Phase 1
Hi From DFW Airport. This was the "warm-up" leg of our adventure. We have two long flights coming up: 9 hours to London and 9 hours to Beijing, for an early morning arrival in Beijing on August 13. So far so good. Everything on time and running smoothly.
We're Here!
Jetlagged and tired, but here in the Loong Gardens. Photos to follow. It's hot (no big deal for we Tucsonenses) but humid (ugh). Had a nice breakfast and getting ready to explore the surroundings of our hotel after cleaning up.
Forbidden City
Any day that starts with kittens is bound to be a good one. Jen demonstrated her ability to find and befriend cats on yet another continent. After the hotel breakfast we took a bus tour to the Forbidden City. Plans for a group tour of Tianemen Square had to be cancelled because groups are presently not permitted to visit that site, although individuals may. We may go back to visit on one of our free mornings. We did end up with a rather rushed but fun tour of the Forbidden City. Our tour guide "Michael" was entertaining and informative, reviewing the history of China as a civilization on the way to the Forbidden City, and then pointing out major features of the structures and stories and symbols within the complex. We got on the bus just as it started to rain, and waded through the deluge getting really soaked on the way across the hotel complex. We just walked back from the TAFNOT opening reception (good Chinese finger foods), where Dwight Stones spoke briefly about US prospects and the planned TV coverage. Tomorrow we have evening tickets for T&F, although we may take the subway in early to explore the Olympic Green in advance of our events.
At the Olympic Green
We'll upload pictures tomorrow, but I thought it worth an update today. Yesterday was our first day at the Olympic Green. Although we only had evening T&F tickets, we took the tour bus to the Green at 9am so that we could sightsee the green: and it's so enormous that it did take all day. It's beautiful, as the pictures tomorrow will attest. We enjoyed watching the first evening of track, although we left early and didn't see the women's 10K where Shalane Flanagan set a new AR and got a bronze medal.
Although we didn't come to China to eat at McDonald's, we decided to sample that for a quick fill-up yesterday afternoon. It was complete bedlam in the restaurant in the Olympic Green, and two Big Mac meals (pretty much indistinguishable from standard US fare) were less than $4.00 each. Today we tried a "self-heating" lunch - a rice-bowl with a kind of beef stew, where you pull a tab and it gets nearly instantly scalding steaming (never selling this in the US because of lawsuits) hot. It was about $3.00 per person. In general, whether at venues or at McD's, the Chinese don't appear to be good at queue-ing, preferring the crush and sidle to move lines.
This morning we watched the women's vault qualifying. April Steiner-Bennet and Jenn Stuzinski made the final for the US. Isinbayeva took one stellar jump at 4.60 to move on, while April and Jenn made 4.50 along with 11 other women. And April looked much, much better than Stuzinski. I'll have to review the results, but I don't recall there being any major surprises.
A track observation: either Hyleas Fountain and the men's throwers for the US need to get a sports psychologist, or fire the ones they've got. It was painful to watch otherwise well-prepared athletes nearly completely sabotage their own efforts. Fountain double-faulted in the heptathlon LJ, having to settle for a safety jump well below her best and putting back into second place. We'll see this evening if she can recover from that and yesterday's weak shot-put performance to go for the gold.
Unusual sound for the day: the theme song for mission impossible played on accordion. That song's supposed to be played in 5/4, and instead it was as square as accordion music could possibly be.
Hope you are all well! We'll do a photo upload tomorrow. Thanks to Dominic Johnson (Pole Vault, St. Lucia and Tucson!) we have access to the Samsung friends and family center, which is providing slow and unreliable but free email and internet. (And snacks, and respite from the heat and sun.) For the downloads we'll get a better service (but not free) from our hotel so that we can share photos. Tomorrow we don't have any morning activities and plan on sleeping in, going to the hotel pool, and maybe visiting the 'Jade Factory' which is nearby, And we'll catch up on our photojournalistic efforts.
We Were There!
The stadium was already very excited, with the conclusion of the Women's Heptathlon and Shot-Put, and it was pretty close to a frenzy at the conclusion of the men's 100. You usually see someone run away from the field like that in a high school meet, not at this level. That was a race for the ages.
Today is a "rest day" for us: laundry and lounging around with an evening of track and field tonight. We are tired and have sore feet. And while we didn't come to China to watch TV, an easy day today will help keep our energy levels up over the next couple of days. Tomorrow and Tuesday will be a shopping/sightseeing day, with our usual evening track sessions. Then Wednesday is a tour of the Great Wall with evening track and then we finish up with a couple of double-session days of morning and evening track, which is exhausting.
Some images of note: the "friendlies," the mascot group that shows up at about 30 minutes before the start of each session, and the cheerleaders. They appear in the big-screen programming and they are pretty funny. In "The Incredibles" there was a comment about "cheerleaders, at a trackmeet? I mean, what's that about?" and those are my sentiments exactly. They are rather talented performers - yesterday evening it was more of a demonstration of ribbon and fan performance, but the pink cheerleaders at the start of the first evening session were something else. Friends don't let friends cheer.
It's unfortunate that the Olympic Truce isn't holding. I almost caused an international incident at the Samsung Friends&Family center when I spilled the beer of a Belorussian athlete. It should have been funny: trying to step over our bags, with RDW saying "watch the table" just as I knocked into it. However, the athlete was really upset by the loss of the beer - but they were free? I guess you should never come between a Belorussian and his beer.
We Were There! Part II
Another WR! Isi knows how to get it done. Congrats to Jenn Stuczynski. Too bad she didn't actually seem to be enjoying the experience!
Men's PV Qualifying Train Wreck
We were there last night to watch the vault and watched the train wreck that it was. There were at least 9 major stops: event introductions, medal ceremonies, and then the standards debacle. These were complete stops of 3-5 minutes (cone on the runway), about 15 minutes for the first bar malfunction at 5.65. In general it took quite a bit of time to get any jumper set up. They may have appreciated the extra time, but it was wildly inconsistent. I admire anyone that could make a bar: there was no opportunity to set up a rhythm. It was hard to tell when to be ready to jump. The jumpers arrived in the stadium at 7:20 and started to vault at 8:40. There was about a 10 minute break before the start for intros and such. Just as a competition would start to move between jumpers, there'd be a delay for an event introduction or for a medal ceremony or for some random (to us) reason. In general it was run very slowly - at the start of the meet guys were waiting and ready to go at the end of the runway on deck, but they stopped doing that when it became clear how slowly and irregularly it was being run. As a matter of general practice they didn't move up one pit until the other was ready, and even the other pit had to stop for a while until they figured out there was not quick fix for the broken standards. Pretty much every time that Brad took the end of the runway the standards became stuck and he'd have to wait until they got the bar up. In my opinion Brad probably didn't run quite enough before his jumps, but then, how did anyone know when to loosen up? Energy management (both physical and mental) must have been a real challenge. We left the stadium at just a few minutes after midnight when they were still haggling over whether to jump at 5.75 or to set the finalists then. (And then experienced an insane taxi ride where the driver also got lost...but that's another story.) They should have scheduled this as a morning prelim as they did for the women, so that there are no finals and no medal ceremonies to disrupt things. I think that it could be argued that there was a significant difference in the performances between pit A and B, based on the "facilities". I'm also pretty sure that no appeals will be granted. This was a real heartbreak to watch. They are all great athletes, and the people in the final will put on quite a show, but the dismal management of the competition and standards malfunction means that it was definitely not a competition that systematically selected for the best vaulters: just the guys who got lucky and managed the competition (not the vaulting) slightly better than others.
Notes on the Great Wall
Yes: we got to the point shown in this picture.
There is a Starbucks at the Great Wall.
We had a real sense of accomplishment, especially when we got to the top, and took a look around, but then again when we got to the bottom and looked back up at it!
Note the similarity between the wall, and the photos of the staircase up to our seats at the Games (OG 5).
There is nothing small about China.
Greetings from Guilin...
We'll get caught up on uploading albums in the next day or so. We are in Guilin, which is an agricultural town about the size of Tucson. Pix uploaded today include the Beijing Zoo, our last stop in Beijing. The Xi'an and Guilin pix will go up later. We have had a great time, although we have a upper respiratory thing going. Guilin's air is pretty nice, since it is very green here. More later. Time for a noodle dinner!
Hong Kong Airport
Hey all: on our way to London! Hong Kong is an amazing city. All the photos are up: will need to cull duplicates from the Li River photos.....Sorry.
Hong Kong/London Album Up
Our last day in Hong Kong included a walk on their 'walk of stars' (handprints of Jet Li, Jackie Chan, and more) and other tooling around. We had a 'rest day' yesterday, getting to know our neighborhood (multiethnic, many young families, lots of tourists) with Thai, Japanese, Indian, Brit, Italian, and about every other kind of restaurant you could think of.
Our hotel is WORSE (cramped basement) than the hotel we had in Beijing, by far, but it's paid for so we'll have to live with it. It's definitely for the backpacker set. At least it's reasonably clean. It's quiet in the evening, but the hammer drill in the building next door during the day time cut into my nap today.
Today we took the Picadilly line into Westminster, saw the London Eye, the London Aquarium (nice but not L14 per person nice), the Jubilee walk, then over to Buckingham Palace, Wellington Square, and Hyde Park, including a visit to the Hard Rock Cafe and "The Vault" with Clapton-abilia, and many other artifacts (a bustier from Madonna - ouch - you'll put your eye out) from legends of rock. The tour guide was a cut-up, too. We managed to fortuitously miss the London rain while in the aquarium, the vault, or on the tube.
Of course the pix are all mixed up, and it will take a bit more robust internet connection than we've currently got to sort that out.
Still deciding on what to do tomorrow.
Tower of London
Toured the Tower of London today. RDW got to help demonstrate the ballista (medieval siege engine: bolt-thrower) during the instructional presentation. Their interactive event for the summer has focussed on understanding the Tower as a fortress (rather than as a prison, which is how it's often understood). Interesting place, and an interesting archaeological challenge: which 'version' of the tower is preserved and displayed? How are things 'restored' to which era or style? The Crown Jewels are quite beautiful, if you're into that sort of thing. And of course it rained. We missed most of it until we forgot umbrellas after dinner.
Never Underestimate the London Museum of Science
WOW! What a facility. It took an hour and a half to get through the fifth floor, which was Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine Exhibits. Over the course of a full day we worked our way down to the basement, and on pretty much every floor there were interesting interactive exhibits. Levers to Pull, Buttons to Push, Things that Go Twee! That pushed off our plans for the Natural History Museum for later, maybe tomorrow or the next day.
For you gear-heads out there, this is a place that takes restoration and modelling really, really seriously. Just as we were leaving the turned over one of the great big steam engines. Impressive!
So if you're in London, leave enough time (6 hours) for the Museum of Science. And the best news: at this point in time, it's FREE!
Willits Plus Camera Plus Living Things = Lots of Photos
London Zoo, via Regent's Park and Baker Street (hence the Sherlock Holmes Statue). Nice zoo. Heavy on the birds, with a wonderful butterfly-arium, and an OK aquarium. (No sea mammals and nothing very large.) A lot of the more space-intensive species seem to be at Whipsnade Zoo (sp) north of London, but this zoo really is nice with interesting and interactive habitats and nice interpretive resources.
The really cute white monkeys are in a 'rainforest' exhibit with no barriers between people and animals (monkeys, sloths, and birds and a colonizing mouse) and the little monkeys are about the size of your fist.
The day was probably about as good as it could get in September in London: mostly sunny off and on, cool breeze, air temperature comfortable at about 65-68.
Walkabout
We started the day taking the tube up to King's Cross and St. Pancras station, checking out the location of Platform 9 3/4 for those into that sort of thing, and the general layout of a pretty amazing space.
We then walked to the Wellcome Institute, to check out its open exhibits and the Library. The current exhibits include 27 human skeletons from London's past, that were exhumed during various construction excavations. They range from 2-3 CE to 19th century. Interesting stories. They have exhibits which integrate artistic interpretation to current events in medical research, plus a subset of Wellcome's own extensive and idiosyncratic medical history and anthropology collection (Japanese Ivory miniature erotica, shrunken heads, to multiple copies of apothecary jars and medical instruments).
Jen got a Wellcome Library card. She may need to come back here to do some real research. It's a pretty friendly facility with an extensive collection of primary documents and history of medicine books and journals.
After that it was a walk to Kensington Park, pictures of Peter Pan and the Kensington Sunken Garden, and then back on the tube. Nap and Dinner.
British Museum, Picadilly, and Walking
The British Museum:
Excuse me, Greece called and they want their stuff back.
Three cheers for Victorian National Identity Projects, The "Invention" of a Continuous Western Civilization, and Contemporary Memory Projects.
Did Britain colonize it? Then there's stuff. If they didn't, there's a token recognition that maybe, maybe, some people somewhere did something interesting.
But What a Great Building, amazing artifacts, and interesting interpretive work.
Then on to walk around Picadilly Circus (Time Square with better manners) and then through St. James to the Tube. That was quite enough walking for the day.