Two weeks to liftoff

Two weeks from today, Tuesday, Feb. 1, an Air France flight will depart from Boston's Logan Airport at 5:20 p.m. If all goes as planned between now and then, I will be on that plane, on my way to Beijing for my third consecutive Winter Olympics experience and my fourth Olympic experience overall.

Of course, the important words in that paragraph are "if all goes as planned between now and then." Obviously, this has been the biggest issue over the course of the last few weeks and months as things have not gone as planned at just about any stage of this journey.

As reported last week, I was able to secure flights to and from Beijing, thanks to Air France and numerous calls to my credit card company to ensure them that the 4,000-dollar charge on my card was not fraud, despite what it might look like. The flights are secure, the hotel in Beijing is secure and I have entered all the necessary data into the proper web sites so that someone will hopefully be waiting for me to transport me to the hotel when I get to the airport.

There is a little more good news to report, as the COVID testing facility that I submitted to Beijing 2022 for approval was actually approved, which means that I should be able to get my testing done in Manchester, which is a relief, since there didn't seem to be many options in the New England area. Of course, there are still plenty of things that could go wrong and the way things are going, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they did.

This whole experience has been such a handful, but if things come together, it should be a pretty interesting trip. Like in Tokyo this past summer, we are going to be pretty limited to where we can go and what we can do. Unlike Tokyo, we won't have to spend a long time at the airport waiting for test results, as we will be tested there and will then go to our hotel and await results. Also unlike Tokyo, we will not need to quarantine for three days. Also unlike Tokyo, we won't be able to move about the city without restrictions once we've spent 14 days in the loop. Once we are in the closed loop in Beijing, we will not be able to leave the loop. In fact, our closed loop actually starts on the plane on the way to Beijing, which is why we need to take the special flights in.

What I need to do now is to make sure I don't get COVID between now and then, but the only real way to do that is to stay at home and not leave, and that's probably not feasible at this point. I do have a job to do.

Beijing has announced that there will be very limited spectators at this year's Winter Olympics. Photo from Olympics.com.