PyeongChang 2018 - Day 6 (February 15th) Gangneung and points north

Today we are at men's ice hockey where Germany is facing off against Finland. When we bought these tickets, we were disappointed that we only had one men's ice hockey game. That is because Olympic ice hockey was the best hockey tournament on the planet. All of the teams were like all-star teams, but unlike most all-star games, the players actually had something to play for - their countries and a chance to win a gold medal. Unfortunately, the NHL (national hockey league) decided this time not to allow their best players to attend the Olympics. There was a lot of posturing with the NHL blaming the IOC and IIHF (international ice hockey federation) for pulling financial support to cover travel and insurance costs. But this was essentially a smoke screen because the real issue was greed - the owners simply did not want to lose revenue from games not played during the three week long league shutdown. This was a shame. I think that the league will ultimately lose due to missing their chance to grow Asian interest in hockey, but only time will tell.

The loss for US and Canadian teams whose players usually all play in the NHL was a win for both of the teams we are seeing tonight. Finland has 38 active NHL players so their team is composed mostly of players who are currently playing in the Finnish and Russian hockey leagues. Germany only has 7 current NHL players - their team is composed of a mixture of retired NHL players and kids who are only 18-20 years old. In fact, the German team feels like a San Jose Sharks alumni team. Former sharks forward Marco Sturm is the coach of the team while former shark forward Marcel Goc:

is the team captain and former shark defenseman Christian Ehrhoff:

is an assistant captain. Consequently, we elect to root for Germany.

While we are waiting for the game to start, an older woman comes up from her seat several rows in front of me and asks if I'd like to trade pins. This is still pretty early in the games for pin trading so she has only older pins to trade. She says that while she is from Minnesota, she adopted several kids from Korea and has been here a number of time. She is attending the games with friends from Germany who have never seen an ice hockey game, so asks to trade for a pin from the 1991 German junior national hockey championships - a pin that I never expected to be able to trade, but that I put on my vest in the hope that I would. She also wants one of my NBC pins from PyeongChang. I find a couple of sport pins from Calgary 1988 that I'd like and we both end up happy with the deal.

Just before the start of the game, the arena looked like this:

The upper bowl, where the prices are lower, is packed with mostly Korean spectators while the lower bowl has mostly foreigners and is mostly empty. The organizing committee, knowing that having a broadcast with mostly empty seats in the background is a really bad look, decide to let the people in the upper bowl come down and take empty seats in the lower bowl. Our section goes from less than one quarter full to about four-fifths full in the space of a few minutes. A great deal if you brought cheap seats!

The game starts and it is clear that the Finns have a much quicker team. The Germans have also brought a pretty quick team, but it is clear that their strategy has been to try to hem the Finns into their own defensive zone to slow them down.  The Finns spent large parts of the game doing the same thing to the Germans:

The Finns outshoot the Germans 11-6 in the first period, but the score was tied was 1-1 on goals by Sami Lepisto from Finland and Brooks Macek for Germany. After that, though, the Germans actually outshoot Finland for the rest of the game and do get some decent scoring chances:

 Finland hangs on to win 5-2 as the Finns go wild:

We are supposed to go to the Pohang snow park just east of PyeongChang tomorrow for women's snowcross (imagine a curving, banked track made snow with four spectators on snowboards), but the event begins at 10 AM which means another 7 AM walk to the train station. We are pretty worn down at this point so we decide to see if we can get different tickets for tomorrow at the ticket office just outside the hockey venue. Unlike the huge lines at the ticket offices outside the gates to the Olympic park, this line is really short. Our first choice, women's curling, is sold out (more on why in a later blog), but we are able to get tickets to the women's 5,000 meter speed skating event tomorrow night.

We had planned on eating a late lunch at Spectator Dining, but the line is huge. They had a woman walking along the line saying in Korean and English - please enjoy this food later. We don't know how long we're going to wait so we decide to eat yet again at the Taste Local food court. On our way out of the Olympic park, we notice this:

There is something ironic about the image of a melting polar bear. We go inside and learn some of the things that the organizing committee is doing to reduce the carbon emitted to put on the Olympics. We've noticed one of them already - there are a lot of large windmills on the ridges above the Alpensia resort. They use a lot of LED lights to reduce power consumption and at least some solar photovoltaics to produce power from sunlight. The booth also features a computer program that estimates how much carbon was emitted in order to get you to the Games and gives you an option to buy renewable energy to offset your carbon footprint.

On the walk back to the train station, we first pass a church with a lot of evangelicals taking the opportunity to proselytize, but today, they are mostly interest in my pins and want to have their pictures taken with me. I end up in about a dozen selfies along with a few group pictures, give some pins to them and head off up the hill. Just after getting off the pedestrian bridge over the spectator transport loading area, we see this:

This is a traditional (Joseon era) wedding. The guy in the middle is the priest. The groom is on the right and the bride is on the left in a dress with huge sleeves - we learn later that these sleeves were developed because the bride has to sit for a long period of time before, during and after the marriage ceremony and she uses the long sleeves to conceal food to tide her over. The bamboo in front of the priest symbolizes flexibility and the pine tree to the left symbolizes longevity. The two bowls of rice in front represent fertility, but the two wrapped up chickens had us baffled. We learn later from Sunny that the wrapped chickens means that once you marry, you are stuck with that person for life!

We get back to the train station and grab a quick lunch. Back outside, the taxi queue is huge. It is still early so we decide to do something that we hadn't previously done - take the bus in the opposite direction back to Sunny's apartment. We have to wait for a while, but eventually a 302 bus shows up and we get on. The route is different but that doesn't concern us until we'd been on the bus for about an hour. But we have no idea where we are so getting off doesn't seem like a great idea. We do get a chance to see the Sea of Japan:

About 30 minutes later, we know there is a problem because the route number on the bus is now 325, not 302. Uh oh! We are going through smaller and smaller villages and eventually, we are the only ones on the bus. We get to a point where the bus turns around and pulls off the road. The bus driver gets out of his enclosed area and walks back to us, sensing that there is a problem. Unfortunately, he does not speak English although he does show us a bus route that indicates that the 302 route is not circular, but more like U-shaped. On one end of the U is Sunny's area in Gangneung. On the other end are a bunch of branches included 325. In a flash, I realize that the bus that we got on was 302-2 and that the reason we are on the 325 bus now is because of that -2 at the end. I show him my business card with Sunny's address, but that doesn't seem to help. I finally think of using Google Translate and type out How do we get back to Gangneung station? He takes a look at my phone, smiles and indicates that we should just stay on this bus.

The driver gets back behind the wheel and I turn to Google maps to determine that we are now close to Jumunjin beach, about 15 miles north north-west of Gangneung. I occasionally check our position on Google maps to make sure that we are generally going in the right directly. We are only 15 miles away, but we are still following along a bus route and it takes us about 1 hr 45 min to get back to the train station. Along the way, we stop at "scenic" places like where buses go to get cleaned. Definitely not an adventure that I'd like to repeat, but at least we do get back safe and sound.

After spending more than 3 hr 30 min on the bus, it is now about 6:30 PM and we end up right back at the Taste Local food court for dinner. This time, we share two servings of meat and barbecued pork dumplings before catching a taxi back to Sunny's apartment.

We spend the rest of the evening editing pictures, working on the blog and watching Olympic coverage with Sunny's family. The men's 10,000 meter speed skating is on. We think that the Korean skater, Lee Seung-Hoon, must have won because they replayed the race that he won in a time of 12:55.54 at least twice while we are watching. But we finally realize that this is how Korean TV kills time during the ice resurfacing intermission (replaying the performace of the Korean athlete in that sport). After the intermission, we watch Dutch skater Jorrit Bergsma, beat Lee's time by about 15 seconds. In the heat after that, Ted-Jan Bloeman from Canada sets an Olympic record of 12:39.77 to win the gold medal. Bergsma takes the silver. Unfortunately for the Korean fans, Nicola Tumolero, skating in the same heat as Bloeman, crosses the finish line in 12:54.32 to win the bronze medal over Lee by just 1.22 seconds.

Steps for the day: 13,176

PyeongChang 2018 - Day -5 (February 4th) Seoul

PyeongChang 2018 - Day -5 (February 4th) Seoul

One of the stranger things you can experience in travel is crossing the international dateline. Our flight on Asiana airlines from San Francisco to Inchon airport outside of Seoul takes off at 11:30 PM on Friday, February 2nd, but doesn't land until the early morning of February 4th. So no February 3rd for us. But don't worry, coming back, we are going to arrive back in San Francisco before we take off from Seoul!

Our flight takes us up over the Aleutian islands of Alaska then down over the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, across the Sea of Japan and then across the Korean peninsula - passing right over Gangneung where we will be based in a few days. I can't say that we saw much because we were trying to get as much sleep as we could. The flight was supposed to take 13 hours, but headwinds are lighter than normal so we arrive at Inchon 90 minutes early. Walking down the unheated jetway, one thing is clear. It is cold out here, especially for a pair of whimpy Northern Californians where the temperature was 78 F the day we departed.

Normally, getting in early is good news, but in this case, it means we arrive at 4:10 AM. It takes a while to get our bags and clear customs, but it is still only 5 AM when we get out. I thought for sure that I would not be able to pick up the SIM card that I'd ordered. But apparently, selling SIM cards to tourists is such a lucrative business that people will work whenever there are plane landing. We get the card, put it in the phone, and viola, we have unlimited data access for the duration of our stay.

We are so early that the buses to Seoul are not yet running. But that gives me time to get a picture with the Olympic and Paralympic mascots, white tiger Soohorang and black bear Bandabi:

Other than this display and a few signs pointing Olympic athletes toward Olympic accreditation and transport, there is almost nothing to indicate that the Winter Olympics are going to take place in less than a week. Perhaps there is more in Terminal 2 which was built specifically for the Olympics or maybe there will be more going on in the next few days when more spectators begin to arrive, but I would have thought that the PyeongChang Olympics would be a bigger deal to Koreans than they appear to be.

While waiting around for someone to sell us a bus ticket, an older Korean guy approaches us and in pretty bad English volunteers to take us to Seoul for 70,000 Korean won (krw, divide by 1000 to get US dollars). The bus was going to cost 30,000 krw, but we were going to have to wait at least another hour to get on one, so we decide to take him up on the offer. Back outside, where it is a balmy 8 F, and into his small limo. Inchon airport is out on an island in the middle of Inchon harbor surrounding Seoul so it takes nearly an hour to get from the airport to our hotel. When we get there, I hand the driver 70,000 krw. He waves his hand and points to the meter (which says 95,000 krw) and explains that the difference is the tolls to get out of the airport and off the island. Oh well, at least we got to where we wanted to go.

As expected, the people at the hotel desk said that our room would not be available until normal 3pm check-in. But as they are checking our bags into their baggage room, they tell us that they think that a room will be available at 10:30. We had been discussing whether to go look around but this is soon enough that we elect to wait for a room to open up before going out to explore. That is when things started going wrong.

I had not turned on my surface since shortly after we'd left Rio in 2016 so you can imagine the number of Microsoft updates that were waiting for it. I had started this process before we left, but something had gone wrong and I needed to close the computer right when it has the screen "Update in process. Please do not turn off the computer".  So, there was some possibility that nothing would work when I turned it back on. Fortunately, it seemed to pick right back up where it left off. Unfortunately, the update failed again. But it did fall back to the previous update so everything still worked. Yeah!

After taking a look at the PyeongChang Olympic pins currently on sale (much more on pins later for those who have not looked at any of the previous blogs, sorry to those who have read this blog previously who are sick of reading about pins), I decided to put some notes on my blog for later. I could look at the blog, but when I tried to create a new one, I got a message from Google that I needed to log in instead of being logged in automatically. This was a problem because neither Beth nor I had any idea what our Google password was. Even worse, when I clicked the forgot password link, Google wanted to send a text message code to our rescue phone. Unfortunately, Beth's phone, while physically in Korea, could not find any compatible AT&T networks so we could could not get the text code. Google lets you send the text code to an email address which worked fine, but when I put the code in, Google says "we cannot verify that your email address is owned by you". Over the next 2+ hours, I tried everything I could think of including trying to reach Google customer service. Google goes out of their way to make it impossible to speak with an actual human, but I did manage to get a reply by email in Korean. The Google translation (irony) of the email said exactly what the website had said - that I needed to authenticate myself on a device that they already accepts as being mine. Sigh. I finally throw in the towel, created a new Google user, new Google blog (olympiholic2.blogspot.com) and new Google document file (for photos) which is how you are reading this striped down version of my usual blog. I will recover the old blog when I get back to the US.

The front desk staff finally lets us know that our room is ready. We pick up our bags, take them up to our room and then head off to our first adventure - a visit to the 1988 Seoul Olympic park. But first, we have to navigate the Seoul subway system. The subway map looks like someone took 16 pieces of colored yarn, started each one at irregular intervals around the outside of the city and weaved them back and forth in the interior so that no one can predict where a line will come back out. We think that we've worked out that we need to take the #4 train 4 stops then change to the #5 train and go about 9 stops. We find a ticket dispenser and find that our trip will combined cost us only 4,100 krw. Most signs have the station names in both Hangul (the phonetic Korean writing) and English so it was reasonably easy to figure out whether the train is going in the right direction.

It takes us about 20 minutes to get to the correct station. We see a sign indicating that the exit to the Olympic park is to the left. But to the left is a wall. After walking around for about 10 minutes, we finally just take one of the other exits. Once we get up to the surface, we look across the street and see that the side of the station that we were supposed to exit from is under construction. Okay, we are not crazy.

We cross the street, past a big wall and see this:

Hmm, big gold thumb. Are we in the right place? What has that got to do with the Olympics? The answer to the first question is that the main Olympic stadium is to the left and the baseball stadium is to the right, so I'd have to say that we are in the right place. As far as the big gold thumb, it has to be art. But why is it here? We keep walking. Next, we see these:       

                                        

I did not record all of the artists, but I started noticing that they came from all over the world and all were installed in the year or two before 1988. Apparently there was a huge art festival in the park and they were left here after the Games ended. This is way cool. One of the most important parts of hosting the Olympics is the legacy that is left after the camera lights turn off.  That is one of the saddest thing to me about Rio because after all the money spent, the country and city are not financially able to keep most of the stadiums open after the Games, although I think that the subway line to the Olympic park will remain. Seoul on the other hand has done well in establishing an lasting Olympic legacy. They built 3 subway lines including both of the ones that we took to get here. They have this Olympic park for the locals to enjoy, but also contains the training facilities for most Korean summer Olympic athletes. 

Beyond the art, we arrive at the Olympic plaza:

We're getting pretty cold so it is a good thing that the Olympic museum is directly in front of us. The museum did a good job of following the whole history of the Olympic movement beginning with the Ancient Olympics (the reason Greco-Roman only alows holds above the waist is the athletes wrestled in the nude!) through the reintroduction of the Olympics in 1896. Then they showed the Seoul Games beginning with the bidding process when Seoul was considered a dark horse to win the Games (Nagoya, Japan was the favorite) through the end of paralympics. Here is a picture of the huge drum called a chinko which was used during the Seoul Olympics:

Just before we left, we stopped in the museum shop to see if they have any...you guessed it, pins. They do, I thought that the entire set of 24 Seoul mascot (the baby tiger Hidori) sports pins cost 5,000 krw - that is incredibly cheap, but the reaction from the sales woman when I indicated that I wanted one of each sport tells me that I've gotten it wrong. She does not speak English, but we manage to ask her if the price of 5,000 krw is for one pin or for all of them. She answers that one pin costs 5,000 krw. At 120,000 krw, this is still a good price, but I don't want to spend $120 for pins I'm only going to trade. We tell her thank you, but no thanks and head back out into the cold.

We are going to toward a different subway station that is closer to this end of the park when we happen across this scene:

The big gate in the background is called the World Peace gate and was constructed for the Seoul games while a smaller temporary display for the PyeongChang Olympics is in the foreground - a nice superposition of the two Korean Olympics.

Our trip back to the hotel was uneventful despite having to change trains twice because we started from line #8 instead of line #5. It is now about 1:30 and we haven't eaten anything today yet so we stop at a shop that is in the basement underneath our hotel. I'm keen to use Google Translate to read the menu, but they actually have an English menu. Beth orders gimbap, which is a Korean rice snack sort of like sushi except that it only contains vegetables. I am not sure if my stomach is up to the normal Korean spice level so I order a chicken curry. The meals come with two small dishes (a small number for a typical Korean meal, which can contain 10 - 12 sides) - assorted pickled vegetables and kimchi, which is fermented cabbage flavored with chili pepper.  Delicious!

We go back up to our room. Beth watches TV while I work on editing pictures and begin work on this blog. Neither our stomachs or heads know what time zone we are actually in so around 7 pm, we decide to go back to the same shop. This time I have bulgogi, which is a thinly sliced marinated beef dish. Beth had fish cakes in a chili sauce. Usually, the redder the sauce, the spicier the dish and this one was bright red. She eats about half before giving up due to the spice level - something I've never seen Beth do. Korean's appear to love spice so we will have to be careful on what we order.

We head back to the hotel and hit the sack after a very long day.

Tomorrow we are off to the National Palace Museum. Stay tuned.

Steps for the day: 9,324

PyeongChang 2018 - Day -4 (February 5th) Seoul

Welcome to our 2nd day in Seoul! It is already February 7th so I'm already falling behind, but hang in there, once we get to the Olympics, I'll try to post something every day, even if it is shorter.

Today when we went down to the restaurant to eat, we discovered that our initial reaction to the hotel music was correct, this place is stuck in the 1980's and 90's. We been here less that 24 hours and I've already heard 3 or 4 ABBA songs. Breakfast is a sort of UN buffet. In addition to the typical American faire, we also have our choices for Korean, Chinese, Japanese and vaguely European.

Today is history day. We are off to Gyeongbokgung Palace. Gyeongbokgun was built in 1395 and for most of it's history, it was the home of the Joseon Dynasty that ruled Korea for just over 500 years. This palace was mostly burned to the ground during the Japanese invasion in the Imjin War of 1592-5, but was largely rebuilt during the 19th century. Here is part of the palace gate:

The palace and all of what was then Seoul was surrounded by a very big wall. Most of the wall is gone, but here is one of the gates and guardhouses:

The palace has a very strong Forbidden City (Beijing) feel to it. Check out some of these pictures:

 

This is understandable because of the way that China dealt with nearby countries. In exchange for paying tribute (payments made to China along with things like trade and diplomatic relations), China agreed not to invade. This arrangement kept the Joseon in power for 27 generations of their family. It also resulted in a strong Chinese influence on Korea in the writing system, social structure, arts, etc.

As we were walking around, we noticed a lot of teenage girls wearing elaborate custumes:

The outfits are called hanbok which just means Korean clothing. These outfits date back more than 1,000 years. But it took us a long time to find out why these women are dressing up in these dresses. Apparently, this is one of the latest fads among young people in Korea. Both women and men will dress up in these clothes, take their pictures often at historical sites like this, and then post them on Instagram for their friends to see.

We are getting cold so we stop into the National Folk museum to get warm. In honor of the PyeongChang Olympics, they have a special exhibit on winter showing how the Korean people have traditionally dealt with winter. They showed historical gear for ice fishing, skating and hunting along with what they wore to keep out the cold and crafts that they enjoy in the time before they could begin planting their next crop. Other exhibits gave us some understanding of how hard it was to be a subsistence farmer in such a harsh land.

We are making our way back out of the palace when we hear drums beating. They are changing the guards in the parade grounds just inside the main gate. Here is a picture of the soldiers in their traditional garb:

The guy with the orange and red uniform with pheasant feathers is the battalion commander who is leading the troops coming off duty. Off to the side is a band that is playing suitably military marching music and beating another one of those huge drums like we saw yesterday.

After that, we head to the cafe to get some warm food. Beth has a meal with vegetables and glass noodles and a sort of sweet rice drink and I have bulgogi (a thinly sliced marinated beef dish) with green onions and rice and sparkling water. Feeling much better, we head back outside for a quick walk over to the National Palace Museum.

I had originally thought that this museum would be a sort of National museum, but found that it specialized only on the Joseon Dynasty. It was quite interesting. I learned that one of the reasons that the Joseon ruled for 500 years had partly to do with how they were trained. The Joseon followed Confucianism and one of their critical beliefs were continual improvement. A crown prince was supposed to master skills like calligraphy and poetry and linguistics. In addition, even after becoming King, they were expected to continue to practice to improve their skills  to better lead their people - a far cry from what we currently see in the US government!

A Joseon ruler, even when not present at a social affair or meeting, was represented by this screen called a Irworobongdo sitting behind the throne:

The full moon and red sun represent the concepts of bringing yin and yang into balance, but the meaning of the five peaks and the twin waterfalls have been lost to history. The main idea is that even when he was not present, the Joseon leader was watching over his people.

Since Confucianism includes ancestor worship, each Joseon ruler posed for an official painting. Here is one of them:

On the death of the ruler, his portrait would be installed in a separate nook in the hall of ancestors so that future rulers could come to meditate and seek advice from his ancestors. I'm trying to picture Donald Trump seeing wisdom from George Washington or Thomas Jefferson or.. Barack Obama, but just can't.

We've had enough cold for the day and head back to the hotel. Stay tuned for the next episode.

Steps: 10,751

PyeongChang 2018 - Day -1 (February 8th) Gangneung and Alpensia

I'm skipping ahead a few days to try to catch up with current time (Feb 9th) and get the Olympic coverage going. I'll get back to the missing days at some point.

We start today by waking up late. Our Airbnb host Sunny had been waiting for us to make breakfast, but she has to get to work at the hospitality cafe she and her daughter were asked to run for the Olympic period. As I understand it, the Gangwon county government has asked shop owners to make over their businesses to make all of the Olympic visitors flooding the area feel welcome. Sunny was chosen because she works as an English tutor and the government wanted some places where English is spoken. We agree to go with Sunny and have breakfast at her cafe. Along the way, she shows us the downtown area and where the market area is.

When we arrive, we see a sign that says English Free Mungju branch cafe. I don't have the heart to tell Sunny that English Free does not mean what she thinks it means. I also think that branch probably means brunch. There are a lot of Koreans who speak some English, but as in our experiences in Japan, they rarely get to try it out with native English speakers so these "near misses" are common.

She needed a little time to get the shop ready so she suggests that we walk down to the corner and take a look at the old building and see what is going on there. The building looks like a miniature version of the palaces we saw in Seoul. In fact, it was the home of the local government which was responsible for keeping the peace, collecting taxes, conducting the census, etc. It is not exactly clear to us what is going on, but here is the sign:

Unfortunately, this is the only English that we see. There appears to be a place where you can see traditional Korean children's games and a place where you can write a wish on a piece of paper and attach it to what looks like a Christmas tree. It looks like the tree will be burned at some point to send all of the wishes to heaven. But what we mostly see is a site that is not quite ready. There are a lot of workers scurrying around trying to get things ready. Some parts of the site appear to have been built just for this event:

We've killed enough time, so we head back to the cafe. Sunny offers us toast, which in this part of Korea means a toasted cheese sandwich, and a couple cups of chamomile tea.  While we are eating, I take a bag from my pocket and beginning sticking Olympic pins on my vest. Along the way, I explain to Sunny that pin trading and collecting is the sport for Olympic spectators. She is intrigued so I give both her and her daughter USA ring pins and a pin of her choice off of my vest. Then it is time to get up and get going.

Gangneung appears to be a pretty big place:

Google maps wants to put everything in Korean which makes it hard to tell where we are going, so I am sort of taking Sunny's route this morning in the opposite direction. We eventually see a sign for Gangneung Station which is where we want to go. Here it is dressed up for the Olympics:

Across the street is what looks like an area set up to showcase the local companies and goods. We wander around a bit and then head back over to the train station to take a taxi back to Sunny's apartment to get ready for tonight's event - men's normal hill ski jumping qualification round. Google says that the apartment is only 2km away and it is fairly close because the taxi only cost 4,000 krw. 

We put on our long underwear and other assorted stuff to keep us from freezing after 4+ hours with temperatures around -7 C (15 F) and head back outside. There is a bus stop not far from Sunny's apartment that is supposed to have buses going back to the train station, but we can't figure out how often they come. So we decide to walk. 2 km aught to take us about 20-25 minutes, but it actually takes more like 40 minutes. We're a little tired and sweaty after our hike, but we make it in time to get on our train to Jinbu; one stop down the line where we are supposed to pick up our shuttle bus to the venue.

We had originally planned to take an early train so that we could walk around, but when we arrive in Jinbu, we are informed by the large group of enthusiastic volunteers that the shuttle buses won't start running until 3 hours before the event which is about 2 hours from now. At least the station is warm and there is part of an Olympic exhibit on Korean history with the Winter Olympics. I say part of an exhibit because here too, workmen are still hanging up items and setting up signage.  There is also a partially complete exhibit of Korean art (vases, sculpture) that is to be part of the cultural Olympiad.

We finally manage to get onto a shuttle bus, which appears to have been a party bus in a previous life based on the colored LED lighting inside. It takes about 20 minutes to get to the Alpensia Olympic Center, which is the venue for ski jumping, aerials, cross-country, biathlon and the three sliding sports: bobsleigh, skeleton and luge.

Even though we've stopped right outside the ski jumping venue, a volunteer asks us to cross the large street that is the main road into Alpensia. We walk uphill for a little while and then are asked to cross the street again to enter the venue from the other side. Strange, but okay. 

Shortly after we enter the venue, we come to a stop in front of what is obviously the security area. It looks like they are also not quite ready as we stood their for a good 20 minutes before continuing on to security. I had been nervous about this because the organizing committee at the last second added camera lenses larger than 300mm to their list of forbidden items and I've got a 70-400mm zoom in my backpack. I'm not sure of how the argument about the impossibility of an old guy with essential tremor producing professional grade photos while handholding a 400mm lens at night is going to go over with a policeman who likely speaks no English, but fortunately, no one asks to look at the lens and we are on to the next stop where we have our tickets scanned.

From there, it is about a 10 minute mostly uphill walk to the venue. Along the way, I am stopped by a Korean guy. It turns out that he is a journalist and wants to ask me a few questions: Where am I from? Is this our first visit to Korea? Do you have a favorite sport or athlete? and then the one that generated his interest, "Can you tell me about these badges that you are wearing?" I tell him that in 2 weeks, pins will be a hot story and that I meet people from all over the world simply be wearing a bunch of pins on my coat and hat.

When we get to the venue itself, a volunteer is scanning the event ticket of the woman in front of us. It fails, presumably because it was already scanned right outside of the security area. We finally manage to make the volunteer understand what is going on and head into the venue looking for food. There are a few people milling around, but not many are being served. We learn from a couple of Americans, that they only have cold drinks and no hot food, but they indicate that there is another concession stand closer to our seats. We head over there. The woman running this stand let us buy two red bean and one BBQ beef steamed buns and watched her spend a good 5 minutes warming them up. I'm thinking to myself that this can't go well once the bulk of the crowd showed up. We also find that the only hot drink she has is coffee. Clearly some bugs need to be worked out of the systems because they are really not ready to be putting on an event here yet. A lot of people over the years have asked me how I tell which are the best Olympics. I usually tell them that a lot of things just don't go well for the first few days when 7 years of planning meet the first day of reality, but the good Olympics are the ones that spot the problems and rapidly fix them. We will see whether POCOG (PyeongChang Olympic Organizing Committee) can rise to the challenge.

The start time on our tickets say 21:30 and it is only 20:00, but shortly after we get there, forerunners begin jumping. We finally figure out that this first round is to set the jumping order for the actual event that begins at 21:30. Here is a picture of the top of the jump:

The normal hill is on the left, the large hill is on the right. We think that the round thing up there may be a restaurant.

The forejumpers help the judges set the start position:

The jumpers sit on that red bar and wait for their coaches to decide when the winds are just right to jump. The start bar can be moved up or down depending on the weather and how far other jumpers are going. When the jumper hits the end of the track, they try to jump up at exactly the right time to maximize lift. Then they put their skies in a V position like this,

trying to mimic an airplane wing as well asusing small hand motions to keep level and pointed at the landing point:

The normal hill has two red lines on the left. The one on top is the K point at 98 meters. Every meter beyond this point is worth 2 points to a jumper and every meter short of this point costs the jumper 2 points. The distance is measured from where the back end of their ski hits the ground. The second red line is the hill size which is in this case 109 meters. If a lot of jumpers are going farther than 109 meters, the judges will move the start position down to slow the jumpers slightly. If they are all landing short of the K point, they'll move the starting position higher up. The hill flattens out below the HS line and landing down there is dangerous as the height you are falling from increases rapidly. The next part of the score is style. Jumpers are trying to land in the telemark style like this jumper is showing - one knee bent and the other leg trailing behind. Finally, there is a compensation score that is based on the wind at takeoff. It is much easier to get lift when the wind is in your face so jumpers that get a strong tailwind gain compensation points while jumpers with a strong headwind lose points.

The event itself lacks much drama because all this is going to do is eliminate 7 jumpers out of the 57 that qualified. The other 50 will go on to the finals on Saturday night. There is a huge range of abilities between the athletes. In the first round, Fatih Arda Ipcioglu from Turkey (and Turkey's first Olympic ski jumper) managed a jump of 77.0 meters worth 21.2 pts while Andreas Wellinger from Germany jumps 112.0 meters worth 87.2 pts. The Americans are not great at ski jumping, but Kevin Bickner manages a jump of 100.5 (68.5 pts) to sit in 14th place. The other Americans are in 37th, 40th and 47th place.

The first jump only sets the start order so the second round represents a fresh start for everyone. Ipcioglu improves in the second round with a jump of 79.0 meters worth, but he still ends up in last place with 68.2 pts. However, he made it to the Olympics and he was selected to carry the Turkish flag at the Opening Ceremonies tomorrow night. Like most of the Olympians, being named an Olympian is the goal and attending the Olympics is the reward. Most of the six other jumpers who fail to qualify (two from Estonia, two from the Czech Republic, one from Kazahkstan and one from Korea) were really young (17 or 18) and were just here to get some Olympic experience.

Along the way, we see some old "friends". One of them is 45 year old Noriaki Kasai from Japan:

Unbelievably, Noriaki-san is competing in his 8th winter Olympics beginning in Albertville in 1992.  (We saw him jump in Nagano, where he won several medals and was the main  TV highlight replay the entire time we were there!)  This is the first time that any athlete in any sport, summer or winter, has qualified for the Olympics this many times. He will be Japan's flag bearer in the Opening Ceremonies and is coming off of winning silver and bronze medals at the Sochi 2014 Olympics. Kasai finishes in 20th place with a jump of 98.0 meters (117.7pts).

Some of the others that have been around a while include 4-time Olympic gold medalist Simon Ammann from Switzerland (competing in his 6th Olympics) and 2-time Olympics silver medalist Janne Ahonen from Finland (competing in his 7th Olympics). But at the end of the day, it is clear that the current powers in ski jumping are Germany and Poland as they go into the finals with 7 jumpers out of the top 10.

At the conclusion of the event, we all try to head out into a fairly narrow walkway and immediately jam up. There is another jam up crossing the street outside the venue and another on the walk back to where we pick up the buses. When we get to the last jam, we understand that the other slow points were because security is stopping people on the walk back to keep the bus pickup area from being jammed up. Once we get down to the bus pickup area, we understand why. Spectators have to cross the main entrance to Alpensia Olympic park in order to get to the boarding area, but there are about a million buses moving along that road so pedestrians can only cross once in a while. Once across the main street, it is a short walk to the bus stop. There are plenty of buses and we manage to get on one quite quickly. But the huge delay in getting to the bus means that we've missed our train to Gangneung. Transportation is the most critical need for spectators and our hope is that this will be one of the areas that POCOG fixes quickly.

We get back to Jinbu after the 20 minute bus ride and immediately head to the information center. This was a reasonably small event so there aren't too many people ahead of us in the line. When we get to the front, we show our PyeongChang 2018 rail passes (which give us free access to trains) and the agent gives us two tickets for a train leaving in 10 minutes (it is now 12:02 AM after the event let out at 10:20 PM). The ride to Gangneung is a quick 15 minutes and it gives us a chance to thaw out.

Our understanding is that the city buses stop running at midnight so we head over to the taxi line. Before we left California, I'd printed out a few "business" cards with Sunny's address printed in Korean. This was handy because our taxi driver did not appear to speak any English. The taxi takes only about 5-10 minutes. Sunny had given us cards giving us access to her apartment building and to her apartment so all we have to do is avoid making too much noise when we come in and take off our boots (like most Asian cultures, shoes are not worn inside the home). It has been a long day!

Steps for the day: 15,373*

* - iPhone died before we got home