It was an interesting trip over to Beijing. I hardly got any sleep the night before we left because we didn’t get home from the Kenny Chesney concert at Gillette Stadium until almost 12:30 and I spent the better part of the night tossing and turning hoping I hadn’t forgotten to pack anything critical – and the reality of the fact that I’m going to be gone for five weeks finally settling in.
So, 6:00 AM came really quickly. I had two big, really heavy bags to take with me – full of crap that we need over here including briefing books, press materials and office stuff. With all the new airline restrictions it cost almost $400 to ship the bags – just glad it wasn’t my money.
The trip to NY went smoothly – at least until we taxied out to take off for Tokyo. At that point ridiculous weather rolled in and we sat on the tarmac for almost five hours while wind, rain and lightning entertained us. When we finally took off we knew we were missing our connection in Tokyo, but didn’t know if there might be a later flight or if we’d be spending the night in the Tokyo airport.
Managed to sleep for almost seven of the 12 hour long flight to Tokyo. The movie selection sucked – about all they had worth watching was “21” and it wasn’t nearly as good as the book. Upon landing in Tokyo we had to do the immigration song-and-dance before we could figure out what our deal was. Turned out we did have to spend the night in Tokyo, but Japan Airlines was awesome and booked us rooms at an airport hotel and had everything coordinated for us.
We grabbed a quick meal of mystery meat (which I’m sure I’m going to be eating a lot of) and then headed to bed. We got up on Tuesday morning and grabbed a late morning flight to Beijing. As we were coming into Beijing the first thing you notice is the much-publicized smog. The news reports certainly aren’t sugar-coating it, it is really severe. When we got off the plane we were hit with a wall of humidity – not good for someone like me who is a “sweater” – and could immediately sense the poor air quality.
After collecting our luggage, the next sensory experience occurred when walking into the arrivals area at the airport to literally hundreds of Chinese waiving signs and looking for arriving passengers. The smell can best be described as a mix of inside of a Camp Yawgoog latrine and the locker room at the old YMCA on Federal Street. It was unbelievable… The Chinese can give some European countries a run for their money when it comes to personal hygiene (or lack thereof).
Regardless of the above, we were very happy to find out Chinese guide. They had a shuttle bus waiting for us, so we climbed aboard and took the 45 minute ride into the heart of the city and started our Olympic experience. More to come tomorrow.