Qingdao - Set Day

August 8th

Had to be in at 10 again today.

I rode my new bike with a couple of other guys as I wasn’t exactly sure how to get to work. My padlock thingy kept getting caught in the pedals – so that was fun.
The ride isn’t so bad – except for the weaving in and out of traffic part. It's kinda scary at first, but you get the hang of it quickly. I highly doubt I would of tried this in Beijing though!

I tested the machine a couple times and then went to lunch. Again, terrible (lunch).

After lunch, I had to do a “Name Scrub” – which means comparing the names in the graphics interface to the list of names supplied by the athletes. The names in the interface where entered months ago – and there are of course typos and errors when they were entered since some countries put your family name before your given name.

Anyway – there are 400 athletes participating in sailing – so with the help of Christina – this took about 2.5 hours. Take into consideration, there are very few names like "John Smith" - so it makes you go blind after awhile.

Left the venue around 2pm.

At 2:30 – I met some of the guys in the lobby to go visit the Tsingtao beer factory. Thanks to our Olympic credentials, we got in for free.




It was the typical beer factory tour – the history of the factory, etc.


I learned that they even ship Tsingtao beer to the U.S. although the label is slightly different


Here we are getting a sample

Nic - Ben - Billy - “Z”



We each had our photo taken and they printed our our photos on a beer label and put it on a bottle of beer for 20 Yuan (about $3USD)



The photos of the factory itself didn’t turn out very well.

They have this strange room called the “Drunk Room” – it is crazy!
My photo of Ben didn’t come out so well since we were both moving


But here is one of “Z”


After we drank a few pitchers of beer and bought souvenirs, we returned to the hotel. Made our plans to meet to go somewhere to watch opening ceremonies.
It was determined there was a beach side hotel that was going to have big screen TVs outside showing Opening Ceremonies.

I grabbed a taxi with “Z” and Christina. We got to the Sea View Hotel around 7:30.


Since there were about 30 people that needed taxi’s, it took an eternity for everyone to arrive. Plus, the Opening Ceremonies made today kind of like a national holiday - so not as many cab drivers worked as usual.



The 3 of us found an outside buffet and decided to eat there. We didn’t find the big screen TVs – but there were plenty of TVs in the area we found.

The buffet was very nice and it was definitely a 5-star hotel. Christina and I struggled at finding something to eat because all of the meat and seafood was raw and then they cooked it for you.

Some of the highlights were:
Mutton Bunch
Mutton Chops (“What is mutton anyway?”)
Cattle Stomach
Deer Chop
Taiwan Style Baked Intestines
Cicada
Chicken Neck
Much Gout Fish (huh?)


And believe me - that was just some of the more strange. There were easily 75 options on the raw meat/seafood section.

Anyway – we found some nice slices of boneless pork chops and each had several.
They were actually really good – however – they felt like they rubbed them in dirt before grilling. Otherwise – tasty!

The Opening Ceremonies were fabulous! It was even more entertaining because there was a table of locals sitting next to us. So watching them react was really cool.

About an hour into our dinner, they locals came to our table and welcomed us to their town & country. They shared beer with us and wanted us to share a toast with them.


As soon as we accepted the beer, one of the ladies told Christina and I it was local tradition to chug the beer if we accepted it. So of course we did!

Then we went to find the rest of our crew who were at the beach bar.
It was a very nice outside bar where pretty much our entire crew was.

Here is one of the tables:


Soon after Team USA came out, Christina and I took a taxi back to the hotel and called it a night.