London (Olympic Day 10)

We have late afternoon tickets at Men's water polo today so we have some time to do something else in the morning. I would still like to get a SIM card for my cell phone so that I can use it as a smart phone without having to sell Sean into slavery. So, we decide to head toward the British museum near Tottingham Road and then head over to Oxford Street to look for a SIM card.

Back to London Bridge station on our way to a change to the Northern Line at Waterloo. We get off and a guy wearing a Puerto Rico jacket approaches us and asks if I would like to trade. It turns out that he is involved with tourism in Puerto Rico and trades a small pin shaped like the Coqui frogs that inhabit the island for a water polo pin as that was the sport that he used to pay. He gives us his email address in case we'd like a tour of Puerto Rico.

We switch trains and are soon on Tottingham Road. There are a lot of electronic shops around, but none are obviously selling SIM cards so we head for the British museum. We walk around a corner and run into a pair of people from Hungary who want to trade pins. He trades a pin that looks like it is a special pin for people who donate money to the Hungarian team and asks for a NBC soccer pin. So far, I've taken whatever pin the other person has offered, but eventually I'd like to be able to choose my pin. 

The British museum is to England as the Smithsonian is to America and it is huge. We could spend several days here, but only have a few hours so we spend some time at the beginning looking at maps to choose a few areas we'd like to concentrate on. We decide on China, Egyptian mummies and statues, Americas and Roman Britain.

Just inside the Egyptian section is one of the most famous items in the museum: the Rosetta stone that allowed egyptologists to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics. Sorry that there is no picture, but I really had a difficult time getting pictures of items in glass boxes. While looking at the stone, I was approached by a pair of women who wanted to trade pins. The first woman offered a Mexican flag pin. I completed that trade and could see that the second woman was disappointed because she had the same flag pins. I told her that there was no problem and handed her a pin from my give-away pocket. It is great that there are some people who want to trade pins, but it is too bad that none of them are from England.

While I was standing there, I heard a tour guide behind me. He was telling his tour that you have to view this museum in the context of England in the 1800's. It was in a contest with France to be the dominant world power. The two countries competed in everything and collecting antiquities was no exception. You can almost picture the ships of the East India company loaded to the gunwales with bootie from the civilizations that they visited. Looking around at all of the statues, I'm surprised that the Egyptians have not tried to get more of these back.

The mummies were equally impressive. I had seen a number of these before, but there were a number of mummies where they had many of the various layers between the mummy and the outside coffin. Here is one of the outer coffins:

Next up was China. They had a special exhibit on the history of Jade. It was impressive to see how long (more than 5,000 years), the Chinese people have been producing art. But I liked the section on ceramics better. Here is one of my favorite pieces:

It was time for lunch so we went to the museum dining room - and had a great meal. Sean had chorizo and black pudding (sausages made with blood - how many 14 year olds would even try this?), I had Scottish salmon and Beth had some sort of Spinach tart (looked like a quiche to me).

Feeling much better, we head off to the section on Roman Britain. One of the things that I learned was that Roman influence extended much further north than Hadrian's wall (read about Hadrian's wall in a future post). They had a number of forts in central Scotland. I also found that they were in Britain for quite a long time; perhaps 150-200 years. Here is a picture of a Roman tile that was donated by the Bank of Britain when it was discovered during construction of the bank in 1806!:

Our last stop was the section on the Americas. We were quite curious to see what would be there. I turned out that is was exclusively dedicated to the indigenous people. There were sections on the Inuit people in the north to the Incas in the south. Here is an Aztec panel that I liked:

We'd like to see more, but we'll miss the water polo matches if we don't get going. On our way out, we see an exhibit on the making of the Olympic medals. Here is what they look like:

We make a quick stop at the hotel to change cameras and then head off to the Olympic park. We were a little worried about how the Underground would be on a work day (our previous trip was on Saturday), but this trip was even faster. We were through Olympic park security (with the ceremonial donation of pins to the security people) in about 45 minutes. Transportation at this Olympics has certainly been very strong.

We aren't sure what there will be for dinner inside the water polo venue so we stop at an area called World Square that is just to the left of the Olympic Superstore. Beth and I have Thai chicken with green curry and Sean has Chinese vegetarian noodles. Finding a place to eat was a challenge as all of the nearby tables are occupied. After walking around for a few minutes, we walk over to the edge of the walkway near the Olympic stadium and sit on the ground to eat. Both dishes were tasty, but a little on the bland side for our taste.

The Water polo venue is close by, but we enter the venue fairly early to have a look around. In this venue, the small store and food booths are outside. Our seats are in the 3rd row right on one goal line. Ordinarily, these would be great seats for photography, but in this case, the shot clock is in a direct line between our seats and the goal. I've got a 300mm zoom lens so I'll concentrate on the far end of the pool. All around us are current and former water polo athletes. Next to me is a guy who plays water polo at UCLA and in front of me is a guy who is on the Australian team.

The first match is between Britain and Montenegro. This is another sport where Britain would not have qualified had they not been the Olympic host nation. On the other hand, the team from Montenegro have a chance to make the knockout round. Going in, they have lost to the USA, beaten a strong Hungarian team, tied Serbia and beaten Romania. They need a win to advance.

It is clear from the beginning that there will be no miracle win for Team GB. In fact, they look more like a bunch of swimmers who occasionally play water polo as they have some difficulty getting way out of the water to shoot, trouble getting open and their passes are not as crisp as the team from Montenegro. On the other hand, the British goalkeeper looks quite good:

Despite his best efforts, Montenegro pulls away to win 13-4. At the end, the British team tosses their caps into the stands to thank the fans for all of their support:

The second match is between Spain and Italy. These are much better teams than we saw in the first match. Spain has already qualified for the knock-out round while Italy needs to win in order to advance. This is clear as Italy gets off to a fast 4-0 start. Rather than concentrating on the match, I'm watching the battle between two athletes who play the 2-meter position. This is the most dangerous position because if you can get the ball into the 2-meter guy, the chance of scoring is very high. This is also the most important position for the defense. As a result, there is a lot of warfare going on here. The defender will often raise both arms to show the referee that he is not doing anything while at the same time holding the other guy under the water with his legs. Here are some pictures of this action:

The Spanish wake up and close the gap to 7-6, but can't get any closer and Italy prevails 10-7 to clinch a spot in the quarterfinals.

One word about the TV coverage on BBC. In some ways, it is even more geared toward British medals than NBC is toward American medals. It is common for the announcers to openly root for the British athletes on air and every day, they show a graphic of Big Ben as the height equivalent to the number of medals that the British team won in Beijing and another tower equal to the number of medals won so far in London. The two towers are almost equal in height now as Team GB is raking in a bunch of medals in track cycling. On the other hand, I have learned much more about the technique required to perform some of these events than I have ever learned from watching American TV. For example, today they are talking about the technique of running high hurdles. They mention that it takes a man approximately 0.3 seconds to clear a hurdle and 0.7 seconds to run between hurdles so you have to have a very precise sense of timing in order to be any good at the hurdles. I've really enjoyed these bits and look forward to more of them.

Steps for the day: 18770 (our highest total so far)

London (Olympic Day 9)

We have women's weightlifting this afternoon so it is time to squeeze some culture into our Olympic trip. We walk back over to the London Bridge Underground station and for the first time head West instead of East to Olympic Park. Three stops later, we get out at Westminster. I love the London subway system and can't figure out why anyone would own a car. We've talked about it a lot, but here is a picture from the Jubilee line platform in London Bridge station:

We walk out of the station and find that we have intercepted the Women's marathon course:

Given the complaints about ticket prices that we've heard, I expect that there will be huge crowds her as there is no cost to attend. Fortunately, it doesn't start for another two hours so we have some time to look around. There is plenty to see. On one side of the street is Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament:

On the other side of the street is Westminster Abbey:

We walk around for a while on what the locals call the Mall (pronounced mal) and see statues of Nelson Mandela, Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill to name just a few. Then we get back onto the Underground for a quick ride back to our hotel. Along the way, we stop at a place called Prete a' Manger. This is a chain of sandwich shops that makes both vegan and regular sandwiches daily and which donates the sandwiches that don't sell each day to the local soup kitchens that help the homeless.

We have just enough time to get cleaned up before heading off to the ExCel arena for weightlifting. Our trip takes us onto a newly built Underground line called the DLR. This is a light rail system (i.e. above ground) that goes through the area called the Docklands where most of the ship traffic for London ends up.

Excel arena is very much like the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta. It houses a wide variety of Olympic sports like Boxing, Table Tennis, Wrestling, Taekwondo, Judo and Weightlifting. For some reason, we don't have three tickets together today so Beth sits with Sean and I sit with a couple of "Olympic junkies" from Sydney, Australia.

Today's event is the women's +75kg weightlifting. These are really, really big women, but there are all sorts of body types. Most women probably don't want to see their weights up in bright lights on the scoreboard, but if there is a tie, the lightest woman woman wins so up on the scoreboard the weights go. The lightest woman in the competition, at 78.53kg (173lbs) is Alberta Ampomah from Ghana:

The heaviest woman, at 157.04kg (346lbs) is Holley Mangold from the US:

Also on the board are the initial weights that each woman will attempt to lift. It is clear that this is going to be a special event because two women, Zhou Lulu (Zhou is her last name) from China and Tatiana Kashirina from Russia are both going to try to break the existing Olympic record for the Snatch on their first lift! I am not going to go into all of the rules of weightlifting here, but if you want to read about it, take a look at my blog called The Crucible.

The person lifting first is the person lifting the lowest weight, but there is some switching around as one lifter may decide to increase what they will try to lift and change places with another lifter. If a lifter fails to lift the weight, they have 2 additional minutes to try again.

We progress through the lighter weights. It is clear that there are perhaps 4 lifters who have a chance of winning a bronze medal while Zhou and Kashirina will win gold and silver unless they get hurt. Several of the women, including Mangold are clearly dealing with injuries so this is a possibility.

The real excitement starts when Zhou breaks the Olympic record of 140kg with her first lift in the Snatch of 142kg. That record lasts for about 2 minutes until Kashirina breaks the record with a lift of 144kg. Zhou failed at 146kg, but was successful on her 3rd lift to set another Olympic record. The crowd was already fired up when Kashirina came out to attempt a World record lift of 149kg and went totally nuts when she made it:

A couple minutes later, Kashirina added 2kg and increased her World record. To give you an idea of how strong the competition was, 9 of 14 competitors were able to lift more than their body weight in the Snatch!

The event is running behind schedule so there was basically no time between the end of the Snatch and the beginning of the Clean & Jerk. Again, we started with the people lifting the lowest weight and worked our way up. While Kashiruba and Zhou were basically in their own league, there were four women who have a realistic chance of winning the bronze medal after the Snatch: Marian Usman from Nigeria, Nahla Ramadan from Egypt, Jang Mi-Ran from Korea (who is the defending Gold medalist and holds the World record in the Clean & Jerk) and Hripsime Khurshudyan from Armenia (try saying that one three times fast).

Ramadan is successful on her first lift of 150kg (272kg total) and is able to increase her total to 277kg before failing to lift 158kg on her final lift. Jang quickly erases that total with a first lift of 158kg giving her a total of 283kg. Her 158kg lift was matched by Khurshudyan who took the lead at the time with a 286kg total. Usman nearly succeeded at lifting 160kg, but could not lock one of her elbows and was given a no lift. Here second lift was even worse, she dropped the bar as she was trying to get it to her shoulders and hurt her elbow in the process. There was a camera in the warm-up area and we see the Nigerian coach spray her elbow to freeze her nerves and kill the pain. This can't be good. I can't imagine lifting 160kg in any situation, but trying to do it with an injured elbow is crazy. But I guess if this is the moment that you've been working toward for the past four years, you would give it a try especially since Usman finished fifth in Beijing at the age of 18. Unfortunately, she again cannot get the weight to her shoulder in gets a dnf (did not finish).

With Usman out, there are only two women left with a chance for the bronze: Jang and Khurshudyan. Jang is successful on her second lift of 164kg to take the lead with a total of 289kg. Khurshudyan has one advantage - she weights more than 30kg less than Jang so Khurshudyan would win if there is a tie. She sets the weight at 166kg, but fails in her attempt so she has two minutes to try again. This time, she is successful and moves into first place with a total of 294kg. Now the pressure is back on Jang who must lift at least 170kg to win the bronze medal. This is much less than her World record of 186kg, but she may be injured because she fails on her last attempt. After her attempt, she knelt at the back of the stage and it felt to me like she was announcing her retirement. On the other hand, you would have thought that Khurshudyan had won the gold medal she was so happy.

Now it was on to the real business of the event. Kashirina sets the weight at 175kg and makes it look easy as she goes into first place with a total of 326kg which ties the Olympic record for total. Zhou counters with a lift of 181kg and sets an Olympic record total of 327kg. She has no expression when she completes the lift - ho-hum, another day at the gym! Kashirina keeps the weight at 181kg and again lifts it "easily". This gives her both the lead, the Olympic record and another world record for her total at 332kg. Zhou is heavier so she sets the bar at 187kg. The crowd goes from screaming wildly as Zhou comes on stage to dead silent as she steps up to the weight. Zhou gives some sort of yell (casting away evil spirits??) and grasps the bar. After a few seconds, she lifts it quite easily to her shoulders. Then she drives one foot forward and one foot backward to help drive the weight upward. She locks her elbows, wobbles a little and then waits until she hears the buzzer telling her that she has a good lift before dropping the weight:

Now Zhou has a total of 333kg. Kashirina could have increased her total by lifting a lesser weight before Zhou, but she wanted to be able to respond to whatever Zhou lifted, so now she has to try the same 187kg weight. Perhaps the pressure got to the 21 year old because she failed to get a good enough grip on the bar and dropped it on the way up to her shoulders and Zhou wins the gold medal. However, it is clear that Kashirina is thrilled with her silver medal and will surely be in Rio to try to win a gold medal. I would also be remissed if I did not mention the fact that 19 year old Luisa Peters from the Cook Islands set national records in the Snatch, Clean & Jerk and Total - well done! What an event!

The DLR is pretty packed on our way back to the hotel. We talk to an older woman (okay, she was probably our age!) from New Zealand who is curious about my pins. I happen to have a pin from Sydney shaped like a boomerang in my give-away pocket. I give it to her and show her the National Olympic Committee pins on my hat.

About that time, a young black woman plops down in front of us. She is frantically trying to dry off her passport which has gotten wet. The lady from New Zealand is speaking with her while we listen in. She explains that she is an athlete on the French team and had a Coke blow up in her backpack. I am trying to read her passport upside down and think that her name is Muriel Hurtis. She is running in the 4x400m relay in a few days. Unfortunately, she is still working on her passport when we get to our stop so I don't get a chance to ask her if she has any pins to trade. Oh well, at least we got to meet at least one athlete at this Olympics.

Steps for the day: 15,400

Newry (Olympic Day 4)

I apologize for the delay in putting out this blog. I'm way behind and have been spending most of my time trying to keep up with the Olympics. I hope that you enjoy it anyway.

Today we are off to the Republic of Ireland to visit the neolithic site of Newgrange and to look for the home of my mother's mother's family in County Cavan.

The weather is marginal as we head out - not raining, but definitely threatening. We have not been on the motorway for more than twenty minutes when our GPS system beeps telling us of traffic problems ahead. It turns out that there had been a big crash earlier in the morning and the police (called the Garda in Ireland) have closed the highway. We are directed off the highway along with all of the lorries (trucks) ahead of us. The fact that we were no longer on the motorway did not seem to affect the speed that these trucks were going. We are flying along these winding country roads at 80kph (50mph). We can't slow down because we are wedged in-between two speeding trucks. We go through a couple villages. Everyone in town is out looking at the street because they are probably seeing more traffic in their villages in a few minutes than they would typically see in a few months. Mercifully, we reach the end of the detour and get back onto the highway.

We get to the visitor's center in the Boyne valley and transfer to a shuttle bus for the ride to the site. We are on one of the earliest tours so there are not too many people with us. It is quite a diverse group. We hear Japanese, German, some Scandinavian language and what I think might be Polish on our 30 person bus. Our guide tells us that Newgrange was built about 5,200 years ago and is now listed as a World Heritage Site. It's story is similar to the first Chinese emperor's tomb in X'ian. It was abandoned. The outside of the mound gradually collapsed until it blended into the hill it was built on. And there it sat until it was rediscovered in the 1600's by the land owner. In the 1960's, a Professor O'Kelly from University College Cork excavated and rebuilt Newgrange as he believed that it originally looked. Here is what it looks like today:

Building Newgrange was no spur-of-the-moment decision. The white quartz on the outer wall came from about 50 miles away in one direction while the round darker stones on the mound were brought from another site about 50 miles away in a different direction. In addition, more than 300 huge stones, each weighing 1-10 tons, were brought from a quarry near a fishing village about 20 miles away. It is thought that these stones were brought to within 4km (2.4 miles) of the site by boat and then rolled uphill on logs. Our guide tells us that they estimate that getting one of these stones to the site would have taken a team of 80 men 4 days. Amazingly, the site was abandoned within 50 years after they finished building it.

While human remains were discovered in Newgrange, the thing that makes it famous is that the central axis of the tomb is exactly aligned with the sun on the shortest day of the year. Even after more than 5,000 years, the sun still makes it up into the center area of the tomb only on December 21st. Here is how they do it:

The small "window" above the entrance is where the sun shines in. It is at roughly floor level inside the tomb. The "alley" around the entrance completely keeps the sun out of the tomb except for 2-3 days before and after December 21st. On those other days, there will be dull light inside for a few minutes, but no direct sunlight. We all go into the tomb (several very low areas for me while Sean does the limbo under the low parts). Once inside, they turn out the lights and then they turn on a light to simulate what it looks like inside on December 21st. They tell us that they have a lottery for people to get to go in on December 21st to see what it looks like for real.

Inside, they also show us the construction of the roof consisting of interlocked stones that are tilted to the outside of the tomb. The construction was incredibly good because no rock has ever fallen inside the tomb and it is still completely dry. In fact, the only indication of exposure to the outside is some algae that is growing on some of the walls and the graffiti left by people from the 1600's when the tomb was first entered.

Outside, there are a number of large vertical stones that were added to the site many years after the rest of the site was constructed:

The whole Boyne valley has smaller versions of these tombs. In fact, the small green hill at the left of the golden field in the above picture is another one of these tombs. By the time that we get out, the rain is starting and we are glad that we beat it. We have a quick lunch at the visitor's center and then head toward County Cavan to look for family sites.

For a while, the combination of Mom's dead-reckoning and our GPS is working well, but shortly after we get to Bailieborough:

we start getting lost. Part is that it has been a few years since Mom has been here and new buildings have been built. The other part is that our GPS shows us in the middle of a large box with no roads where we are. It is so bad, we are starting to call it the Everlost system. Where we are is on a bunch of roads that are little more than goat paths. The rain is starting to collect in potholes and I'm starting to get worried that a) we will get stuck and b) we will have no idea of which direction to travel if we do get stuck.

Through some combination of skill and blind luck, we find the town of Corraneary where the Gilmores, Hills, Gambles and Lucases are from:

This might not be the middle of nowhere, but you can certainly see it from here. ;- ) Here is a picture of the Corraneary Presbyterian church just down the street:

After some time going in the wrong directly, we make our way to the motorway. It is still only around 4pm, but Mom decided that we should have an authentic Irish meal so we stop at a place called Fitzpatricks. Normally, it would have a great view of the lough, but today, we can't see beyond the other side of the street. Since I'm in Ireland for the first time, I order a half pint of Guinness to go with my steak sandwich. I hope that my Irish ancestors will forgive me, but while the Guinness is not bad, I prefer a stout if I'm drinking dark beer. All around us are road signs, old Guinness advertisements, farm equipment, etc. All of this helped reduce my stress level after all of the driving. Then we head out so that we can watch the Olympics at the Malcomson's. The main event is Michael Phelps in swimming. As expected, he beats Ryan Lochte by about 0.6 seconds to become the most highly decorated Olympian in history.

8717 steps 

London (Olympic Day 8)

Today we are off to Men's team handball at the Olympic stadium complex. The travel guides say that we should plan on getting to the Olympic stadium two hours before our event. Factor in the estimated 40 minute ride on the Underground (subway) and we would have to leave at 6:55 am for our 9:30am event. We also need to squeeze showers and breakfast in here somewhere. We decide that these time estimates are really conservative and will get up at 6am to leave the hotel at 7am.

Each event ticket comes with a ticket that gets you on the Underground for free. We get to London Bridge station in a few minutes and get right onto a train. It is already pretty well packed so we have to stand. I give away a couple pins to a pair of kids standing near us. This serves a dual purpose - I get to make someone happy and it decreases the load that I am carrying around.

We get to Stratford station and follow the crowd toward the stadium. The first thing we see is the huge new Westfield Mall. I had thought that we would be forced through this Mall to get into the park, but we just walk by the entrance. The organizers clearly spent a lot of effort on moving the crowds because even though there are a lot of people, the lines move quite quickly. Everywhere we look, there are volunteers welcoming us and being "perky".

We get to the security line and the bobby (policeman) looks at my vest covered with pins and says you can't go through the metal detectors wearing that. I tell him "no worries, we've done this many times" and strip off the vest, backpack and hat in a few seconds and put them into trays going through the metal detector. He asks whether I would like to make a donation to his pin box sitting nearby. I put 3 or 4 in for his crew.

It is only a little after 8am when we get through security so we are way ahead of schedule. This is good, because there are a lot of people going in the same direction. Here is the view:

The Olympic stadium is directly in front of us. The weirdly twisting thing on the left is the Orbit. I had thought that this was a roller coaster, but it appears to be a sort of observation platform. And everywhere there are people. This complex houses seven different stadiums so there are a lot of people here at any given time.

The team handball stadium is called the Copper Box. The signs say that we have a 20 minute walk to the stadium and we have some time for sightseeing along the way. One of the royal barges is parked in the stream next to the stadium complex:

After a couple wrong turns, we arrive at the Copper Box:

It is called the Copper Box because the stadium is clad with huge Copper sheets. It reminds us of the Basketball stadium in Beijing. Inside, it is much smaller than the Basketball stadium; holding about 7,000 people. We have great seats for this event in the 3rd row on one of the goal lines. The volunteer that is helping people find their seats comments on my pin vest and I explain that this is our 11th Olympics. I tell him that I hate to see volunteers without pins and hand him one. He asks are pins an important part of the Olympics. I explain that to me, pins are the competition for the spectators, but it worries me that we are already at Olympic Day 8 and this volunteer is still clueless about Olympic pins. This makes it much less likely that many spectators will get hooked before the Games ends in 8 days.

Team handball is a weird sort of hybrid with elements of football (soccer), rugby and basketball. There are six players and a goalkeeper on each team. The ball is slightly smaller than a basketball and shaped more or less like a football (soccer ball). The goals are shaped like small football (soccer) goals. Surrounding each goal is a 7 meter semi-circle. The shooters have to leave the ground before entering this circle:

Once a player receives a pass, they can run no more than 3 steps before they either have to bounce the ball off the ground or pass to someone else. Bouncing the ball off the ground is somewhat problematic. This is because the players hands and the ball are coated with sticky stuff to keep the ball from slipping out of their hands. So when they bounce the ball off the ground, it makes a sort of splat sound. The ball is so sticky that if it rolls on the ground, it rapidly slows down and comes to a stop.

The first match of the day is between Great Britain and the African champions from Tunisia. Unlike most of the European nations, handball is not very popular in Great Britain. In fact, the only reason that they have a team is because the home nation automatically qualifies for the Olympics. The scoreboard indicates that both teams have yet to win a game; both are 0-3. Great Britain has a goal differential of -62 while Tunisia has a goal differential of -23 so it is likely that this is the only chance that either team has for a win.

As you can expect, almost everyone is rooting for Team GB. Here is one of the few exceptions:

It is clear from the start that Tunisia is the stronger team and despite some excellent goalkeeping by the British goalkeepers, they gradually pull away to win 34-17.

The second match is Korea versus Serbia. Both of these teams are stronger than either Great Britain or Tunisia, but neither of them have won a match yet. Korea has a 39 year old guy named Yoon who has scored more than 2,000 goals in international competition, but he does not seem to have a prime role on this team. Here are a couple of the pictures that I took:

The match stays close throughout. The Koreans have five very good scorers, but the Serbians have nine players score and it is this balance that helps the Serbians win 28-22.

After the match, we go looking for something to eat. We settle for a long building with a variety of sandwiches laid out on shelves similar to a supermarket. You pick what you want and join a giant queue (line) to the till (cashiers) to pay. We have plenty of time so we decide to explore Olympic park. We find the only two story tall McDonalds that we've ever seen:

Next to the McDonalds is the Olympic Superstore. Outside the Superstore is the queue from hell. We ask one of the volunteers how long from the end of the line. He said that he would make a prediction, but was worried that the people he tells would come back and lynch him. We decide to give it a try figuring we can always bail out if the time is ridiculous. The organizers apparently have learned something from Disney because the line really moves fast. Sean gets a gold lame' Wenlock to add to his Olympic mascot collection and I buy a few pins (like I need any more!) and we decide to return for clothes.

Sean is getting antsy, but we decide to walk over and see whether we can climb up (or down) the Orbits tower. First, we have to find the queue, which is difficult when there are so many people about. We finally find the queue. Sean and I stand in the queue while Beth goes to find out whether we have to have preregistered to go up. She comes back and tells us that we have to already have tickets. Oh well, perhaps another day.

The most amazing thing to me was that in five hours walking around wearing a vest and hat covered with Olympic pins, I ran into exactly one person who was actively looking for pins - and he was also from California. In side the Superstore, I noticed that the price for each pin was 7 pounds (US$11-12). This is a lot for a place where the economy is not very good and may explain why so few people are wearing any Olympic pins.

The organizers have been trying to get people to exit the park through the West Ham station. That might be find if you were getting on a different Underground line into London, but since we have to be on the Jubilee line that comes from Stratford, walking to West Ham would just mean we'd be trying to get onto a train that had already been completely packed at Stratford. We go to Stratford station and find no problems. A train is just leaving when we walk into the station and another one pulls up in 2-3 minutes. We are able to get seats for the ride back to London Bridge station.

We make it home in time to watch the Great Britain women's pursuit track cycling team win the gold record and set the world record on all six of their races. The riders all say that the huge support that they get from the local fans makes all of difference. This is why the host nation always wins many more medals than their average.

Our lunch was fairly late so we don't want a big dinner. We end up at a Japanese restaurant. The selection is pretty limited, but the katsu and teriyaki that they have is very good.

The other reason for the small dinner is to get back to watch Athletics (Track & Field) on TV. We have been following the exploits of Team GB's Jessica Ennis who has been the face of the London Olympics for the last four years. Some people would fold under the pressure, but Jessica seems to thrive on it. She started out the heptathlon yesterday by running the fastest 110m hurdles ever by a heptathlete. In fact, it is so fast that it would have won the 110m gold medal in Beijing! Jessica sets personal best's in three of the first six events giving her a huge lead going into the last event, the 800m. All she had to do was stay close to her nearest competitor, Russia's Tatyana Chernova to win the gold medal. But like a true champion, she pushed through the pain to win the 800m.

The other event that got our blood pumping was the men's 10,000m. Of course, all of Britain wanted Mo Farah to win. In case you hadn't noticed, runners from East Africa (Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea) are pretty good at distance races. In fact, the last time that an African did not win the men's 10,000m was 1984 when Alberto Cova from Italy won. But for the first time in dog years, the US has a very good distance runner, Galen Rupp. Galen and Mo, who both train under former Olympic marathon champion Alberto Salazar,  hit the afterburners in the last half lap and manage to finish 1-2 ahead of two brothers from Ethiopia. Rupp's silver medal is the best US performance since Billy Mills won the 10,000m gold medal in Tokyo in 1964!

Steps for the day: 15,200

Liverpool to London (Olympic Day 7)

Today we are off to the Olympics by high speed train. But first, we've got to figure out how to give back the rental car. We manage to get the train station into the navigation system and off we go. But when we get to the train station, we see no sign of the Hertz drop off lot. It is only then that we read the contract and realize that the drop off is in another part of town. We allocated extra time so we are okay on time if it doesn't take too long. We go through a warren of little streets, half the time not knowing whether the streets are one way or not. After only a couple wrong turns, we manage to find the Hertz lot, get all our bags out of the car and hand over the keys - then find that Hertz doesn't have a shuttle bus and are going to take us to the train station in the same car we've just brought back. So, we shoe-horn the bags back into the car and off we go. We make it to the station with 25 minutes to spare and make our way to the correct platform. There, we see a sleek Virgin (is there any form of transport that Virgin doesn't own?) high speed train:

We paid for First Class so that we would have wireless access and I could work on this blog. We're sitting at a table for four with one other guy who is bent over his Apple Powerbook when we sit down. He doesn't say anything the whole time except to ask the Attendant for tea when she comes down the aisle. Beth spends here time reading her Kindle and Sean plays a marathon game of Peggle on his Kindle Fire while I work on the blog. The two hour journey flies by and in what seems like no time, we pull into Euston station.

We find our way to the taxi stand, but cause some problems in the queue when we don't get into the first taxi because it wasn't large enough to hold our three bags plus carry-ons plus the three of us. After two or three taxis, we see one that is large enough and climb in. While becoming a cab driver is one of the first occupations that new immigrants with no qualifications try in many cities, this is not how it works in London. We remember watching a TV show about how the brain works. One of the examples on memory was the test that a London cabbie needs to pass in order to get a taxi license. Imagine a city with a population of about 8.2 million. The cabbie test includes a random start location and finish location and requires the cabbie to list all of the turns from start to finish. Miss any of them and you fail. Once out on the streets, we see that the Olympics have added another level of difficulty by shutting down some of the streets to all but Olympic vehicles. We go through a bunch of what looks like alleys and I am thanking whatever deity that is listening that I don't have to drive through this mess. Before we know it, we arrive at the Novotel - London City South.

We check in and notice that Cartan Tours is based at the same hotel. This is funny to Beth and I because Cartan was the official ticket agent for the US until 2004. We went with Cartan to both Lillehammer and Nagano, but there prices are very high so for Sydney and Salt Lake City, we bought tickets from Cartan and then arranged out own housing. I'm very curious how much Cartan is charging their clients for the same rooms.

It is now mid-afternoon and we haven't eaten since breakfast so we go looking for something to eat. There is pizza bar just down the street so we try that. The concept is interesting. When you enter the shop, a server hands you a card the size of a credit card. Then there are a series of different areas where you can place an order: pizza, salad, pasta, drinks, etc. Each time you order something, you place your card up against a scanner. At the end of your mean, you take the card to the cashier who tells you how much you owe. Since we are all together, we only charge one of our three cards - and then manage to mix up which card has the charge. So we hand all three cards to the cashier and ask her to figure out which one has the charges. From her reaction we can tell this isn't the first time this has happened. I hand her one of my give-away Olympic pins for her trouble.

Feeling much better, we decide to explore our neighborhood. Walking back toward the hotel, the first thing we see is a building that the locals have taken to calling the Shard:

For the next few months, this building is the highest in Europe. There is another slightly taller one under construction (not sure where), but for now, it is the tallest.

We continue following the same street and find the London Bridge underground station that we will need to get to the Olympic Park tomorrow. Across the street is an open market that seems to be selling almost anything you'd want to eat. It has only been 20 minutes since we ate so Sean is not quite hungry yet and we head on.

On the other side of the Shard is London Bridge. We walk most of the way across so that we can get a good picture of Tower Bridge:

We had to wait a while because Tower Bridge is a drawbridge. When a ship with a tall mast comes by, they have to raise the Olympic rings and then the drawbridge.  While we are standing there, we see a police zodiac inflatable boat flying along the Thames with perhaps a half dozen police in full swat gear - a sign of the more than $1 billion being spent on Olympic security.

We turn around and head along the river toward our hotel. Here is a view along the Thames looking toward St. Paul's cathedral:

Shortly after that, we run into a statue of the Olympic mascot Wenlock:

The people in Atlanta must be feeling better about their computer-generated mascot Izzy that would have been my previous choice for the stupidest Olympic mascot. The only thing I like about Wenlock is his/her/it's name. Wenlock is the name of the village in England where Pierre du Cubertin came up with the idea for restarting the Olympics. It looks like they have these Wenlock statutes all over London (much like the Sharks in San Jose or the cows in Chicago) - all with unusual paint jobs. I'll see how many of them I can photograph while we are here.

Further down the river, we run across something that Beth really wants to see - the recreation of Shakespeare's Globe theatre:

I've been married long enough to know when Beth really wants to do something so Sean and I agree to go on the tour. Unfortunately, there are no tours in the afternoon as they get ready for the evening's performance (Henry V). So, we'll have to come back later in the week.

We have been walking for a while so we head back to the hotel for a rest before going out for dinner. I catch a brief nap while Beth and Sean watch Michael Phelps win two more gold medals (making 17 in his career so far). Just to give you an idea of how incredible this is, if Michael Phelps finishes with 18 gold medals as expected, he will be ahead of all but 31 countries in lifetime gold medals!

We decide that we'd like to eat either Indian or Thai for dinner and ask one of the hotel staff for a recommendation. She consults her computer (hmm - we could have done that) and recommends an Indian place near London Bridge station. We walk back toward the Shard and notice that there are a bunch of people standing in the street near the outdoor market. Apparently there are many more drinkers than there is space in the local bars so they just flow out into the surrounding area. The restaurant is down a flight from street level. The staff doesn't seem very smooth; indicating to us that this restaurant must be new. The food is good, but the ventilation in the restaurant must not be great because there is a vague smoke smell in the air that is off-putting.

We walk back to the hotel. I settle down to blog and Beth watches the Olympics. Instead of watching the Olympics, Sean notices that the view out our hotel includes the flight pattern for one of the local airports. He points out several Airbus 380s coming in for a landing. We've got an early event tomorrow so we go to sleep around 10pm.

Steps for the day: 14571

Newry, Northern Ireland (Olympic Day 3)

Apologies to my Olympic readers, but the next few blogs will mostly involve family history with an occasional comment about the Olympics. Feel free to tune out for a few days. For those who would like to see what we are up to, welcome.

Today, we are visiting sites relevant to my mother's father's Harshaw family. Harshaw means High Wood from the Norse. Two particular people will show up again several times, James Harshaw and John Martin. James was a farmer and wrote a journal every day for about 30 years. It remains one of the only surviving sources of information about  Ireland during the time of the great potato famine. John Martin was James' nephew, a leader in the movement for Irish independence, and former Member of Parliament.

Here is how I am related to these folks:

Stephen Barrett Robie (b 1955)

Marjorie Harshaw (b 1930, still with us!)

Harold MacCloskey Harshaw (b 1896, d 1978)

Rev. William Roseborough Harshaw (b 1855 d 1948)

Rev. Michael Harshaw (b 1807, d 1874)

Andrew Harshaw (b 1755, d 1813)

Andrew Harshaw (b 1700)

James Harshaw (b 1744, d 1822)

1)James Harshaw (The Diarist) (b 1796, d 1867) 

2)Jane Harshaw (b 1787, d 1847) married Samuel Martin (b 1749, d 1831)

John Martin (b 1812, d 1875)

Our first trip of the day was to visit my Mom's friend and relatives Jean and Morris Hillis. Jean's father was a Harshaw and directly related to James Harshaw. We pull into the driveway and there are two huge farm machines (a thresher and a hay bailer). In addition to their farm (which backs up against the Malcomson's property), Morris runs a business renting out his farm equipment to other local farmers. Jean didn't know that we were coming so she was surprised when my Mom was standing there when she opened her door. We have a short conversation and get to see a picture of James Harshaw that I had bought on eBay that she is holding for Mom until Mom decides what to do with it. 

Our next stop is at the Donaghmore Presbyterian Church. This was the church that James and John both went to and were Church Elders. The Presbyterians were generally caught in the middle in the fight between the Catholics, who wanted a unified Ireland, and the Protestants, who wanted to continue British rule. Interestingly, both James and John were in favor of independence. However, their choice had nothing to do with religion. They simply believed that the British had done a poor job governing Ireland and that local rule would be better - this choice got them both into big trouble later in their lives. I asked Mom why if both James and John were members of this church, neither were buried here. The answer is that they didn't at that time have a cemetery. Here is a picture of the church:

We meet up next with Adrian Murdoch (another cousin) who will take us to see the ruins of the cottage where John Martin grew up. Adrian now has control over the site and hopes to develop it into a small museum about John Martin.

The cottage itself is down a quiet country lane:

I am not sure what the reason is, but there are many ruins of homes about in Ireland, but the barns are often in pretty good shape. Perhaps this is because the farmers working the fields didn't own the land. So when a new tenant took over a set of fields, there was motivation to protect and repair the barn - it was valuable to the next tenant. But the home was unimportant and usually not built as well as the barns. In addition, the population of Ireland was decimated during the potato famine so there was even less need for these other homes. John Martin's home at Loughorne cottage follows this trend. The cottage itself is virtually gone - only parts of a couple walls still exists. Here is part of the ruins:

The barn is a typical Irish design - two stories on one side with the barn built into the side of a hill so that you can walk into the top level from the opposite side:

As you can see, the barn, which was renovated in the 1940's, is in pretty good shape. Adrian is hoping to put his museum in the small out-building to the left.

On our way out, we saw potato plants that are still coming up after more than 100 years since John Martin was cultivating them. This is pretty ironic given that it was a blight to these same potatoes that lead to the death of millions and partial depopulation of Ireland around 1850.

Next on the agenda was a visit to James Harshaw's house. Unlike John Martin's house, this one looks like it is in great shape:

Our final stop in the morning was a visit to St. Bartholomew's Church of Ireland in Donaghmore. This is where John Martin was buried. It is said that thousands of people walked long distances to attend his funeral. Here is his headstone:

These words give some indication of the place in Irish history that John Martin held at the time of his death. It was no exaggeration to say that he was close to being the Irish equivalent of Thomas Jefferson. Yet 137 years later, very few Irishmen have even heard of him. There are a number of reasons for this. First, John Martin was not into self-promotion. He just tried to do everything that he did as well as possible. He didn't write any books and most of his writings were in local newspapers. As a Presbyterian, he didn't have a constituency that benefited from his fame. The Protestants regarded him as a traitor because he favored Irish independence. The Catholics preferred to remember Catholic nationalists like Daniel O'Connor. So, he disappeared from history. If you would like to read more about John Martin, check out my Mom's blog:

http://abelovedpolitician.blogspot.co.uk/

There was also a nice Celtic cross in that cemetery:

Sean is reaching starvation levels so we take a quick ride into downtown Newry for lunch. Since I'm in the United Kingdom, I go for the fish and chips (french fries to my American readers). Beth and Mom have heated baguettes and Sean has curry on rice (it is easy to get Indian food almost anywhere!). 

We say goodbye to Adrian and head out to look for the church at the village with the colorful name of Tyrones Ditches. Mom is guiding us, but is not sure we are on the right road. We go up and down hills and around blind corners that have me putting the steering wheel in a death grip. Finally, we find the church. My ancestors Andrew and Michael Harshaw both worshipped here. I think that Michael went to America and Andrew might be buried here, but did not have a headstone.

Our last stop in this family history marathon is the Presbyterian church in Glascar. This is where James Harshaw is buried and my Mom wanted us to see the headstone because we helped pay for it (after many years of famine, there was no money left to pay for James' headstone) as part of the celebration of the rediscovery of James' diaries. Here it is: 

James' journal included everything from crop prices and weather to episodes of sectarian violence and the catastrophic effects of the potato famine. If you'd like to learn more, check out my Mom's blog and the subject:  http://forgottenireland.blogspot.co.uk/2007/06/james-harshaw-irish-farmer.html

By this time, it was time for dinner. It was a Monday night and most of the restaurants are closed, but Walter Malcomson recommended that we try a Chinese restaurant in Bambridge called Gaze. We are always game for Sean to exercise his Mandarin so off we go. We park the car and Mom tells us that a bomber blew up a car just a block from Gaze during "the troubles". We can only hope that "the troubles" never return although I get the feeling that this unrest continues to bubble just below the surface.

The food at Gaze is good - a blend of many different Asian cultures instead of just Chinese. Beth, Sean and I share dishes from China, Thailand and India - yum. Sean gets a smile from the waitress when he asks her in Mandarin whether she speaks Chinese. After a brief conversation, she tells Sean that he speaks better Mandarin than she does!