When we woke up this morning, there was blue sky. This was the first we have seen. It was a beautiful day. A light breeze, sun, and blue sky. Perfect for our first trip to the Birds Nest and a day in the Olympic Green.

We headed via the metro for the Green. We "had" to get back to the Olympic Store to buy more pins. The Chinese have really taken to pin trading. They see you wearing pins and they approach you and stand in front of you with the intent to trade. They have really gone for some of the pins that I brought with me that were very colorful from previous games. These are all duplicates for me, so trading them just adds to my collection. I have pins on my wall at home from all of the games I have been to, so I need to add a Beijing collection.

The "hot" pins are from the various sponsors. I have gotten some of them while here. We "scored" a Today Show pin this afternoon. We hung out at the Today Show set and talked to many Americans. We were there for the start of the filming and, we hope, that some of you saw us standing behind Matt and Meredith for the introduction. We were with a group of people all cheering U-S-A. The first interviews were with Nastia and Shawn from the Olympic All-around Gymnastics finals in the morning. You already know that USA took Gold and Silver. We met and had our pictures taken with each of them. We missed our photo with Matt Lauer and hope to catch him tomorrow when we are there.



We went to the Birds Nest for the opening of Track and Field. We saw the first gold medal ceremony of Track and Field and an American won silver in the shot put. Track and Field is like a three ring circus. There are events going on all the time and it is a little hard to focus your attention. Especially when your tickets put you in the nose bleed section. So much for E-bay. Tomorrow we are in the lower tier, right near the infield area of the Birds Nest, in row three.

That is the night of the men's 100 meter finals. We saw Tyson Gay, the favorite, in his early heat tonight. He cruised to an easy placing for the semis. We are excited about our Saturday.
We have US womens softball in the morning. Christina will probably come late to the event. I want to see China vs. Japan in the first game before the US women play. We hope they have a "meet and greet" area behind the stadium so that I can get my picture taken with Jennie Finch. I will add it to my picture with her from Athens.

We are coming close to the end of our stay at the games. I am sad that it has to end, but it has been great and just as tiring as all the others.

In case you are curious about the best Olympics in my experience, it has to be Barcelona. It was my first, in a foreign city, and it was just electrifying. Nothing beats your first Olympic games. Each one after that has been special in its own unique way. Athens was special because of the history of the Olympics dating back to 776 B.C. in Olympia. The Athens Games were part of the Pan-Athenic festival in honor of the goddess Athena. Her statue stood in the center of the Parthenon on top of the Acropolis.

We have been having a great time in Beijing. We hope that you, the readers, have enjoyed catching up with our journeys and adventures. We love to get your comments back because it tells us that people are onto the site.

We have posted pictures on a sharing site called Shutterfly. Go to: www.rsandcv.shutterfly.com to look at them.

Rick