Hurry Up and Wait
Thursday, July 19th, 2007
Streeter and me on the field before the Ceremony began. Streeter in his garage-man suit and Harry had to wear all black.
“20 minutes” – that is how long transportation said we had to wait for the bus to the Opening Ceremony at Maracana Stadium. Sounds reasonable, yes? It’s just that we heard that three “20 minutes” ago and in my experience, in any other country, that means an hour. But this is Rio and as we are discovering, that’s almost on time. Live and learn. A quick bite and a bit of traffic, we arrive 2 hours later than planned.
Of course, this doesn’t faze our media contact, a local Brazillian we call JP who bends over backward to help Streeter set up a remote for the fireworks. Before we know it, we are back on schedule, in the bowel of the stadium – right where JP had planned all along…to be in position for a 2 hour wait.
Did I mention that the photos from the night were pretty good?
I captured this picture while roaming around on the in-field…just after the cauldron was lit by former Brazilian track and field medalist Joaquim Cruz.
More fun later…


