Rio Olympics Blog — Day One: The long adventure begins

Well, what a past 24 hours it has been.

Around 2:30 p.m. yesterday, I started the journey south to Rio de Janeiro at DFW Airport, meeting up Kevin and Jasmine before heading to Miami, meeting up with the rest of the group and then making the eight-hour flight down to Rio.

The flight from DFW to Miami on American was actually nice since we somehow ended in business class. The flight to Rio on TAM, however, is a different story. Going from a pretty spacious layout to a tight one isn’t an ideal situation. And with my troubles of sleeping on a plane, I only managed about three hours of sleep, so this ought to be fun.

Now, however, I’m actually here on the ground, and it’s all starting to actually sink in. After realizing that four of our five bags were left in Miami, we drove through the city on the way to the apartment. The drive featured many sights, both good and bad, and it really began to hit home that I’m actually here in Rio for the Olympics. I’ll have a few more thoughts about the city and the games in tomorrow’s blog post.

We checked into our apartment, which is right down the road from the Olympic Park where most of the events will be held. It’s a really nice apartment (with air conditioning) and basically a really, really nice dorm room with a living room and kitchen and dining area. Most importantly, it’s within the security perimeter around the games.

The rest of today will be getting our credentials and a nice dinner to celebrate our arrival.

It’s all starting to set in that I’m actually covering the Olympics in person and for a wide audience. The excitement is palpable. Now I can’t wait for the games to actually begin.