Mundane Details
As we settle into our rhythm, I start to take a lot of things for granted about my time and my life here. I’m definitely sending you the most exciting and vibrant stories of the things I’m doing, yet in my daily life here, it’s still kind of interesting, so I want to just give you some of the simple but interesting details.

Most of the teams are here now, with the final group for Crete slowly rolling in. One of the best friends I’ve made here is Lauryn Williams. She’s the “next big thing” in track and field, and it seems like she’s so oblivious to it. She’s 19 and a freshman at the University of Miami, and quite honestly, if things go really well, could win the 100 meters in women’s track and field. She was the focus of NBC’s coverage of the U.S. Olympic Trials, where she qualified for the 100 in 3rd, but had a terrible start, which tells you what kind of speed she has. Even with that start, she smoke Marion Jones, so that’s something to think about.

Anyway, Lauryn is kind of my best “customer.” She opted out of the fancy Crete training camp with Track and Field to come stay here and train on site. She clearly has already figured out the politics of the 4x100 relay team can be brutal, so I think at 19, she just wants to tune it out. At this point, she knows she’s simply too fast to leave her off of it, so she just lets them do their thing in Crete. We greet each other every morning in the lounge with a high five, usually followed by some kind of question about something.

The lounge is sort of my domain, and we’ve made it the best we can, decorating it with USOC banners and Adidas ads. Adidas is the official sponsor of the team. But it’s interesting that a whole bunch of athletes are wearing these new, very sharp, Nike duds, with the moniker “MMIV” on them (Roman numerals for “2004”). It’s kind of their way of sneaking in the back door. Nobody is required to wear the official Adidas or Roots Olympic Team clothing when just hanging about the village. They are when on the medals platform and at any official USOC press conference or event. Otherwise, athletes are allowed to where their own competitive or personal gear whenever they want. While most wear the official delegation stuff out of pride, there is this interesting undertone that is coming up with the “Nike athletes” wearing this new “MMIV” gear around. And the interesting thing about how Nike does it—it’s pretty much the best or most publicized athletes they are giving the stuff to. So when you start seeing the biggies wearing the Nike gear, all of a sudden, there’s a new dynamic to the clothing scene and who’s cool and who’s not. Nike knows how to subtly make the official Adidas stuff not so cool anymore amongst the athletes. It’s interesting, and you can tell, it works.

Another sponsor is Coca Cola. In fact, they are an official Olympic Games sponsor, not just ours. But we have been reinforced with Coke products in our area, but it’s not like we need them. All the delegation members receive these little rubber Coke bottle key chains with an electric sensor in them. Basically, at any Coke or Powerade machine around the village or at the venues, there is a sensor for these to give you free drinks. We don’t have drinks in the computer area so the athletes have to go to another building to get drinks.

But we do have snacks, which is partially my job. I put out Gold Fish, Rice Krispie Bars, Powerbars, Powerbar Bites, dry cereal, Nutri-Grain and Granola bars, and popcorn, fairly regularly. The popcorn is the big hit around here. Especially the Toffee-butter popcorn. A bunch of us sitting around watching events today were laughing about how from now on, every time they smell burned microwave popcorn, they’re going to think of the Olympics and this lounge.

I sit around here a lot and watch events with athletes. Basically, the work here isn’t back-breaking, but we simply need to be here. We have to get the guest passes ready every day and as we start getting into the 70s with daily requests, that’s a lot of data to keep track of and put in rank order, with Name, Guest’s Name, Guest’s Mothers and Father’s names, dates of birth, places of birth, nationality, and passport numbers. That’s a lot of input when it’s crunch time, so we try to input all day long so we make our deadline. We also have to be here to give out the athlete event tickets. Athletes don’t have regular hours between training, eating, and competing, so we have to be fairly available to hand them out.

The USOC brought over little foldable bikes, so to save time, I’ve been cruising all over the village when I need to do anything. It does save a ton of time every day, and you see a whole bunch of countries with bikes here. The most noticeable is the Netherlands, with a bunch of orange, Giant brand, semi recumbent bikes with seat backs. When you go to the dining hall at a busy time, you can see a ton of those orange bikes parked outside. It’s kind of funny…like we’ve been invaded by weird looking, orange recumbent bikes. I swear, it looks like the whole village is from Holland with all those bikes!

The dining hall is definitely the place to see and be seen. It’s pretty cool just to rubberneck between Inga de Bruijn, Wilson Kipketer, Bernard Legat, all the U.S. swim stars, and anyone else you come to recognize as they become more famous through the Games. One of the fun things is to sit and figure out which sport people are from. Noticeably absent are people like the Track and Field sprinting stars, Ian Thorpe, the USA Reem Team, and other such “stratosphere” stars. I think they are missing something, because when all is said and done, they don’t get to experience the Games that way. Roddick lost today in Tennis, and you can tell he’s really bummed, but he’s also had the Games experience now, and if he hadn’t, then it would be a double shame.

Yesterday, Sarah Hughes came into the Village to hang out with us. She came alone to do some work for CBS, but since CBS does not have TV rights, their ability to get her access to anything is pretty bad. I think she really had a great time with Sandra yesterday. I helped her get a cab out of the Village, and she was kind of dejected because she was basically heading back to town to do a few-minute piece for CBS, then just hang out by herself. We invited her back and told her she’s welcome to come hang out with us in the lounge or go with us to events and stuff. Sandra said she was also getting hit on by some of the guys in the lounge while she was here, so I’m sure that has something to do with wanting to come back too. So she called me today to see if she could come back tomorrow, so I got her a pass again to come hang out here with us. We all kind of feel it’s the least we can do for an Olympic Champion from our country.

Tyler Hamilton and Bobby Julich finished with gold and bronze today in the men’s road cycling time trial. Dede (Demet) Barry won the silver in the women’s TT. Add to that gold and bronze in fencing last night and a gold in shooting and silver in women’s slalom kayaking today, plus more medal performances in swimming, and the U.S. is getting into high gear now. For the first time in a long time, we’ve won medals in more sports than any other country at the moment. We still aren’t winning the medal count, which I could really care less about. But it is fun to be here in the lounge at this time of the Games.

The Games are still young and most people still have to compete, so the lounge gets a lot of use, and it’s usually very vibrant. I expect that to slow down as we get closer to the end and more people spend their nights out. Blaine Wilson, at 31, got his gold medal in the men’s team gymnastics, and he’s done. But his team is still competing and his sport has alcohol testing for the Games period, so he can’t go party or anything. I think that’s going to be a big factor in keeping the atmosphere fun and cool around here. As I write, it’s 11:20 p.m., and it’s really loud out in the lounge with people laughing and cheering from whatever’s on TV. While being in the office isn’t as fun as being out at events, it is a neat place to be in it’s own way.

So with that, I’ll sign off for tonight. Some pictures with captions following.

Chad
0008-0018-2004

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