Rio 2016 - Day 7 (August 12)

Today (well about two months ago today!), we are on our way to our one premium Olympic event - Track & Field,  also known by its Olympic name: Athletics. This will be the third day in a row where we've taken the same route to a different venue: Metro from General Osório to Central then the Santa Cruz train to the De Dentro station and then a short walk to the stadium.

This is the first day of Athletics and we expected a big crowd; instead, this is what what we see:

We're not sure why - maybe it is the Brazilian aversion to mornings, the light rain that is falling, or the facts that this session has only one final: the women's 10 km and no Brazilians are expected to figure prominently in the results. Our seats are located on the end of the stadium away from the finish line for most of the events. But that's okay as there is plenty to see. We are just under the end of the roof and the breeze is toward us so we are getting a little damp. Most of the seats around us are empty as people move further back under the roof. 

At the far end of the stadium the session begins with qualifying for the men's discus. This is broken up into two groups A and B. Group A are the athletes with the longest throws in the current season and they go first. Here is Gerd Kanter from Estonia making a throw:

Each of these rather large humans (Gerd is 1.95 m[6'5"], 125 kg [276 lbs]) gets three tries to reach the qualifying distance of 65.5 m (214'11"). They throw from inside a huge cage. This is to protect the spectators in case someone lets go either too soon or too late, although this is much more of a risk during the hammer throw. It is really hard for us to follow who is throwing and what the results are because an official with a GPS-on-a-stick has to run out, find the place where the discus hits and record the distance. Usually the distance is displayed while someone else is throwing. But occasionally, one of the stadium scoreboards lists the current best throws. We notice Polish athlete Piotr Malachowski throws 65.89 m and Austrian Lukas Weisshiadinger throws 65.86 m, both on their second throws. At that point, they are done for the day because they've qualified for the finals. Everyone else stays for all three throws to try to qualify for one of the other 10 spots in the finals.

In the meantime, a bunch of women walk out onto the track to our right where high hurdles are set up:

Sean takes one look at Uzbekistan's Ekaterina Voronina and exclaims "she's got better abs than I have!". These very fit young women are competitors in the heptathlon and are here to compete in the first of seven events held over a two-day period: the 100 m high hurdles. They will also compete in the high jump later in this session. While these athletes are theoretically competing against each other, they are really competing against the clock (or ruler). The faster (or further) they go, the more points they get. Voronina finishes last in the first heat in a time of 15.21 seconds. This is good for 814 points. The top athletes in heptathlon want to get at least 1000 points per event so the first place finisher in this heat, Gyorgyi Zsivoczky-Farkas from Hungary, is quite happy with her time of 13.79 seconds good for 1008 points.

It is common at the Olympics to see some of the athletes wearing one or more pieces of kinesio tape used to support injuries or weak areas. Grit Sadeiko from Estonia comes out to warm up for the second heat with four pieces of kinesio tape on her lower back, one on her left leg and a larger wrap above her left knee. Uh oh, this looks like a train wreck about to happen! But it is understandable; the Olympics are only once every four years so even if you are banged up and might have skipped a lesser competition, the tendency is to tape yourself up and go out and try to compete. Two hurdles into her heat, Grit pulls up with what looks like a blown hamstring:

This is too bad. But it says something about the will of these athletes that they go out there and try to compete when their bodies are saying no way. Grit is only 27, so we hope that she will get another try in Tokyo in 2020. This would be her 4th Olympics!

The rest of the hurdles goes more or less as expected. Defending gold medalist Jessica Ennis-Hill from Great Britain sets the fastest time at 12.84 seconds good for 1149 points and a great start on her bid to repeat. Right behind her are Akela Jones from Barbados (13.00/1124 pts), Nadine Visser from the Netherlands (13.02/1121 pts) and Kendell Williams from the US (13.04/1118 pts). But there are 24 athletes with at least 1000 points so it will be some time before we figure out who the real contenders are.

While the hurdles are still going on, the competitors in the women's shot put come out to warm up. The A group is qualifying directly in front of us while the B group is off to our left. All of them will be trying to reach the automatic qualifying distance of 18.40 m (60'4"). Four women: Valerie Adams from New Zealand (the two-time defending gold medalist), Christina Schwanitz from Germany, Lijiao Gong from China and Anita Marton from Hungary qualify on their first throws, put their sweatsuits back on and sit down to watch the rest of the competition. We're concentrating on the two Americans. Here is Raven Saunders:

Raven is a "spinner". That is, she spins around several times before throwing in a way that is similar to the discus. This is a relatively new technique that is based on the idea that if you are spinning, you're less likely to go outside the ring on your throw. This doesn't help Raven on her first throw as she fouls anyway. But on her second try, she throws 18.83 m (61'9") to automatically qualify for the finals.

Next up is Michelle Carter:

Raven looks large, but she is "only" 1.66 m (5'5"), 108 kg (238 lbs). Michelle is truly a large woman: 1.76 m (5'9") 136 kg (300 lbs). She came by this size naturally as her father Michael (6'2"/285 lbs) won the silver medal in the shot put at the 1984 Summer Olympics in LA and then went on to play for the San Francisco 49ers for 9 years. Both father and daughter set national high school records in the shot so she's got a lot of genetics in her favor. In track lingo, Michelle is a "glider" meaning that instead of spinning, she will take a couple short steps directly across the ring and throw. And throw she does. After a disappointing first throw of 17.95 m (58'11"), she uncorks a beauty on her second try. Her throw of 19.01 m (62'4") easily qualifies for the finals. 

None of the other women reach the automatic qualifying distance, but the few Brazilians in the stands cheer loudly when it is announced that Geisa Arcanjo qualifies for the finals with her season's best first throw of 18.27 m (59'11").

With the Heptathlon 100 m hurdles out of the way, it is time from the preliminaries in the Men's 800 m. In this competition, the three fastest athletes from each of the 7 heats along with the 3 with the next fastest times will qualify for the semi-finals. There seems to be two types of runners in these races - those with enough endurance to maintain their pace for the entire race and the "kickers" who try to avoid using up their lower level of endurance long enough that they can kick into a much higher speed near the end of the race. This combination produces a number of strange races. In the first heat, Boris Berian of the US:

decides that the only way he is going to qualify is to go out hard and try to neutralize the kickers. He led his heat for perhaps 700 m before Ayanleh Souleiman from Djibouti and Amel Tuka from Bosnia blow past him. Boris hangs on for 3rd and qualifies for the semi-finals. The third heat features David Rudisha from Kenya:

Rudisha, the current world record holder and defending gold medalist, does not want to risk getting tripped up by the pack so he goes to the front and stays there the whole race. His wins his heat in a time of 1:45.09 and is a good 0.3 to 0.4 seconds faster than anyone else in all 7 heats despite looking like he was out for a morning stroll in the park.

Seven of the top 10 times were recorded by athletes in these two heats. With the top of the race out of the way, it was time to see who else would qualify. The luckiest guy in the entire competition had to be Girodano Benedetti from Italy:

In heat 5, Benedetti found himself in a race full of kickers. No one wanted to take the lead because it takes more energy to lead than to follow and kickers always tend to come from behind. So they snoozed through the first lap with everyone saying "you lead" "no, you lead". Benedetti reluctantly took the lead. He was eventually passed by two other runners, but did manage to finish 3rd to qualify for the semi-finals. This is despite the fact that his time of 1:49:40 was slower than all but 12 of the finishers. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good!

Once the 800 m was finished, it was time to start the high jump portion of the heptathlon. This takes place at the other end of the stadium and it is really hard to see what was going on unless I am looking through the viewfinder of my camera with the 400 mm lens. Each athlete chooses their opening height. This is a sort of strategy because each athlete can realistically make perhaps 6 or 7 successful jumps before they run out of energy so based on what height they think that they should be able to jump, they start at some lower distance to give themselves enough time to warm up, but not so much lower that they'll have no energy left by the time they get to their target height. The result is that you get huge differences in starting heights. Evelis Aguilar from Colombia and Sofia Yfantidou from Greece start at 1.56 m (5'1") while Nafissatou Thiam from Belgium doesn't start until 1.83 m (6'0").

The women get part way through the high jump and then have to stop for the beginning of the premier event of the session: the women's 10 km. I've run dozens of 10 km races so I am pretty sure that today's conditions of cool with light drizzle are almost perfect conditions. Sure enough, a lead group consisting of Alice Nawowuna from Kenya, Almaz Ayana from Ethiopia, Yasmin Can from Turkey (but who was born in Kenya), Vivian Cheruiyot from Kenya, Betsy Saina from Kenya, Gelete Burka from Ethiopia, Tirunesh Dibaba from Ethiopia and...Molly Huddle from the US took off like they were shot out of a gun:

It was incredible to see how fast they opened up time on a very large chase pack:

By 4 km, the lead group was already ahead by about half a lap! At the other end of the spectrum is Marisol Romero from Mexico:

Marisol is 33 years old and has a personal best of 31:46:43, but she is clearly not in that kind of shape right now. She runs basically alone for the first 7 laps until the East African (+1) freight train blows past to lap her.

We find ourselves rooting for Huddle to hang onto the East Africans for as long as she can and for Marisol to catch at least one person. Meanwhile Nawowona continues her insane pace. I know that the Ethiopians Ayana and Dibaba both have much faster 5 km times so maybe Nawowona is just trying to take the strength out of their kicks. One thing is for sure: the pace is absolutely shredding both the lead pack and the chasers into small groups spread out over the entire track. It is really hard to follow who is winning, but somewhere just after 5 km, Ayana from Ethiopia moves into the lead followed by Cheruiyot, Dibaba and Nawowuna. Huddle has fallen off the pace, but she has also picked off Burka to move into 7th place. Romero has now been passed a second time and has moved up one place when Ekaterina Tunguskova from Uzbekistan fell and could not continue.

By 8 km, it was clear that if Ayana:

finishes the race, she will win. It is only by how much. Around the same time, Huddle moved passed Can into 6th place and Romero got lapped a third time. The crowd was screaming at this point because Ayana is well under the pace of Wang Junxia's 23 year old world record. 

As she crossed the finish line, the scoreboard shows the time 29:17:45 and the words that everyone wanted to see WORLD RECORD! Ayana has lowered the world record by nearly 15 seconds. This is amazing because previously, no woman has come within 22 seconds of Wang's record during those 23 years. It should also be noted that Wang when she retired confessed that she was taking part in a state organized doping program at the time she set the record. This is the real downside in current professional sports - when an unbelievable performance is delivered, the first question is "Is she clean?" This is a real issue for Ayana because the Ethiopian doping control program has a 0 rating (on a 10 scale) from the World Anti-doping Agency. Second place goes to Vivian Cheruiyot from Kenya and third place goes to Tirunesh Dibaba from Ethiopia.

But whatever happens to Ayana and her record, I am thrilled with the results. You'll recall in an earlier blog that I said that what makes me come to the Olympics is the chance to see someone perform so well that they are shocked at what they've done. Well, this race is a bonanza in that regard. The first 13 finishers and 18 overall set personal bests. 8 athletes set national records. That includes Molly Huddle, who finished 6th in a time of 30:13:17, a time that sets a personal best, a national best and a North American best!

As for Marisol Romero, she picked up one more place when Juliet Chekwel from Uganda dropped out in the last km to finish 35th in a time of 35:33:03. While that was well off her best time and over 6 minutes behind Ayana, I'd like to point out that her time is nearly 7 minutes faster than my best time.

Although the crowd took a long time to pay any attention what with Ayana doing her victory lap with her country-woman Dibaba, the women's heptathlon resumed right after the end of the 10 km race. Here is a picture of Brianne Theisen-Eaton from Canada:

What is interesting about this picture is the guy in the black shirt and red hat in the upper middle of the picture. That's world record holder and defending gold medalist Ashton Eaton from the United States. He's also Brianne's  husband. Ashton is thrilled that Brianne just set a season's best mark of 1.86 m (6'1") good for 1054 points. This moves her into 5th place with 2151 pts so far.

But this event really evolves into a two woman match between Katrina Johnson-Thompson from Great Britain and Nafissatou Thiam from Belgium. Katrina started at 1.80 m, made that, passed at 1.83 m then made four consecutive jumps at 1.86 m, 1.89 m, 1.92 m and 1.95 m (6'5") before missing her first try at 1.98 m. Her jump of 1.95 m set an Olympic record for the high jump in the heptathlon. Thiam, whose father is from Senegal, started at 1.83 m, and made four successful jumps before missing her first two tries at 1.95 m. But she comes through and makes her last attempt at 1.95 m:

to pull into 2nd place behind Johnson-Thompson on the basis of fewer misses. Johnson-Thompson misses on her first try at what would be a world record for the heptathlon high jump of 1.98 m (6'6"). Thiam stepped up to the line and cleared the height to set a 2nd world record for the session! Johnson-Thompson then also cleared 1.98 m on her second try to tie the record. But the finish is a little anti-climactic when but both athletes fail on their three attempts at 2.01 m. This leaves them tied with 1211 pts and keeps Johnson-Thompson narrowly in 1st place with 2264 pts to 2252 pts for Thiam.

Our final event for the day is kind of unusual. It appears that too many women qualified for the 100 m so the organizers need three heats to reduce the number of women who will compete in the standard qualifying heats. As a result, a number of women from countries that would normally never be in the spotlight get to show what they can do. Here is the start of heat 1:

It is not often when the top four finishers in a heat are from Suriname, Cook Islands, Oman and Cape Verde! Charlotte Winfield from Malta has the fastest time in 11.86 seconds. The other seven qualifiers were Cecile Bouele from Congo, Sunayna Wahi from Suriname, Husniah Zulkifli from Malaysia, Hafsatu Kamara from Sierra Leone, Patricia Taea from Cook Islands, Mazoon Al-Alawi from Oman and Sisila Seavula from Fiji. I would also be remiss if I don't report that although they didn't qualify for the first round, Lidiane Lopes from Cape Verde, Kamia Yousufi from Afghanistan (running in the track equivalent of a burka) and Kariman Abuljadayel from Saudi Arabia all set national records!

There are a group of spectators that come to each Olympics and only watch athletics. After today's session, I can certainly see the attraction! On our way out of the stadium, we see Marisol Romero stretching out her legs against a security fence. I want to walk up and tell her that I appreciated how she kept battling despite not having a great day and being passed over and over, but do not want to intrude on her privacy.

It is only early afternoon, so neither the train nor the Metro are very crowded and we get back to our hotel around 3 pm. I work on pins for a couple hours while Beth and Sean watch the Olympic coverage. We're a little tired today so we decide to go back to the Mexican place for dinner, get a quick meal and go to bed early.

Steps for the day - 7,836

Rio 2016 - Day 6 (August 11)

My apologies to my long suffering readers. I've now gotten most of my Olympic pin responsibilities out of the way and can focus on writing up the remainder of our trip. Now, where were we?...

Today, we are off to men's volleyball at Maracanãzinho. This means little Maracanã and is located right next door to the Maracanã stadium where the opening ceremonies were held last week. In fact, this is the stadium where the athletes were staged for their entry into the opening ceremonies.

With yesterday's trip to basketball at Deodoro in mind, we make the same metro trip downtown to the Central station and then switch to a train for a much shorter ride to Maracanã. I had seen pink metro cars previously and wasn't sure what was up with them, but today, I got a good view. These are special cars that are for women only during rush hour for those that don't want to be groped or just packed in like sardines in the standard metro cars. Even though it is rush hour, it is not too crowded and we get to Central and onto the train to Santa Cruz with few problems.

Maracanã is only a few stops away so the ride is pretty short. The Maracana station is elevated so we've got a great view of the main stadium, but almost miss the small sign that points us to the Maracanãzinho. Because of where security for the venue is located, we have to walk about three quarters of the way around the Maracanã. Along the way, we happen across this:

so this is a good time to talk about street art. Unlike in the US, street art is actively encouraged in Rio. Also unlike the US, there seems to be a consensus among the taggers (do they call them that here??) that if a picture is good, no one draws over it. Since these are generally drawn by residents of the favelas, many have a distinctly political theme. Here are a couple of others we saw during our visit to Rio:

Each of them is "signed" although it is certainly unclear to us which element is the signature. Many of the better ones in the area around our hotel have the picture of a small green-headed man near them. We heard from another spectator that there is a sort of artist's favela in Rio where each of the homes is decorated by one or more of these murals. There is also supposed to be a favela tour, but I don't think that we will get to it on this trip.

At security, we run into a problem that I hadn't run into so far - the security officer running the X-ray machine wants to take my camera because professional camera equipment is not allowed in the venue. He doesn't speak very much English so he tells me to please wait a moment. After about 5 minutes, a woman comes over. She is apparently part translator and part trouble-shooter. She has a quick conversation with the security officer in Portuguese and then says to me "Professional camera equipment is not allowed in the venues". I told her that I've taken the same equipment into venues the previous 5 days and that while my equipment (Nikon D500 with 80-400mm zoom) is good, it is certainly not professional grade. She opens my backpack, takes a look and then indicates to the officer that I can go. She says to me, "I have the same camera and while it is really good, it isn't professional grade". Since I've had plenty of time standing there, I picked out a couple of pins to give to each of them to thank them for not making me go through the hassle of reclaiming my camera after the session.

The inside of the Maracanãzinho is beautiful, but there aren't many people here:

This is just another case of the Brazilian fans not wanting to get up for an early (9:30 am) session, especially when the Brazilian team is not playing!

Our first match is between Iran and Cuba. Both teams are 0-2 in pool B. It used to be said that Cuba didn't care how tall you were as long as you have a 4 foot vertical leap, so I'm anxious to see if this is still true. Before the match, I notice that the starting lineups on the Jumbotron have the usual name, height, weight info, but now they also include how high they can jump while spiking (one arm up) or blocking (two arms up). I see that while Cuban outside hitter Mario Luis Rivera Sanchez is only 1.80 m/5'11", he spikes at 345 cm/11'4" and blocks at 323 cm/10'7". I can't figure out what his vertical is without knowing how long his arms are, but this guy can really jump! But they also have some bigger guys. For example, middle blocker Javier Octavio Concepcion Rojas is 2.00 m/6'7" tall and spikes at 356/11'8" and blocks at 350 m/11'6".

The Iranians are, perhaps as expected, somewhat taller than the Cubans. The have 4 guys that are 2.03 m/6'8" or taller compared to only two tall players  for the Cubans. The guy that can get off the ground the best appears to be 2.03 m/6'8" middle blocker Seyed Mohammad Mousavi Eraghi, who has thoughtfully helped the shirt designers by shortening the name on his back to Seyed. Seyed spikes at 362 cm/11'11" and blocks at 344 cm/11'3".

Just before the match begins, the venue presenter, who we think is an American, tells the crowd about the three special songs that will play during the match. They are "Monster Block" when someone makes a great block of an attempted spike, "Super Spike" for a great spike and "Ace Ace" when someone makes a serve that no one hits. Each song comes with choreography that the fans are supposed to do while the song plays. I'm thinking, "Who will ever know whether the fans are doing their part?" given how few people are present.

We went to women's volleyball in London and can immediately see a big difference in the men's game. The first is that nearly everyone is doing a jump serve:

This is essentially a spike from the endline. The Cubans rip off a few service aces on jump serves. But then start making a bunch of service errors. It used to be that a team could only score when they are serving. But, FIVB, the international volleyball federation, recently changed the scoring rules so that each of these service errors become points for the Iranians. It quickly becomes apparent that this game is going to revolve around whether the Iranians can block the Cuban spikers. The fans seem to primarily be rooting for the Iranians, but this impression may be due to a big group of Brazilian rent-a-fans with Iranian flags that are sitting quite close to the court. Despite the pregame info on maximum spike and block heights, the best Cuban spiker is Miguel Angel Lopez Castro:

Just for a little perspective, the top of the net is 2.43 m/7'11" above the ground so all of these guys are way off the ground. Anyway, Miguel finishes the match with 17 spikes and the Cubans finish with 44 spikes versus 41 for Iran. However, they are only able to come up with 3 kills on blocks while the Iranian's have 13. As a result, the Iranians prevail in straight sets: 25-21, 31-29,  25-16.

Between matches, they have some local dancers perform:

This was enough to get the few Brazilians in the stands up and dancing. During the dancing, a Brazilian guy comes up and asks to look at my pins. He doesn't speak English, but is clearly asking whether I will trade. When I indicate that I'm happy to trade, it appears that he doesn't have his pins with him, but will go and get them. A few minutes later, he's back and we make a trade. Each Olympics seems to have the same pattern. The local population knows nothing about pins at the beginning for the Olympics. But as time goes on, they start to buy a few pins and then trade with other spectators. By the end of the Games, everyone is pin crazy! So this is a good sign that the Brazilians will really get into pins as well. Since we still have a little more time before the match, I go out to the walkway outside to see if anyone wants to trade. No one does, but lots of people take a look at my outfit and I get several chances to give pins away to little kids.

The second match is between the Russian Federation and Egypt. These guys are much bigger than in the previous match. Russia has 6 guys that are 2.03 m/6'8" or above including 3 guys who are 2.08 m/6'10" and above while the Egyptians have 4 guys 2.03 m/6'8" or above including  2 guys 2.08 m/6'10" and above.

While both teams are 1-1 coming into the match, it is clear early on that Russia is a much better team, especially on defense. The Brazilian fans, sensing this, and also probably reacting to the near-disqualification of the entire Russian Olympic team due to allegations of systemic doping, are clearly rooting for the Egyptians. This helps the Egyptians at the beginning, like here:

where the spike makes it though the block, but most of their attempts are more like this:

With all of this blocking going on, it seemed like we are hearing the "Monster Block" song constantly. It was cute the first couple of times, but after a few dozen times, this and the "Super Smash" songs are getting really old. I cannot imagine how the venue personnel will feel about them after 16 days. I would go insane!

While the Russians are able to block 17 spike attempts, the Egyptians are only able to block 2. As a result, most of the Russian spikes look like this:

and they win easily in straight sets 25-11, 25-17, 25-9. While it would have been nice to see more competitive matches, the two straight set victories mean that we have time enough to visit the Olympic Boulevard in downtown Rio where the Olympic flame is on display before heading back to the hotel for dinner.

Yesterday, we'd spoken to a woman on the metro who told us that we should go visit the Olympic Boulevard and that we should get off at the Uruguaiana station. I'm not sure whether we would have figured out where to go without this information. Anyway, off we go. In front of the station is a huge wide road called Avenida Presidente Vargas. This seems like the Rio city center as there are huge buildings on both sides of the road. These buildings really make it hard to look around and see where we are supposed to go, but our directions from the woman on the metro was to turn right and walk down to the old church. This road is laid out something like the main road in Turin when we were there in 2006 - besides the street on both sides are arched, wide covered walkways. We see many people selling things on the walkways - jewelry, watches, shirts, paintings, etc., but our time is not unlimited so we hurry on. Just about the time we are starting to wonder whether we've made a wrong turn, the church comes into view. Beside it, we can see a high security fence. This fence stretched in both directions for quite a while and only the occasional sighting of a fellow Olympic tourist on the other side of the fence keeps us looking for the way in. We eventually find the entrance and are surprised to see that there is no security screen. I'm sure that there are hidden cameras watching, but this area quickly climbs to the top of my list for places in Rio most likely to have a terrorist attack during the Olympics.

Inside, we see a lot of Olympic sponsor displays similar to what we saw in the Barra Olympic park - one has a small Olympic museum, one has a hot air balloon on a fixed rope that takes people up for an aerial view and another has a bungee jump - all with huge lines. In addition, there are stages for performing groups and Jumbotrons for watching Olympic events. The whole site is located right along the harbor and is perhaps 2-3 km/1.2-1.8 miles long. It is around 2 PM and we haven't eaten lunch yet - this is a bad situation when you are traveling with a teenager so we know that we've got to fix that soon. Fortunately, we see the Olympic torch up ahead and manage to get a picture with the old church in the background:

It's funny to watch all of the people taking selfies, but I have to wait for quite a while to get an unblocked photo. I don't really understand the meaning behind the design of the torch, but it is pretty cool looking. The church behind it is the Candelária church. Legend has it that there were a Portuguese couple in the early 17th century bound for Rio when the ship that they were on, the Candelária, was caught in a storm and nearly sank. The couple promised God that if they were allowed to live, they would pay for the establishment of a church in Rio. God must have been listening because the ship made it to Rio. The couple kept their word and established a small chapel there in 1609. This chapel was greatly expanded in the late 18th century and inaugurated in 1811 in the presence of King John VI of Portugal. Thanks to Wikipedia for this information!

After taking a few pictures of the flame, we headed out in search of food. Fortunately, we didn't have to go far. An area quite close to the Olympic cauldron was set aside for food trucks. This was a welcome change from stadium food and it took some time to figure out which of the many trucks to go to. The search was complicated by the fact that we were running low on paper money so were looking for a truck that would take credit cards. Fortunately, we found one and all of us enjoy some thin crust pizzas. Once fed, it is quite pleasant sitting in the sun on the coast watching people walk by, but Beth's pale Irish skin is beginning to complain so we head back to the hotel.

Tonight, we've made plans to go to a traditional Brazilian steak house. The Brazilians seem to be quite meat and potatoes sort of people so this kind of restaurant is very popular. We've seen huge lines to get into this particular restaurant every night, but think that if we can arrive early, we can beat the typically late arriving Brazilians. We arrive a little before 6 PM and are happy to see that there are no lines. In fact, there is no hostess standing at the front door to keep track of reservations so we walk right in. We see a long row of tables in the middle with smaller tables on the outside and are a little confused about where we should go. Fortunately, the manager comes over and greets us in English and explains that there is a huge group arriving in a while, but we can take one of the tables on the side. We sit down and a server comes over and indicates that we should start with the salad bar in the back. There is actually a lot more than salads back there. Besides a lot of vegetarian and starch-based items, there is also fish and shellfish. We've have visited this type of restaurant before and since we have some idea of what is to come, we're pretty conservative about how much we pile on our plates. When we return to our table, our server is waiting for us with a wine list. We try to ask him whether there are any good Brazilian wines, but he doesn't understand so he calls the manager over. When we explain what we want, he smiles and indicates that there are no really good Brazilian wines, but he does have a special on a Chilean malbec. We are happy to accept and our server brings over a bottle and opens it.

After that, we don't have long to wait before the first server arrives carrying a long skewer with beef tenderloin and a very sharp knife. He asks whether we'd like some and when we say yes, begins carving pieces off of his skewer. He indicates that we should use our knives to cut off the size piece we want. Then off he goes to the next table only to be followed a minute or two later by a guy with filet mignon and then by a guy with some sort of sausage and on and on and on. We call this kind of restaurant "death by meat" because they will keep bringing you different types of meat until you explode. I expected that eventually we'd see the same type of meat coming around a second time, but this doesn't happen before we run completely out of room. Everything was great, but I think I'm going to have to be vegetarian for the next couple days to balance out all of this meat.

On our way back to the hotel, I suddenly have a moment of panic when I realize that my pin hat is not on my head. I rush back to the restaurant, pass the hostess and the long line out front (getting nasty looks from people on the way) and am relieved to find that they have not yet cleared our table and that my hat is still sitting on the chair where I left it. Whew!

Hat firmly on head, we head toward the hotel but are thinking about the problem of what to do about desert when we are still clearly stuffed. We decide that buying chocolates would be a good idea and there just happens to be one a couple doors down from our favorite gelato place. Better yet, they sell individually wrapped pieces so that we can all have a mix although it is not clear from the wrappers what the different flavors are. We try to keep Forest Gump's saying that life is like a box of chocolates in mind as we return to the hotel for me to work on pin stuff and Beth and Sean to watch whatever Olympic coverage is on TV.

Steps for the day - 13,565