500 days to go? Why not?

 Yesterday, Monday, Sept. 21, marked a milestone in the Olympic journey, both in the larger sense and in a much more personal sense.

Obviously, I've written in this space countless times about my Olympic travels in Russia in 2014, Korea in 2018 and the plans to be in Tokyo next summer when the postponed Olympics take place.

But the milestone that passed yesterday was for the Beijing Olympics, coming in 2022. Now, that may seem like a ways away and indeed, yesterday marked 500 days until the start of the next Winter Olympics, which take place in February of 2022. But 500 days, in the grand scheme of things, is not that far away. It's less than two years from now and about six months after the Tokyo 2020 rescheduled Olympics are scheduled to take place.

The Beijing 2022 team was all over social media on Monday promoting the 500 days countdown and in China there was a big celebration near the Great Wall, which will likely provide the backdrop for a lot of NBC's extensive Olympic coverage in 2022. And rightfully so, it is an impressive piece of history.

And while the celebration was alive on the other side of the world, I was in my office in Meredith getting ready to send stories and photos to the editor for inclusion in this week's papers. When that was all done, I reached a little bit of a milestone of my own. I filled out the paperwork officially applying for credentials to what I am hoping will be my fourth Olympics.

The process of applying for Olympic media credentials is obviously not a short one, as a lot of planning goes into things. When I first applied to cover the Sochi Winter Olympics of 2014, it was actually 2012. If I remember correctly, it was late in the summer when I applied and then I got a call from a writer from Buffalo asking about my plans for covering the games, etc. In late October, I got the email confirming that I had gotten credentials to cover my first Olympics. I remember it well, I had just finished covering a football game at Kennett and because the cell service is so bad at the school, I was in the Burger King parking lot in North Conway checking my e-mail after the game.

For the PyeongChang Games in 2018, I applied at approximately the same time of the year, but didn't have to do an interview and again found out later in the fall that I had been approved. The Tokyo Olympics were on a different timeline because of the fact that they are happening in the summer, but it was still more than a year and a half before the scheduled 2020 Olympics that the process began.

The Beijing process seems to be a bit behind where the Sochi and PyeongChang processes were, but I am guessing that is completely because of the Tokyo situation, which has sent a lot of people scrambling to figure things out. The Olympics haven't been this close together since the early-1990s, when the Winter and Summer Games were held in the same year (1992, Albertville and Barcelona were the last time they were held in the same year). So, all the work that is going into getting ready for Tokyo would normally have been done by now and the focus could solely be on Beijing. However, with Tokyo delayed a year, there is work to be done for both, right now.

The e-mail announcing that the credentialing process was something I was expecting to arrive, though I was hoping it wasn't something that slipped through the cracks while I was laid off during the summer. The USOPC, which handles the credentialing of US media, told us that we would know if we were approved by early next year, meaning we'd have a year to plan it all out. While that may seem like a lot of time, it's definitely 3-4 months shorter than the last three Olympic processes.

Additionally, Tokyo is just about six months before Beijing, meaning if I end up going to both places, the time to come up with the money will be pretty short.

But, that's a problem for another day. The milestone has passed, both in China and right here at home. Looking forward to a possible fourth Olympics obviously may be a stretch considering I haven't made it to my third yet, but the power of positive thinking has to be put to work here.

Here I go again, on my own

As of yesterday, I have been back at work for a month. And things are slowly getting back to normal, or at least as normal as they are going to be for a little while.

It started slowly, but it has steadily picked up over the last week and next week promises to be a full-on onslaught of games and contests. The first week back I started making contact with athletic directors around the region, hoping to get their take on how things were shaping up for the fall season. I also wanted to reach out to some of the new athletic directors that I am dealing with this year.

For most of my time on the job, I've been covering five schools, Kennett, Kingswood, Prospect Mountain, Newfound and Plymouth. I've had two people working for me who also cover five schools apiece and I would edit their content and get it set for the papers each week. While we were all laid off back in April, at this point, I am the only one who has been brought back, which means that in addition to the five schools I've covered for a few years, I am adding Moultonborough, Inter-Lakes, Gilford, Winnisquam, Belmont, Littleton, Lisbon, Profile, Lin-Wood and Woodsville.

Needless to say, this is going to be a dauntless challenge that is going to require a lot of cooperation from coaches to help cover the many, many athletes on these teams. There's no question that this is going to be a season like no other, in more ways than one.

Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic has also changed the way the sports season started. The start of practices was delayed and teams were separated into different categories to determine when they could play their first games. This left me with only golf competing for the first week and a half. So, over the course of eight days, I covered six golf matches at six different courses and saw nine different teams. I started with Prospect Mountain, Plymouth, Gilford and Belmont at Farmington Country Club last Thursday and then went to Blackmount Country Club on Friday for Littleton and Woodsville. On Monday it was up to Owl's Nest Resort for Plymouth and Tuesday was a trip to Cochecho Country Club to see the Kennett team open up its season. Moultonborough and Kingswood teed off at Ridgewood Country Club to start their seasons on Wednesday and on Thursday it was a trip to Maplewood in Bethlehem to see Littleton, Woodsville and White Mountains.

This new situation has also brought about regional schedules, which is something I will not complain about at all. Seemingly every game on the schedule is between two teams in our coverage area, which is nice. Plymouth and Newfound are facing off in a couple of sports, the aforementioned Moultonborough and Kingswood golf match featured teams that usually don't play each other and there's many more matchups that haven't taken place before.

The real work starts today, as soccer, field hockey, cross country and volleyball get the official nod to start with contests and it's full-on from here on out.

I am happy to be back at work. Even if it's going to be a bit busy.