Less than 200 days to go...

This past Monday marked 200 days until Tokyo 2020, which meant that it was 198 days until it's time to head around the world.

As the number continued to tick down, I realized that it was time to do a little more planning in regards to the Olympic experience, so after I made all my newspaper deadlines, I spent some time online researching the cheapest flights to get to Tokyo in July.

There are a lot of ways to get to Japan, but none of the flights were terribly inexpensive. Being as this is a self-funded trip (along with donations from some great people), my most important search function for the flight was to find the cheapest way to get there. 

In this regard, there were a few flights that were right around the same price. The one that intrigued me the most was a flight on Hawaiian Airlines that went from Boston to Honolulu then on to Tokyo. Having never been to Hawaii, I thought this would be a great pit stop along the way. However, the layover was almost an entire day and I wasn't sure I wanted to miss out on the possibility of attending the opening ceremonies on Friday, July 24.

So, I looked away from the Hawaiian Airlines flight and found one that was just a bit cheaper on Korean Air. Ironically enough, I didn't use Korean Air to get to the Olympics in February 2018 in PyeongChang, South Korea. This flight would go directly from Boston to Seoul, which is where I flew into (via Toronto) for the 2018 Olympics. From Seoul, the flight would go on to Tokyo.

In the end, that is the flight that I booked. 

I will be leaving Boston's Logan Airport on Wednesday, July 22, at 1:15 p.m. and will be landing in Seoul at 4:25 p.m. the next day after a 14-hour flight. Since Seoul is 14 hours ahead of our eastern time zone, that technically means I will be landing in the middle of the night according to my body clock. From there, after a one-hour, 15-minute layover, I will be in the air for two hours and 20 minutes on the way to Tokyo, where I will land at 8 p.m. Tokyo is in the same time zone as Korea, so this trip will have me 14 hours ahead of folks at home, just like in PyeongChang.

At the last two Olympics I've covered, I have not been able to attend the opening or the closing ceremonies due to my flight times. I saw the Sochi opening ceremonies from an airport in Moscow and I saw the PyeongChang opening ceremonies on a television as I was checking into my media housing. And both times, I left before the closing ceremonies.

Of course, because they are high-demand events, it's not always possible to get into the opening and closing ceremonies, but I am going to give it a shot and apply for one or both.

As for the return flight, I will actually be leaving from a different airport in Tokyo and will be flying back via Delta Airlines. The closing ceremonies are Sunday, Aug. 9, and my flight out of Tokyo leaves on Monday afternoon, Aug. 10, at 4:45 p.m. I will be taking a nine-hour flight to Seattle and after a layover of more than an hour, I will leave for Boston and will touch down at 7:55 p.m. Like the trip back from Korea, I'm arriving home three hours after I left due to the time difference.

So, with the deposit on the housing and the flight, a good chunk of the bill for Tokyo has been paid. The other half of the housing bill is due in April.

I also spent some time on Tuesday working on the required paperwork needed for Tokyo. I submitted my passport information, a photo for my Olympic ID card and all the other information the United States Olympic Committee needed.

My plan, like in the last two Olympics that I have attended, is to update this blog every day while I am there. I plan on putting pictures that I take with my phone on Instagram and Twitter (SalmonSportsGuy) and on my personal Facebook page. Additionally, the photos from my camera will likely go on my personal Facebook page and the Facebook page for Salmon Press Sports – Wolfeboro.

Additionally, I am looking for any information on any local connections we might have for the Summer Olympics. I know all the teams have not been selected yet, but if you know of some local connections, send me an e-mail at josh@salmonpress.news. And if there's anything I can do for you regarding the Olympics, also let me know and I will do my best.

Travel ahead in 2020

This week, as the calendar turns to 2020, it’s time to look ahead and see just what a busy 2020 has in store.

An exciting development that popped up last year was the chance to travel to Ireland with the University of New Hampshire Marching Band. This coming year marks the band’s 100^thanniversary and the director, who was a freshman during my senior year in the band, decided to plan a trip to Ireland and invited alumni to come along if they were interested. The first international trip (not counting Canada) I took in my life was also with the UNH Marching Band, when we traveled to Europe in late 2001-early 2002. I was also an alum at that point, but that trip was a blast and I am hoping the Ireland trip is much of the same. I’ll be making that trip in mid-March and will be in Ireland for the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade in Dublin.

A few weeks later, I will make a shorter trip, this time to Florida for a little spring training baseball. The Kingswood baseball team has made a number of trips to Florida over the past few years and I usually tag along with the Knights, in part for a good story, in part to get a taste of warmer weather after a long winter. This year the Knights will be going to Dodgertown in Vero Beach the final week of March. As it so happens, the Kennett baseball team is also planning to be there that same weekend, so I will get a chance to see two different teams in action over the course of the weekend. 

Obviously, the big trip of 2020 is the two weeks-plus I’ll be spending in Tokyo in late-July and early-August for the Summer Olympics. This will be my third Olympic trip, but it will be the first time I am covering the Summer Games, which from all accounts, are much bigger than their winter counterparts. I’ve taken a few preliminary looks at the schedule and it is daunting with how many different sports and events there are, but I am looking forward to the challenge of seeing as much as I can. As of right now, my plan is to be in Japan for July 23 and stay until Aug. 10. I have booked my media accommodations to cover those nights so the next step will be booking a flight, which is on my to-do list for early in the year. I am incredibly excited to get the chance to see the Olympics in a different light, though I’m not as excited to deal with the wonderful humidity that comes with a summer in Tokyo.

Of course, there will probably be a few Survivor trips in the spring as well, since it is season 40 and there’s bound to be some excitement for the all-winner season of the game. It’s looking like another New York trip and also possible trips to Atlanta and Los Angeles. But that is preliminary.

I’d also like to check another baseball stadium or two off my list, so I’ll see how that works out as well.

I guess 2020 is going to be a pretty busy year, assuming all goes as planned.