As anyone who has read this blog for any period of time knows, the Olympic adventures I go on every few years come with a price tag. In the year leading up to my first Olympic experience in Sochi back in 2014, I had fundraisers and got great support from the community as I looked to have what I viewed as a once in a lifetime experience.
My company matched all the money I raised and because of that, the trip four years later to PyeongChang was essentially all paid for. Since then, I've been to Tokyo and Beijing and I have basically funded those trips on my own dime. The company pays me for the work I do while I am there, but because they are not forcing me to cover the Olympics (or even asking me to), it's not their responsibility to pay for my trip. And since these are no longer once in a lifetime opportunities, I also don't believe I can be going around asking people for money. The expenses associated with the Olympic trips prior to departure are mainly the accommodations and the flight, while food is the main expense once I am on the ground in an Olympic city. Our transportation, admission to events, wireless Internet and media center access is all free of charge.
So, what I've done, ever since I came back to the papers after the pandemic layoff, is work as much as I can at my second job at the Yum Yum Shop in Wolfeboro. During the summer I work at least 40 hours a week and during the school year, I work at least 30 hours a week. I pick up extra shifts when I can and much of the money I make at that job goes into my Olympic account to pay for these trips. And I make wire transfers from that account to the various Olympic committees around the world.
The wire transfer process for the Beijing Olympics in February of 2022 was by far the hardest and most complicated process I had been through regarding sending money for these trips. First, the bank where I have my account, didn't deal in the Chinese currency and Beijing wouldn't accept US dollars. So, I had to create another account at another bank and go from there. It took me and the very understanding and patient woman at Citizen's Bank in Wolfeboro three different tries to get the money through to Beijing. The first time we were missing a code (that was never provided to us), the second time the code was the wrong one and the third time it finally went through. It was a long and annoying process, much like the leadup to Beijing with flights and COVID tests was a few months after making those payments.
Within the last two weeks, I received my invoice for the first half of my accommodation payment for Paris next summer. The Paris Organizing Committee breaks our accommodation payments up into two invoices, with the chance to get some of our money back if we have to cancel at certain points. My bill this time was for close to 1,000 euros and the second one will be bigger (they add the city tax to the second invoice).
I visited Tammy at TD Bank in Wolfeboro and we set to work on getting a wire transfer going to Paris. The first roadblock that we ran into was there was no bank address on the invoice and the wire transfer needed one. I did a google search on the bank name and got an address that Tammy put on the invoice with the hope that it was correct. We got all the paperwork done and I left hoping that we had hit every nail on the head.
Early the next week, I checked in on the accommodation management web site and it read my invoice as "paid," so everything we had done had gone through and now, Paris 2024 officially has some of my money (I guess it's their money now).
If the worse case scenario comes along and the trip has to be cancelled for whatever reason, there are opportunities to get some of my money back, but I am now officially invested in this trip. The next step will be booking a flight and then I will have to make the second accommodation payment in the first few months of next year.
As of right now, there are 281 days until the Opening Ceremonies in Paris next summer. That means there's about 276-77 days until I likely will leave for Paris. In the meantime, there's plenty of baking to be done at the Yum Yum Shop because Milan-Cortina is only two and a half years away.
French residents celebrated one year to go earlier this summer in Paris. They also may have recently celebrated me sending them a bunch of money. Photo from Paris 2024.
