous as possible - or at least as anonymous as anyone can be when standing 6 foot 4 and wearing a vest and hat covered with hundreds of Olympic pins. Can we still find ourselves in the wrong place at the wrong time? Sure, but we know that we've done what we could to minimize our risks.
As in previous blogs, we are not sure about the availability or quality of Wi-Fi in Rio so I'll try to give you an overview of our first couple of days there. We've got a flight at around noon tomorrow (August 4th) from San Jose to Houston. There, we have about a 3-hour layover before getting on a red-eye to Rio de Janeiro. We arrive in Rio around 9am on Friday, August 5th - the morning before the Opening Ceremonies and will be staying at the hotel Vermont (http://www.hotelvermont.com.br/) a couple blocks from Ipanema beach (as in the song "The Girl from Ipanema"). There is a quite long story explaining how we ended up in this hotel, but I'll save that for another day.
Until tomorrow (or whenever I get internet access), stay tuned!
Zika and Pollution and Crime oh my (sung to the "Wizard of Oz" song Lions and Tigers and Bears oh my!)! It has become a tradition for the press to pile up negative articles about an upcoming Olympic Games and Rio 2016 is certainly no exception. And to be honest, Rio does have more than it's fair share of problems, including government instability, economic collapse, crime, enormous income inequality, infectious diseases, threatened ISIS terror attacks and rampant corruption. But it also has tremendous natural beauty and a population that loves to party and is passionate about sports. It is my hope that by the end of the next three weeks, the later will far outweigh the former. Mark Purdy, the sports columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, in his last column before leaving for Rio (his 14th Olympics) said: "The Olympic Games generally succeed because, despite all the other stuff going on in the world as well as the issues that can plague the games themselves, the vast majority of humanity wants it all to succeed." I completely agree.
But we are not going into this adventure wearing rose-colored glasses. Despite a drop in the number of cases of Zika in Rio state from 3,000-3,500 cases/week early this year to 30 cases/week in June and Beth and I being well past reproductive age, we'll be wearing long pants and long sleeve shirts every day as well as applying DEET to all exposed skin. Sean, at the time of this writing, is still weighing the cost of the discomfort of wearing long clothes when he would rather wear shorts and a t-shirt versus the estimated 15 in 6+ million chance of contracting Zika. We're also going to keep our pockets empty and put our valuables (money, tickets, passports, etc.) in pouches hung around our necks with cut-proof wires. We are also going to leave our jewelry and iWatches at home and try to appear as anonymous as possible - or at least as anonymous as anyone can be when standing 6 foot 4 and wearing a vest and hat covered with hundreds of Olympic pins. Can we still find ourselves in the wrong place at the wrong time? Sure, but we know that we've done what we could to minimize our risks.
As in previous blogs, we are not sure about the availability or quality of Wi-Fi in Rio so I'll try to give you an overview of our first couple of days there. We've got a flight at around noon tomorrow (August 4th) from San Jose to Houston. There, we have about a 3-hour layover before getting on a red-eye to Rio de Janeiro. We arrive in Rio around 9am on Friday, August 5th - the morning before the Opening Ceremonies and will be staying at the hotel Vermont (http://www.hotelvermont.com.br/) a couple blocks from Ipanema beach (as in the song "The Girl from Ipanema"). There is a quite long story explaining how we ended up in this hotel, but I'll save that for another day.
Until tomorrow (or whenever I get internet access), stay tuned!
Bon voyage, Robies!
ReplyDeleteHave a good Olympics.
ReplyDelete