It's always something

If you happened to hear me this morning on Greg and the Morning Buzz (who I should note have been so great with letting me talk Olympics the last 12 years), you heard me tell the story of the bus issue last night.

I hopped on the bus in Cortina, which was running a few minutes late, heading over the mountains toward Anterselva, where I had to walk to another bus stop to get the bus to my hotel, which is about a 40-minute drive without traffic. I walked to the other bus stop, just missing the bus that was scheduled for just before 8:30 p.m., so I waited about 45 minutes for the 9:30 bus. And I waited. And I waited some more. Eventually, I waited all the way to the 10:30 p.m. bus, the final one back up to my valley hotel. The one other person waiting with me said that an earlier night the same thing had happened to him and they had to put him up in a hotel because he had no way of getting back to his hotel.

It seems that this is kind of an Italian thing. You just don't know. I expect delays, especially in the Anterselva and Cortina areas when events are going on. There is a lot of traffic in relatively small towns, with lots of pedestrians walking around, making things tough on drivers. But not showing up is just weird to me. A young woman from Finland at my hotel said the same thing happened to her earlier in the week going out of the valley. In fairness to the transportation people, I sent an e-mail just to let them know and got two different responses with apologies and promises to keep an eye on the situation.

Today's thing, I also mentioned on The Buzz this morning. I went to Cortina pretty early, thinking I'd beat busy buses. I hopped on the local bus as opposed to our dedicated media bus and headed down the valley before 7 a.m. But it was not an empty bus, as every stop had at least three kids getting on. Then it hit me, that's how they get to school. The bus was full all the way to the bus stop where I had to get off, though most of the kids got off there too.

I made my way in to Cortina and found the bus up the hill to the Tofane Alpine Center. After walking a bit up the hill, I thought it would be cool to take the gondola up to the race course rather than the media shuttle. This was a mistake. The gondola was cool as we worked our way through the fog, but once we got off, we had to walk down a ski slope toward the course and then, much to the chagrin of this old, fat guy, we had to climb about 200 stairs to get up to the finish area. It took me quite a while to find the venue media center (signs pointing in two different directions did not help), but I was able to leave my stuff and head out to the finish to watch.

A helpful volunteer in the media center told me how to get down to Cortina without having to make any weird transfers. And when the shuttle came, I squeezed in and made my way down to the village with the idea of going into the media center that is shared by the curling venue and the sliding venue. There was a young woman from Norway who was making her first trip there, so I walked with her down to the security checkpoint at the sliding center. That's when things got weird.

I opened my backpack as normal and the young man told me that I couldn't take my camera into the media center. I had to let that sink in for a minute. A young woman who spoke English came over to help and said it was a new rule that anyone with my E credential (journalist, not photographer) was not allowed to bring "professional cameras" into the venues. I was a bit flummoxed as my new iPhone takes better pictures than my "professional camera" in many cases. So I thought I was out of luck in heading to curling and getting some work done in the media center.

However, I tried something else. I walked up the hill a bit to the entrance to the curling center and put the hat and cords in my bag on top of the camera and the security guy didn't see it, so I got in and was able to see a little curling and do some work in the media center.

And for the first time in a few days, I made my way back to the hotel while it was still light out and even got back in time for dinner. I should mention that my hotel here in Val di Casies is a small family-owned place that serves some delicious dinner and it was nice to be back early enough to partake tonight.

There's always something. Tomorrow I won't take my camera to biathlon and I'll look for the signs there. I may be limited to what my phone can do, but we shall see.

The Tofane Alpine Center in Cortina is stunning, even with fog rolling across the top of the mountains.