Two for One

Days are running together now as we near the home stretch of the 2004 games. The night shift finally broke down to get a taste of Atheni nightlife in the Plaka district downtown. This was last night. But, as these things go, last night became this morning and this morning turned into a long 48 hour day. No regrets, though.

Whereas Americans will have their fun in a night club or a bar or a venue of some sort, the venues here cover city blocks. We maneuvered our way through a mingling crowd of thousands filling the cobblestone and paved streets of Plaka, Manistiraki and Syntagma Square in the heart of Athens. The nightlife was almost surreal as this truly international olympic crowd boasted colorfully-costumed Bracilians, raucous Greek chanters and tables of revelers lining the walkways and streetways outside kiosks, open-air restaurants, bars and shops. Where there weren't people, there were cars, bikes and the occasional Smart Car--a vehicle that derives its name from, where else, common sense. Fuel efficient to the tune of 50+ miles to the gallon, comfortable to ride in, and if you can't find a spot small enough to park it in, you can probably zip it up in a gym bag when you get where you're going. (I'm contemplating bringing one back in my carry-on luggage). We, did, however, find out that one must convert everything here...including gas prices...to the metric system! Our little American posse had reached near euphoria when we first read an .84 cent fuel price at an Eko service station. Turns out they sell gas by the litre. Suddenly mass transit makes for great math!

Back to Greek nightlife. So anyway, it was good. We arrived home with enough time to take a shower and see the sunrise before heading back out to elimination rounds of men's wrestling at Anno Liossia Olympic Complex this morning. Sixty-six kilo US wrestler Jamill Kelly of Atwater, California, held his head high for 3 victorious matches. We thrilled to the freestyle segments and caught 5 minute powernaps through the Greco-Roman bouts. (Greco-Roman is a wrestling style akin to watching bread mould).

The rest of the day was spent at the IBC, logging info into a database and regaling the triumph of the U.S. men's 200 meter triple-medal triumph the night before. The trio of Shawn Crawford, Bernard Williams and Justin Gatlin crossed the finish line like an arrowhead for the Gold, Silver and Bronze.

When the day was finally blogged and accounted for, we were more than ready to take more than a Greco-Roman powernap.

Tourist Alert

If misery loves company, we figured we'd join the crowd after the dismal show of athletic faux pas in yesterday's less than stellar Canadian finish. With tickets in hand, my friend and I jumped a media bus to rided out to the Bronze medal baseball game between Canada and Japan. The actual venue was the highlight. Our media bus shouldered up to the Meditteranian coast for several miles of the venture before crossing off the main road. Upon the recent completion of Athens International Airport the abandoned airport has been utilised for many of the games' venues. The Helliniko Olympic Complex comprises the fencing, basketball, softball, field hockey and other sites along with the baseball stadium. Unfortunately, the game was never really a game. When all is said and done, though, who cares! It's all about atmosphere. We spent a large chunk of the game talking with an architect from London named Rob and people watching-- turns out Japanese athletic fans love to make, excuse me, "be" a spectacle. These guys were in competition for a replacement Olympic mascot. And they danced from the 1st inning on! Olympic baseball in a foreign country, excuse me, international destination, provides culturally relevant music such as Yiorgos Dalaras, Dimitra Galani and, of course, Outkast and Britney Spears. (I guess she loves rock n' roll no matter where you go).

Unfortunately, the game never really became a game. The Japs ousted Canada 11-2. But fun was had by all. We spent the rest of the day working away in the IBC. Sorry to cut this abrupt. The US women's soccer is getting geared up to take on Brasil. Check back for game summary.

Canada Runs Out

It was a rough day for our neighbors to the north. When the dust finally settled, one could have heard a Maple leaf drop in our IBC office...or crunch or what have you. Mere minutes after Lori-Ann Muenzer struck Gold over Tamilla Abassova (RUS) in the women's cycling sprint final, the most highly touted Canadian athlete hit the ground...and she wasn't running. Track star Perdita Felicien found her Olympic dreams fall to the track when she crashed through the first barrier in the women's 100 meter hurdles final sending splintered wood, arms and Russian athlete Irina Shevchenko sprawling to the ground around her. Nary a few minutes later, with the loss still weighing heavy upon them, the Cuban baseball team trounced the Canadians potential 3 run comeback on a shot that was going, going...caught with inches in left center!

Needless to say, the ranks have been happier at other times during these Olympic Games. But not to worry. We now have tickets to the Bronze medal bout between Canada and the Japs tomorrow.

Prison Break!

Today was our great escape from the inner chambers of the IBC. Our team started off with our first real-life visit to the Olympic Stadium. There was a lot to take in. The torch. The people. The loudspeakers blasting directions in a litany of different languages. During our 4 hours in the event, we caught long jumping, 100m women's race heats, the hammer throw, shot put and even the women's race walk. A race-walk is basically a group of well-trained athletes engaged in a constant hip-swinging effort to avoid running. If you've ever watched your dog dry off after the shower horror, you get a very similar impression.

Leaving the stadium (rumor has it Athens signed off on a hefty $200 million + euro to a French architect simply to slap a roof on the existing structure) I parted ways with my group to go exploring. A few hundred yards away, The Today Show was broadcasting live from an outdoor venue. Katie Couric was working an interview angle with Phelps while Al Roker was working an angle with crowds. Al rarely has to work an angle as a meteorologist here. The weather is about as sure as the need for Aspirin after 3 hours of Dick Vitale play-by-play.

Moving on, the next discovery was a visit to the World Championship McDonald's (consult a recent blog). Imagine your McSandwich arriving in 30 seconds and fried in olive oil. Efharisto poli!

War of Pins

Today saw the end of olympic judoka glory. I must say 75 kilogram women bout much slower than do the bouters of the 56 kilogramers. (A bout, I learned, is one match in Judo language). There's a lot of other language that goes with it but I'll spare you. It was hard enough just getting names like DONGUZASHVILI off the backs of spinning judo-killa jerseys. We were all inspired by an article from The Miami Herald's Dave Barry today as he compared American badminton to olympic badminton. According to Barry, Americans see badminton as something you pull out of the attic on the 4th of July to poke fun at yourself. Alternatively, the guys and gals that play here can turn a plastic shuttlecock into a weapon of mass destruction. Destruction of medal hopes anyway.

Daily Phelps update--The Wonderboy went gold digging again today for his 6th trip to the podium. As far as we're concerned, he could just pitch a tent up there. Other US notables are the women's basketball and beach volleyball. The Women's swim team keeps coming up golden too. And I have just been informed from our field reporter, Aaron "Zeeeeeeeke" Mohr (that sounds good over the intercom) that women's softball has a 42-0 scoring record on opponents!

I finally got involved in the pin craze today. It seems like the favorite media pasttime (other than going over to get our McBurger from the #1 McChampionship Food Service Team) is trading network pins. I've seen guys with more metal on them than the Russian fencers! These are the guys that make you want to start a western brawl at the security detectors as they peel off all their pin-laden layers. At the risk of being branded, I did a little collecting myself, scoring one from the guys at Televisa Mexico. The one that I will cherish forever, though, is from the guys at Al Jazeer. These guys are very discreet, tucked away in a corner of the IBC, but they're covering all Arab athletes and really zeroing in on the hometown Iraqi favorites. It also turned out to be a story op for the guys at CBC Radio (from Canada).

The rest of the day met with good news. According to sources within the Asbury College team, numerous of our AOB workers are running cameras at various venues around the games. One guy even scored an associate producer (in the field) gig. Yes, all seems well in our little paradise.

The Daily Show

Our CBC team has been coming in later the last couple days. Some of the larger team including the AOB camera assistants have been lugging camera cable and jotting notes from 8am till midnight and later. That math works out to be 16+ hours when you count the commute to work. Fortunately, some of the AOB guys have scored company cars to shuttle back and forth to work at the games. We all grimaced in agony (or at least those of us who are Americans) today upon word of the US women's tennis gals loss. Venus Williams was eclipsed in a match with China and the Aussie's ousted Michael Phelps in the 200m freestyle swim on the shoulders of Ian Thorpe. I may never eat a bloom'n onion again.

Hanging around Canadians has proven very educational. I find myself dropping fewer "y'alls" and using a lot more "eh's". Whatdayaknow, we are crossing the language barrier. Still, the local supermarket girl keeps quizzing me on my greek and I keep failing miserably.

The strides locals tell us that Athens has taken in the last few months to prepare the city still boggles the mind. We are witnessing a re-creation of a community here. A newly finished metro rail system. Numerous new stadiums that have risen to create whole new areas of town. A brand new international airport that rivals most in the states. Greeks are proud and they have reason to be. And we are proud to be a part of it.

Game On!

Just in case you weren't one of the 3 billion or so people worldwide who was watching the show, we rang in the Athens games with a spectacle unmatched. Currently, our Canadian media team is staring down 1:30am, waiting on our ride back to our resident housing. Many of our fellow Athens Olympic Broadcasting (AOB) Asburites are working 16 hour days as camera assistants, researchers, and camera ops. Even so, spirits are high around here as we look forward to Day 1 of competition tomorrow.

Tonight, during the 3 hour gauntlet "Parade of Athletes" at the Opening Ceremonies, we saw a warm reception to an American team that we were hesitant about and an Iraqi team that also garnered a lot of support. Those guys are already making a name for themselves, ousting the Portuguese men's soccer in their first bout yesterday. The 4-2 victory thrilled Iraqi fans who couldn't seem to stay in their seats (they kept running out onto the field).

In other news, yours truly scored an interview in an internet cafe' with a Korean reporter earlier today. Surrounded by patrons eating their ham on rye, we talked sports, politics and what it's like to maneuver Greece's newest olympic sport, metro transit.

Athens at Work

We logged our first games yesterday. The US athletes to watch are definitely Michael Phelps - he stands to win 8 golds while he is here and pocket a million $$$ from Speedo if he can get at least 7. This guy has the wing span of an albatross and he cuts through the water like a shark. He's not even 21 yet! The women's soccer team is in their last hoorah. Mia Hamm, Judy Fowler and the girls have revolutionized women's soccer worldwide and some of them have been playing together since they were in middle school. The 2004 games may very well be their last events together before some head for the showers and enter retirement. Looking to win gold and go out with a bang. The US men's gymnasts, the Hamm twins should be swinging to a good show. And this Olympics marks the first time in forever and a day since Afghanistan and Iraq will once again be competing in the games. Bombs away! This brings me to the issue of security. We have lots of it. There are over 400 US special forces implanted into the Atheni culture that have been living here for a number of years. Dozens of countries are working together to supply a massive ground force. We regularly see the Hellenic Police or others toting AK-47's at an entrance or checkpoint. But the underground security is the impressive thing. Remote sensors for radioactivity have created map views of all radioactive hot beds in a radius around Athens. If any material begins to "move", security can isolate it and destroy quickly. Many other measures have been put in place. Nothing is completely secure but the measures that have been taken are impressive. More to come. I'll be keeping everyone updated and hopefully sending some pics in the near future.

Where It All Began

Hello Greece! This morning we woke and spent our first day getting the lay of the land. We struck out to join the masses riding the bus transit, the metro transit, the rail transit, the taxi transit, and the transitory space between knowing your surroundings and becoming utterly and hopelessly reliant on every map, English speaking Greek or corner-side kiosk you can find. (Random side note: My dirty little secret is I'm actually writing this blog one week after the fact--I'm playing catch up--and I'm watching olympic beach volleyball out of the corner of my eye. When did olympic sports get courtside cheerleaders anyway?)

After finding ourselves (and not in a metaphorical sense) we arrived at the International Broadcasting Center (our home away from home) where we'd be working for the next month. Jim Owens gave us the grande tour of what is currently the most technologically advanced building in the world. We went to the heart of the AOB hub, a room of switchers and walls of t.v. monitors stretching yard upon yard down a long corridor. I felt like Captain Nemo. The Olympics are a testing ground, turns out, for cutting-edge technology. Panasonic, for example, is giving their new P2 model professional digital camera it's first test drive. This thing records on digital cards and never actually uses tape. It records for HDTV, looks really nifty and costs more than John Kerry's reputation. (You have to spend more to save face when your wife likes tell the press to shove it.)

Moving on from the IBC we spent the rest of our afternoon at the Acropolis. Amazing! Cobblestone streets, a theatre carved in the granite wall of the mountain with tiered granite seating, the Parthenon in the distance, and the mighty Agora. From the top of the Acropolis you can see a 360 degree swath of the ancient city of Athens.

Needless to say, we got an eyeful today. If I've learned one thing from this experience it is carpe' diem is not greek, digital cameras only hold so many photos and I need to write shorter blogs.

Coast to Coast

My connector flight to Leonardo da Vinci went airborne from Atlanta yesterday. When your in-flight movie turns out to be another dud with dynamic duo J-Whoe and Ben Affleck (Jersey Girl) you end up making a lot of new friends on the plane. I met a girl from Jerusalem and we talked about Israel for a while, a group of 20 rowdy Texans who were planning to spend time gawking at the Sistine Chapel before they hopped another flight to Atheni land, and two stewardesses, excuse me, flight attendants, who regaled us with stories of electricity coursing through planes after direct hits from lightning.

A day-long layover and a standby flight later, I arrived in Athens with a couple AOB Asbury workers I met on the plane. We came face to face with what some might call an "opportunist" taxi cab driver. Turns out, we got taken for a ride--to the tune of 30 minutes, 38 euros and a "thank you very much-you must not be from around here?"

Anyway, we're on the ground and we'll be waking up to the Grecian landscape and a Grecian sunrise. Ehfaristo poli!