The city sure is decked out. The highway from the airport is lined with Olympic banners.
Plenty of welcome signs, Olympic logos on buldings etc. Everything is very cosmopolitan. Sunday night traffic was great. We passed what had to be the LARGEST Ikea store I've seen to date. Imagine an Ikea the size of the one in Tukwila and make 4 or 5 stories tall. Do I have to follow that line and walk around the entire store to get to checkout? The only bummer is that it is - hazy - you can easily see the blanket of gunk even at night.

Our hotel is even closer to the Olympic Green and Birds Nest stadium than I even imagined in the pictures we had received. Quite busy around, lots of pedestrians even on a Sunday night and of course, plenty of security - officers every few feet watching everything. They sure do take down and file away lots of information in step of the process, immigration, customs, & hotel check-in, scanning and storing of documents, forms for formalizing where you are staying in the city etc., though it's important to note that everybody, from the immigration & customs folks to the security & hotel staff have been very pleasant and friendly. First impressions are important eh?

Long flights sure make one think of interesting things. I Iove the fact I left Seattle at 2:45 on Saturday afternoon and landed in Tokyo/Narita for the connection - and the sun never set - It's was 5:45 in the afternoon. Of course, it was SUNDAY instead of Saturday afternoon, we not only got dinner, but breakfast too. That is the nice thing about international flights, you get food even in coach. I fly a lot of domestic trips in the fall with the Seahawks doing the Mike Holmgren Show and it gets real old having to haul food on - or pay $ for a silly snackpack. The planes were not full, plenty of empty seats, especially the one to Beijing from Tokyo. I can only imagine it will have to get busier closer to the games right?

This flight went by quickly, mainly due to the fact I had my nose in my laptop getting software redone for ... not the Olympics... but for our KING5 election night computer system and the new "top two" WA State primary election on August 19th - smack dab in the middle of the games in Beijing. A very interesting 'revelation' hit me while I was working on the coding aboard the flight to Beijing. While we've been working ahead on both the Olympics and elections, it wasn't until I was on the plane to China that I realized the irony that I was working on the core of our rights and freedoms as U.S. citizens, the right to vote. I always knew I would be doing my final prep work and monitoring of our numbers as they come into KING on primary night via a remote connection - but gee, I'll be doing it from a communist country.

Okay... back to the Olympics. I'll get my first look around the city in the morning - it's 9:45 Sunday night here as I write this - 6:45am in Seattle, so Monday morning here will be Sunday evening in Seattle. Get used to it, mind-numbing.

Oh and the best news - There IS a Starbucks close by. I will survive.

Go to the KING5/NBC Olympic Zone for the most complete updates on our Northwest athletes and more Olympics news.