It's Game Time

I had a great (looooong) flight from Charlotte to DC over Canada, the North Pole, Siberia and into Beijing. Caught a great view of the ice over the Arctic Circle and "Be Kind, Rewind" as well.

We had the treat of having both the US and Canadian baseball teams on the flight. Real gentlemen - easy to call them "Olympians".

Arrival at the airport was great - a huge throng of folks greeting the athletes. The airport is big, but not very busy. Brand new everything and really well appointed. Saw Venus, Serena and Lindsay Davenport arriving. They really drew a crowd, but if they felt like I did, I'm sure the last thing they wanted was all that attention.

I did get to throw the Immigration folks a curve, though. They don't get the whole "William" and "Bill" thing here. Don't know that they still do, but I got through.

Got to our lodging at Beijing Normal University at about 5.30p on Wednesday. I was able to stay up until 9.30 after a nice walk to the WU MART to look for a power converter.

While looking for the Wu Mart, I came to the "Duh Huh" realization that traffic is really wild. I can't imagine it while traffic restrictions are not in place. Trucks, busses, taxis (there are over 60,000 taxis), pedestrians and bicycles of all descriptions sharing the road and all uniformly taking a really casual view of traffic signals.

I must say that I think the bicycles and pedestrians have a lot of clout on the road. Honks from anything barely register or cause alarm in these folks.

Everyone has been really nice. Not hearing much English spoken by the local folks, but I've gotten a lot of head nodding and smiles.

The air is kind of thick. Poor visibility, but that's certainly not breaking news. I hope it clears up some tomorrow for the Opening Ceremonies. Which, by the way, I don't have tickets to. What's up with that?

More later - thanks for reading.