Saturday, April 12, 2008 -- 4 a.m.

On the road again

I love out of town trips. I hate out of town trips that get me out of bed at the same time on a Saturday that I get up for the morning shows Monday through Friday.

Photographer Mike "Domi" Domalaog and I are heading to the 2008 Olympic Media Summit. The word summit implies that two sides will get together, discuss some issues, eat some boiled chicken and call a truce. The Olympic Summit is a little different, although they still boil poultry. One hundred of Team USA’s top athletes are invited to a 3-day media blitz of interviews, photo ops, and odd interactions with foreign journalists.

It’s a great time for us to catch a lot of California athletes under one roof. You’ll see our stories about them in the next four months before we leave for Beijing.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Take a deep breath…or don’t

NBC scheduled a FIVE-hour meeting to discuss the logistics of covering the games.

Here are the highlights:

Don’t drink the water.
Don’t breathe the air.
Have a good time.

I don’t know about you. But, I’m pretty much addicted to oxygen and agua. Beijing’s pollution issue is such a big deal that the Beijing Olympic Games Organizing Committee (BACOG,) actually fired a rocket filled with chemicals at clouds to make it rain and clear out the pollution. This was done during a BACOG media tour attended by NBC to show how efficient the Chinese are at using chemicals to clear chemicals. I’m sure their hypothesis was worded slightly differently.

The good news, according to our NBC friends is that whoever played Rocket Man that day was successful. The clouds dumped rain. The sky turned blue. Angels wept.

The bad news is that it only lasted for a few hours and the haze was back by dinner.

Beijing’s pollution isn’t a joke. It’s bad enough that some athletes are staying in neighboring countries until their day of competition to protect their lungs. It’s bad enough that we’re being told to accept the fact that we will likely have what feels like a bad respiratory infection within days of arrival.

Beijing is promising to do what it can to clear the air, in all kinds of political and environmental ways, before August. The city is ordering certain factories to close in July and is encouraging locals to give up their cars. It’s a tough sell though and you can blame Santa. Yes, Santa. All those factories getting the bad rap for filling the air with junk are working to fill stockings with junk at Christmas. It’s “made in China” time. The country typically starts sending toy shipments to the US during August.

Rudolph’s red nose and my red eyes will have a common tie this holiday season.

Monday, April 14, 2008

I’m not an Olympian. But, I played one on Lakeshore Drive this morning.

I got up early and went for a sunrise run along Lake Shore Drive this morning. I read somewhere that Oprah trained for the Chicago Marathon along this path. Apparently, it was one of her favorite things before favorite things became trinkets you could buy through a link on her website.

I was about 30 minutes out when I came to the conclusion that Chicago has a lot of fit runners. I’m competitive and I freely admit I struggled to pass anyone. You’ll find a hot dog, pizza or burger place on every corner in this town and they’re full. And yet, a seemingly tofu nation of early risers was pounding the pavement with me and they were anaerobically superior. They also had a lot of matchy matchy outfits. I was getting jealous. They’re fast and they look good.

After an hour, I called it a day and headed for the hotel. As the Lake Shore Blvd crosswalk signal beeped, a guy dressed head to toe in Nike wear slowed long enough to say, “heading back to the Olympic Summit?” Yep, I replied. “Good luck with the media. It’s grueling talking with those reporters all day.” Then, he was gone.

Then, I was stunned.

The fleet of foot and fancy of pants athletes on the trail had been Olympic athletes. They look good because they’re sponsored athletes who get a lot of free clothes and are expected to wear them.

By coincidence, I was “swooshed” from head to toe in Nike gear too. In addition, I was wearing a freebie Team USA ball cap I’d picked up the day before.

The troubling part of all of this is that the guy at the light mistook me for one of his own kind. I’m worried for Team USA’s vision. Not the kumbaya vision of Intergalactic harmony that’s usually attached to Olympic teams. I’m worried about their 20/20 or lack thereof.

It’s TV time

Who needs 15 minutes of fame when you can have 6 minutes, 9 times?

There are 450 journalists here in Chicago previewing the Olympic Games. There are 100 athletes. At the risk of this blog turning into an 8th grade math word problem, it’s a mathematic impossibility for every reporter to interview every athlete one on one. So, we’re assigned to one of 9 rooms to “group interview” athletes with other reporters.

Domi and I ended up in a room with Reuters, the Associated Press, and the New York Times. Which of these things does not belong? Um, that would be us.