No Turning Back Now

Hello everyone. I apologize for the couple of days without any information - maybe after you read what we have been up to you will understand. Then again, maybe you will just think that I have been lazy and slacking on my responsibilities.

I am writing this during the early morning hours of January 28 (in Torino). So I will start with an update on an adventure four of us took in the city on the 26th. The four brave souls, who all work in the Torino Village, were Eric (he will be doing all of the transportaion for Team USA), Michelle - the housing master - she decides who sleeps where (so we all have to be nice to her), and Tammie - she handles all of the needs the sports have when they get in the Village. Anyway, we figured that the best way to spend our time and prepare for athlete arrivals - they start to come on January 31 - was to "find" our way around.

Now I said we were brave, but fortunately we are not stupid, our first adventure was to the site where Team USA will do all of their processing - to get there we got a ride versus walking. Processing is something that every single person who is a part of our delegation will go through. In processing the delegation is outfitted with all of the cool Nike and Roots stuff you will see on TV. Everyone also takes part in a briefing where they are reminded that they are here to represent you, the people of the US. They also learn some of the ins and outs about the village, expectations we have of them and of course a talk about security. So processing is cool and if you watch the Today Show I am sure that Katie Couric will do what she does at every Olympics and go through processing with an athlete - I am betting Michelle Kwan.

After we saw the folks who are working processing, and doing a bang up job of geting ready for the arrival of athletes, we headed out....to the mall. Okay, it is not as bad as it sounds. You see there is a mall that has a bridge that connects to it, and that bridge goes to the Olympic Village, so we wanted to see how that process worked so we could advise people. After the stress of riding in a car, seeing processing, and walking to mall, we had lunch.

We then got into the adventure. We wandered from the mall to a bus stop and got on a bus. About two minutes into the ride we realized we had not paid for the ride. But we noticed that no one was paying for the ride. So we called some friends and were advised that if we were caught for not paying, we would be fined. Brutal. Needless to say, we rode the bus. We did think about getting off and buying a ticket, but we did not do that. Before you send email about ethics and morals let me say this. Later in the day, on our return trip, we bought a ticket (and each ticket is good for two rides), so we figure we are even.

So we took our free bus ride and got dropped downtown. We then proceeded to walk past the Bank of America Hometown Hopefuls building. This is a program that BofA does for the families of the athletes. Athlete's register their family members and those folks get feee meals and often times free tickets to events. It is great.

We then walked to the USA House which is our sponsor hospitality setup for the Games. It is incredible what our team in corporate hospitality does with the USA House. From the USA House we walked to Medals Plaza. It will be great, if they get it finished. While we were there there was a line of hundreds of people trying to get tickets to each night at Medals Plaza. It will definitely be great show.

Medals Plaza is very close to where the Shroud of Turin is, so of course we went into the church and saw that. The actual shroud is not on display, but a replica is out. The church and display are amazing.

From there we had to find our way back, which we did, but it was an adventure. Let me just say this - the four of us don't speak any Italian, and I think there are four people in Torino who speak English. That would be great - if we would actually come together. We didn't. It was a long, tough journey, in some very cold weather, but we made it home.

Today we moved into the Village. There are just five of us with the US delegation living here until the 31st, so it is quiet, but that will change. We spent our day setting up our office space, checking all of the rooms, making sure keys work, that we have hot water, that the toilets flush, etc. I will say this, the "dorms" are great.

One challenge we have is that we don't have internet access yet in the Village. I was able to tap into a high speed line for this post. Hopefully tomorrow we will be up and running with wireless access.

That is enough for now. You will be hearing a ton about the village over the next few weeks - as well as those that inhabit it - so I will not give you too much now. I have been taking photos and if our IT folks can help me, I will create a Snapfish account and post the link on this site so you can see what I have taken pictures of so far. The city is great, and being the first delegation on the Village opened up a chance for some photo's. I will keep you posted if I can get that up and running.

I hope that everyone is doing well. Let me know if there is something you would like to hear about. Like I said to start, we are here, we are in the village, and it is time...there is no turning back now.