Olympic Memories (Part 2)

From Athens to Beijing to Rio de Janeiro, I saw some things. A lot ot things. Come with me down Memory Lane...

Olympic Memories (Part 2).

SALT LAKE CITY 2002 – Meh.

I don’t have a lot of enduring memories from Salt Lake.

What I do remember is, it was one year after 9/11 and security was at the forefront of everybody’s consciousness. There’s always security at the Games, but at these Games, it was like Salt Lake was an armed encampment. I’m not saying it wasn’t completely necessary. But it changed the general tenor of those Games. A lot of the joy was sucked out of the proceedings. There were security people with guns everywhere, and you couldn’t go 15 steps without going through a metal detector.

I will say, the hockey was awesome.

But you knew I’d say that.

ATHENS 2004 – So me and three fellow journalists had a smart idea: We would rent a car and make the multi-hour drive to Olympia, the site of the original Olympic Games, to check out the ruins. 

It felt like the perfect introduction to the Athens Games, a good scene-setter. And getting there was no problem at all. It was an easy, scenic drive, one major thoroughfare all the way there. Which was a good thing because Google Maps had not yet been introduced. We went old school; we used a map. A real, honest-to-goodness map, like the one Vasco da Gama used. Look it up, kids.

Well, we got there after pleasant drive, checked out the grounds, took notes, talked to a guide there. Fascinating. And the early part of our drive home was unremarkable; we took that one major road back, and we’d navigate the city streets later.

This is when I learned the meaning behind the term, “It’s all Greek to me.” We desperately rode around the city, good areas, sketchy areas, uptown, downtown and we had no idea where we were. We stopped at no less than three gas stations to ask for directions. The owners invariably knew no English – like, why would they? We only knew how to say “thank you” and “beer, please” in Greek. I remember how desperately they wanted to help us, sketching madly on our maps, trying to explain the inexplicable.

You ever try to read Greek street signs? In a city where the drivers are completely insane and red lights are just a suggestion, and you’re puttering along, craning to make sense of street signs that are printed using the Cyrillic alphabet?