Monday, August 11, 2008

Olympian Andrew Wheating is on the scene of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing and writing a journal for goducks.com as he prepares for the men's 800 meters.

In his first journal entry, Andy writes about the flight to China, gear from the USOC and the amazing 2008 Opening Ceremony.

Well, we didn't get off to a great start. We (Nick Symmonds and I) got a call at 11 p.m. the day before our scheduled departure to let us know that our flight was canceled. That was a little bit of a hiccup, but we managed to find our way down to San Jose to meet up with the rest of Team USA.

I had heard rumors that the athletes were given a shopping cart to gather their equipment and uniforms...this rumor soon turned to a straight fact! We arrived at team processing and were given a Home Depot shopping cart, walked through the doors and were overwhelmed with the clothing lined up to be doled out to us. We were given two massive blue travel bags each imprinted with "USA Track and Field" full of clothing. That night I could not resist, I opened up each bag and just flung all the gear I was given into the air like leaves on a Vermont fall day!

The flight to Beijing was 12 hours! That's 10 hours longer then my attention span could put up with. Luckily I was...