Chile Arrival and The Olympiad

Wow, a week flies, especially when you´re waking up at 4am to watch Olympics coverage.

As a brief recap, we left Cusco, Peru on Wednesday, August 7th. It was a long day of travel, with an especially memorable wipeout in the Lima airport. We were rushing to the gate and of course security made me take off my hiking boots. I put them back on but didn´t lace them, figuring i could make it 200 yards to the gate at a careful trot. I tripped and basically did a forward roll through the terminal. I managed to roll over to my shoulder to save my face, and didn´t drop the 2 salads and fries from McDonalds in the process. A stuck landing you might say.

We landed in Santiago around midnight, and thanks to our wonderful State Department and the weak dollar, had to pay a $130 entry fee. They call it a reciprocity fee, as I guess the US invoked similar fees on foreign nationals entering the US. Well done America, well done.

We got about 5 hours sleep and woke up to watch the Opening Ceremonies from Beijing. I guess they´re saying now that some of it was lip-synching and faked effects, but it was grand. The Chinese appear to be great hosts and it is nice to see that a gymnast, Li Ning, had the honor of lighting the cauldron.

We´ve been trying to catch as much of the Olympics coverage as possible, but the Chilean coverage is (1) focused on its athletes, as it should, and (2) is kind of scattershot. Chile won a couple medals in tennis in 2004 and has around 20-some athletes in the games. When not focused on them, the coverage kind of jumps from sport to sport and is probably a joy for the ADD/ADHD kids out there. Add in the time difference and it is a mess.

Props to the US gymnastics teams. The men faced a huge challenge in getting to a medal, especially with Paul Hamm out. The Chinese and Japanese are still a ways ahead, but hopefully this will feed the next generation of male gymnasts in the US and some of these guys will hold on for 2012 to provide some veteran leadership. There is hope for some individual honors, especially Kevin Tan on rings and Sasha Artemev on horse.
Sad to see the ladies get 2nd, but still a strong showing. Shawn Johnson and Nastia will bring home more medals, so all is not lost.
I will be happy to get home in September and have a fast internet connection on which I can read all the commentary and criticism.
Finally, I am somewhat nostalgic for these Games, as this is probably the last set of guys I competed against who will be on the floor. The 2004 team had a number of guys from my age group and guys like Raj and Kevin are just a hair younger. It is very rewarding to see guys who beat you as a kid out on the floor.

Finally, we´ve basically laid out our remaining itinerary. We leave for Valpairso on Thursday, another colonial town on the Pacific coast. We´ll then depart on a Saturday bus through the Andes for Mendoza, Argentina, home to some of the best Malbec in the world. After a few days there sipping wine and kiking, we´ll take another bus to Buenos Aires where we plan to spend 7 - 10 days. We might also take a side trip to Montevideo, Uruguay, only a 3-hour ferry from Buenos Aires. We depart Buenos Aires for LA on September 3...sniff.