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