200 days to go

The official countdown clock to the Paris Summer Olympics reached 200 days yesterday, Jan. 8. This means that in less than that amount of time I will be heading off to Paris for my fifth Olympic experience and my first Olympic experience in a city I have visited before.

Prior to covering the Olympics, my travels had never taken me to Sochi, Russia, PyeongChang, South Korea, Tokyo, Japan or Beijing, China. While I now can say I have visited all of those places, long before I made my first Olympic trip, I spent a short amount of time in Paris.

The year was 2001, shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. As a UNH graduate, I had gone back and played with the marching band for a few years as a post-grad and also continued to play in the pep band. The band director at the time, Tom Keck, announced that the UNH Marching Band was traveling to Europe and invited anyone who was playing in the band, so long as they paid their own way, to come along, opening up an opportunity to make my first trip abroad (other than Canada).

We landed in Zurich, Switzerland, then flew over the Alps to Milan, Italy, where we spent some time before making our way along the Italian coast toward the French city of Nice, which will be hosting some of the soccer tournament games this summer and will also serve as a city base for the 2030 Winter Olympics. We visited Nice and Monaco, playing a New Year's parade (going into 2002) in Cannes and played at the prince's palace in Monaco as well. From there, we hopped the bullet train and made our way to Paris. 

While in the City of Light, I was part of a group that actually got to do quite a bit in a short period of time. One of the members of our friend group had been to Paris before and knew how to navigate the subway system pretty well, which allowed us to make great use of our day in the city. We went up the Arc de Triomphe, visited Notre Dame Cathedral and the catacombs, walked by the Louvre (the line was way too long) and went up the Eiffel Tower in the twilight. It was a whirlwind trip, but it is certainly a great city.

Of course, my most recent visits to Paris were on the way to and from the Beijing Olympics, where a COVID testing facility almost kept me from getting home. That's an experience I'd rather not relive this summer. You can read about that experience here.

This time around, my time in Paris will be slightly longer and will include a bit more sports than the 2001-2002 trip and I am excited to get a chance to see more of the city. After not really getting the opportunity to see much of Tokyo and Beijing except what we could see out a bus window, it will be nice to get out into the city a little more.

The next step is booking a flight and filling out my paperwork for the USOPC, which will handles all our appplications and credential paperwork.

In less than 200 days, the Paris Olympics officially kick off.