Monday, August 11, 2008
Olympian Andrew Wheating is on the scene of the 2008 Summer Olympics
in Beijing and writing a journal for goducks.com as he prepares for the
men's 800 meters.
In his first journal entry, Andy writes about the flight to China, gear from the USOC and the amazing 2008 Opening Ceremony.
Well, we didn't get off to a great start. We (Nick Symmonds
and I) got a call at 11 p.m. the day before our scheduled departure to
let us know that our flight was canceled. That was a little bit of a
hiccup, but we managed to find our way down to San Jose to meet up with
the rest of Team USA.
I had heard rumors that the athletes were given a shopping cart to gather their equipment and uniforms...this rumor soon turned to a straight fact! We arrived at team processing and were given a Home
Depot shopping cart, walked through the doors and were overwhelmed with the clothing lined up to be doled out to us. We were given two
massive blue travel bags each imprinted with "USA Track and Field" full
of clothing. That night I could not resist, I opened up each bag and
just flung all the gear I was given into the air like leaves on a
Vermont fall day!
The flight to Beijing was 12 hours! That's 10 hours longer then my attention span could put up with. Luckily I was...