TOKYO — I'm covering the Olympics. I am on a bus. These sentences are redundant.
Olympic Diary: The wait for the bus goes on and on, on and on, on and on
It's the Olympics, which means running for buses, hoping for buses, sitting on buses...
July 26, 2021 at 11:08AM
These are the six states of wakefulness at this or any Olympics for a reporter:
- Running for a bus.
- Waiting for a bus.
- Hoping for a bus.
- Sitting on a bus.
- Eating quickly to catch a bus.
- Sitting in a venue, watching a sport, praying the buses will be ready and not overfilled when you need to leave.
Over Saturday and Sunday, I spent a total of seven hours standing at bus stops. I counted. I had time.
That's not a complaint. It's a fact. Well, it's a whiny fact.
If you work for NBC or the IOC, you stay in a luxury hotel and have drivers. If you work for a newspaper, you stay in a lesser hotel and hope the buses run on time, or at least run. Rachel Blount and I both waited for buses that didn't come this weekend.
The way Japan is handling the Olympics during a pandemic, we can't take public transportation until we've been here for 14 days, and even then the language barrier will be daunting.
So, we wait. And hope. And wait.
Oliver Moore and Danny Nelson headline the state’s contingent for the world junior tournament in Ottawa.
