The Olympics... and beyond

This past Monday marked 200 days until Tokyo 2020, which meant that it was 198 days until it's time to head around the world. As the number continued to tick down, I realized that it was time to do a little more planning in regards to the Olympic experience, so after I made all my newspaper deadlines, I spent some time online researching the cheapest flights to get to Tokyo in July. There are a lot of ways to get to Japan, but none of the flights were terribly inexpensive. Being as this is a self-funded trip (along with donations from some great people), my most important search function for the flight was to find the cheapest way to get there.  In this regard, there were a few flights that were right around the same price. The one that intrigued me the most was a flight on Hawaiian Airlines that went from Boston to Honolulu then on to Tokyo. Having never been to Hawaii, I thought this would be a great pit stop along the way. However, the layover was almost an entire day a...

This week, as the calendar turns to 2020, it’s time to look ahead and see just what a busy 2020 has in store. An exciting development that popped up last year was the chance to travel to Ireland with the University of New Hampshire Marching Band. This coming year marks the band’s 100 th anniversary and the director, who was a freshman during my senior year in the band, decided to plan a trip to Ireland and invited alumni to come along if they were interested. The first international trip (not counting Canada) I took in my life was also with the UNH Marching Band, when we traveled to Europe in late 2001-early 2002. I was also an alum at that point, but that trip was a blast and I am hoping the Ireland trip is much of the same. I’ll be making that trip in mid-March and will be in Ireland for the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade in Dublin. A few weeks later, I will make a shorter trip, this time to Florida for a little spring training baseball. The Kingswood baseball team has made a n...

One year from now, I will probably be sweltering in the Tokyo heat. But the good news is that I will be at my first Summer Olympics, getting a look at one of the world's biggest cities. Earlier this month, I received my confirmation that I had been granted my first choice for lodging for the two-plus weeks I am scheduled to be in Tokyo. The lodging situation in Japan will be a little different than in my previous two Olympic experiences. In Sochi, the media housing was in what was essentially a hotel where I stayed by myself while in PyeongChang, the media housing was essentially apartments, where I had my own room, but shared a living room and kitchen with two other people. In Tokyo, because the Olympics are happening in an already bustling metropolis, the media housing will be in existing hotels. Each media member was given a list of the hotels, which included the amenities available and travel times. We were then asked to give our top three choices for lodging. My choices w...

Spring has sprung in New England and with it, plenty of rain. Of course, rain is not a friend to sporting events, making postponements and cancellations a regular occurrence. However, the advent of spring also means that summer is right around the corner, at least in one sense of the word. And with the approaching summer months comes the thoughts of next summer, when it will be time to pack up and head halfway around the world to cover the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan. As I've mentioned before, I've never attempted to get credentials for the Summer Games and only applied on a whim. I didn't really expect to make it through, but when the approval came in, it was a chance I had to at least attempt to make happen. I thought for sure that my trip to Sochi in 2014 would be my 'once in a lifetime' Olympic experience and I left there with a feeling of contentment if that were indeed the case. Four years later, getting the chance to experience my second Winter Olympic...

Today, March 12, marks 500 days until the start of the Tokyo Summer Olympics 2020. While that seems like an awful long time, in preparing to cover the Olympics, it's actually not that much time. The logistics of planning a trip like this are not simple and there is a lot of time involved. Paperwork needs to be filled out well in advance and deposit checks will have to be sent for accommodations later this year. So, while it's 500 days until Tokyo, it was time to get started in figuring out exactly how to make this trip work. Over the last eight-plus years I've been honored that many people have supported my quest to cover local Olympians as they pursue their dreams on the snow in Sochi and PyeongChang. It is humbling to me that people appreciate what I do on a regular basis enough to help me chase a ridiculous dream like covering the Olympics. Sochi and PyeongChang were truly a blast and I expect that Tokyo will be much the same. With that in mind, I decided this time ar...

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had been approved for credentials for the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics. This will be my first time covering the Summer Olympics, as my past two Olympic experiences were during the winter months. This past week, I took the next step toward the trip to Japan becoming a reality next summer. I filled out the forms requesting the accommodations for the two-plus weeks for the Games. This isn’t a huge step, since the accommodations aren’t official until I make my first payment, but this was indeed at least a step forward heading toward Tokyo. Tokyo is different than the first two Olympics that I attended. In Sochi in 2014, my accommodations in media housing were in what was essentially a hotel room. It was a room with a couple of beds and a bathroom. In PyeongChang in 2018, I stayed in what was essentially an apartment, which had three different rooms, a common area, a kitchen and two bathrooms. Both had their advantages and disadvantages, but in both cases...

This blog has generally come alive around the Winter Olympics. Or at least when the credential applications and approvals for the Winter Olympics come into play. However, as we sit in December of 2018, the next Winter Olympics, in Beijing, China in 2022, are a long way away. And the credential process is still more than a year and a half away. However, here we sit with a new post on the Olympics. That’s because for the first time, I applied for credentials for the Summer Olympics, which will be held in the summer of 2020 in Tokyo, Japan. Having talked to many journalists who’ve covered multiple Olympics, the summer games not only feature more athletes and more events, but more journalists as well. Going into the process, I was not terribly high on my chances to receive credentials, but I figured just putting my name out there wouldn’t be a bad thing and if I didn’t get them, that was fine too. A little more than a month ago I got a call on my office phone from Matt Pepin, the Bo...