There will be no rest today or any other day. I say that only because these truly are 16 hour days. People who know me well know how I like my sleep and I can get a little cranky if I don't get it. Well... I guess you rise to the occasion when you have to. It's been fun and games in in MVL Operations. It's get shit done when we need to but not without some necessary shenanigans. Mt favorite these days is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv7Ts4v5_Bs There will be more to come regarding that.
It's crazy I've been here a week already but time flies when you're having fun and working your ass off. Last Sunday (24 hours after my arrival) our first group of athletes arrived. For every Games we organize "Team Processing" where the athletes get all their team issued gear from Nike and Polo. It's insane the amount of gear they get. It's a HUGE undertaking, more so for summer, but this way athletes can get their opening and closing gear, podium gear, media outfits as well as extras that they need to wear really at all times. This is the business side of things... Really the only exception to this is what they choose to wear while competing. Performance gear cannot be dictated by the USOC because it potentially can have an impact on how an athlete performs so there are restrictions on certain items. Nike and Polo have paid the USOC a lot of money to make sure their clothing is worn and they receive the exposure so... so back to Team processing. For these Games the USOC decided to process in Munich, Germany. Different things work for different Games. For Beijing it was in San Francisco because all our flights (United) went through San Fran. For London we processed on the ground in London. For these Games it made sense to use Munich as many of the athletes were coming from training camps and competitions already in Europe. For those coming from the states it was a little more subtle acclimatizing to the time zone as Germany was 8 hours from MST while Sochi is 11. Athletes flew into Munich where they were met by USOC staff and taken to a hotel to relax. Then they were taken through processing which can be a 3-4 hour process depending. They stayed over night and then were loaded along with their luggage onto charter flights the USOC had organized headed to Sochi. The charter flights made sense because a.)otherwise athletes would have to fly through Moscow therefore increasing unnecessary travel time and b.)potentially more cost effective because with all the personal gear, equipment and add to that the team processing gear, most athletes had 5-7 bags which increases travel costs on a commercial airline. It's quite the production with so many moving parts you would not know. I think the athletes have NO IDEA!!! Anyways... for the Paralympics we had 2 charter flights for athletes and then one charter flight just for extra bags. Crazy huh... for some almost 200 athletes and support staff we had 800+ bags. YIKES!!! The last charter flight ended up bringing the 6 staff members who were processing in Munich and the remaining 300 bags that did not make the first 2 flights. So Charter 1 arrived last Sunday, Charter 2 arrived Tuesday and Charter 3 arrived Wednesday. Because of the 3 different villages it then becomes a matter of making sure all the correct bags are going to the correct village because the athletes and bags are seperated for efficiency. The bags get delivered in a box truck while the athletes head up on a bus or shuttle depending if they are in a wheelchair or not. So... our first week here consisted of meeting arriving athletes and making sure they got on the correst transport and then making sure ALL the bags were seperated and sent to the correct Village. Logistics, logistics, logistics. I should be in a brown uniform.
