Day 14

Links:

Panoramas:

After many days, finally had another sit-down meal. I finished track and field tonight at 11 – I was sitting next to Wally Skalij (LA Times) and Paul and Scott… instead of asking when they would be done (because I knew it would be awhile). Scott was nice enough to find out that the Greek restaurant in the mall was open until midnight. So I booked out of there and grabbed the bus – which was, amazingly there! And headed over to the Stratford International to the Greek place – ran into Jim Collins outside of the station – good to see him again… then got some good food and Mythos beer… Chicken souvlaki and some chicken wings yum – I could have ordered more but the kitchen closed:

One thing I didnt talk about last night was food and getting back… So the subway closes in stages… So when I took the bus back to Russell square the plan was to grab something to eat and then jump on the subway. When we got back to Russell square at 1:30 – On a hunch I asked the transportation people when the Russell Square station closed – they said at 1:30! So they said walk to the Holborn Station – not too far away… The thing that sucked is that I’m walking past all of these open restaurants with people eating and enjoying beer outside knowing that I have to rush to the subway so that I can get home and eat a tuna wrap in my tiny dorm room! UGH And I did notice a few people eating that had photo vests on! Double UGH! Here are the waitresses from tonight – not sure what masks they are wearing:

I didn’t get to bed last night until around 4:30 – but was able to sleep in until about 11:30 – so that was nice. I found out Elliott was writing about BMX – so I headed over there. I ran into Paul at security (weird how I keep randomly bumping into people at different places). He told me that he was heading to BMX too but had to swing by the MPC to see Bill about a ticket for closing ceremonies. So just to clarify – when I say I needed to get tickets for swimming or for opening or closing ceremonies or for basketball or whatever, that just means that the Olympics people have deemed a certain event to be in high demand – therefore they are going to ticket the event and allow certain countries a certain amount of photographers to cover the event. So the USOC (United States Olympic Committee) is allotted a certain amount of tickets and we have to sign up for them. And then various factors – like size of publication, amount of locals and so forth will determine who gets a ticket. There is no charge – it’s merely a way to monitor how many photographers (they do this for reporters as well) can cover an event. There are so few papers here that it probably makes things easier on Bill. Here is the USOC office on the fourth floor (but it’s 3 on the elevator – because the first floor is actually 0) – it’s right next to the LA Times – the LA Times office is right next to the NYT office:

We walked over to the BMX track – we figured it would take 12-15 minutes to walk, it’s right next to the Velodrome – which we walked to before a few days ago – unknown time to take the bus. It was really hot – I jinxed myself in the last post where I said no one needs sunscreen here! I hadn’t shot BMX before, we shot the semifinals – which consisted of two heats for men and women with three runs for each heat. I went to a bad spot first couple of races and then hooked up with john and Paul. Here is Brian Peterson “resting” between races:

Now that I figured out I can do the panos with the 16-35mm – I did two more – one on the track… after BMX I walked over to the field hockey arena – called Riverbank and did one there. Paul and Scott headed to the Stadium for track. Look how crazy it was, field hockey was just letting out:

Grabbed a bus and headed to Track from the MPC. It was a long hot walk to the MPC but I made it. Sat down and got situated and John Mabanglo stopped by and gave me a nice bear hug from behind – he said “luckily I showered today.” haha

Had a grand misunderstanding concerning remotes – I wanted to put a remote down by a moat – after Wally suggested it to be a good spot – which it was… but the photo helper said that if I put a remote down I had to stay in the same moat??? I was like um the whole point of putting a remote camera up is so that I can be somewhere else! Anyway after finding two other people they finally put me in touch with the guy in charge Craig – really nice guy – I told him the place where I wanted to put the remote that it was not in any ones way and that it was in a “photo area” and he’s like “yea that’s fine, just keep it under the railing.” so I did:

Luckily worked it out, but of course I got nothing worth anything from the remote. I positioned my in the moat not directly in front of the finish line – but a little further down. Here’s my spot:

David Eulitt stopped by shortly after I got there – we photographed a bunch of races including the poor American who was tripped up… I had a judge who was sitting in front of me – and I barely caught the trip. Track is difficult because there are so many people out there… you can see the shoulder of the judge on the right – while Uceny is tripping: