Seconds from disaster

 Today was certainly a day.

Over the last couple days I was looking at a time to make it down to Marseille, mainly just to see the venue and the city, but possibly seeing a little sailing in the process. Today was the day that it worked out that I could do it, so I purchased a ticket on the high-speed train out of Paris to Marseille. It was more than three hours each way (without the numerous delays), but I figured why not?

I probably should've stayed in Paris.

I arrived in Marseille after 1 p.m. and found the transportation help desk in the train station to get a public transport card, which allowed me to use the Marseille public transportation for the day. I had no problem finding the correct train to get halfway to the marina, but the bus was a bit more of a challenge. However, I eventually found the bus and made my way to the marina.

The weather was warmer in Marseille than in Paris, but there was a nice breeze that helped to keep things a bit more manageable. I watched a little bit of the sailing action, though I admit I really had no idea what I was watching. I did my interview with the Morning Buzz from a table outside the venue media center, picked up my stuff and headed out of the venue. My plan was to head back to the train station and grab a bite to eat before boarding my 5 p.m. train back to Paris.

I left the venue and spent a little time wandering down the street taking in the area before heading toward the bus stop. And that's when I realized something was missing. And that something was my Olympic media credential, which has been around my neck the entire two weeks I've been here, besides the time I'm in my hotel room.

The Olympic media credentials basically get us into everything. They are our ticket to the venues, our way on the media transportation and into the media center. I knew I could get back to Paris without it (I had my train ticket on my phone) and could get around Paris without it (I still had my public transport card), but I knew it would be a problem.

I also knew that every venue had an accreditation help desk near the gate and I had seen the sailing venue window when I walked in. I went to the window and the very nice woman inside the booth called a couple of places inside without much luck. However, she said she could give me a new credential, cancel my old one and have me on my way in no time.

And that she did. I had to fill out a lost credential form, gave her my passport and she used all my information from the system to print me out a new credential. She laminated it and I was good to go. I immediately went inside the venue and the other credential was right where I expected it would be. I brought it back outside and gave it to the woman at the desk and was on my way.

With all of that, I knew I would be cutting it fairly close on time if I had to catch the train, but I eventually made it back to the train station (I did have a great slice of pizza from a food truck outside the subway station) but I didn't have time to grab anything else in the train station before I hopped on the high-speed train. Or so I thought. As it turned out, the train was delayed by about 20 minutes and we were about 30 minutes late getting back to Paris.

However, I made it back in one piece, with a working credential and at this point, I'll take that as a win.

It was great to see the sailing venue in Marseille today. But otherwise, today was a pretty tough adventure.