8/12/16,
“Familiar Locations, New Adventures”
Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil
As I have
mentioned in numerous entries, the theme of my Travelogue is finding the
familiar within the unfamiliar and experiencing the unfamiliar within the
familiar. While the Olympics and my
Olympian heroes is an all-too-familiar experience, I am experiencing this Games
in a completely unfamiliar fashion.
However, also, as I have previously mentioned, while going to an
Olympics is an unfamiliar experience, I am finding the familiar in the
similarities between attending the Games and attending Comic Con or a similar
convention.
Today, though, we things
became even more unfamiliar as we returned to locations that had become
familiar to us and experienced the locations in unfamiliar ways. When we headed out this morning, I knew this
would be the theme of Day 7, but I did not realize just how adventurous our day
would be become.
Not everything that
occurs during a trip makes it into the Travelogue, and some of the omissions
are because they are, as Ernest Hemingway would say, “unpublishable.” Certain aspects refer to one individual I
might not want reading what I write about him or her, but I bank on burying
such things so deeply in the Travelogue and my confidence that said person is
not a regular reader of my Travelogue.
Other things simply cannot be published at all and become confined to my
personal journal. Today was filled with
the latter.
If I was George Costanza,
today’s entry would read, in part, “We headed out to lunch, and after lunch, I
began to perceive this impending…intestinal requirement, whose needs surpassed
any desire for activities, so we stopped at a coffee shop. While I was I washing my hands, a woman
walked up to me and asked if I was from the United States. Yada, yada, yada, I missed Phelps’s race by a
minute.” However, that’s not my
style. I will attempt to, um, sanitize,
this entry as much as possible for publication.
I believe a simple recording of the facts without commentary will serve for
most of the entry.
Okay, so, after I
closed, still engrossed in my debate with my friend, it was 4 AM by the time I
finished publishing and got to sleep. We
slept in, and tried to strategize for the day.
Our plan was to head out for lunch, have a cigar on the beach, go back to
the hotel for another cigar, then go back to Fogo do Chao for dinner, then walk
to the cigar store, while we smoked cigars, to get some more cigars, then I
would head to Swimming. For the most
part, that is what happened, but it happened in the most unexpected way.
I had brought my computer bag with me in case
I wanted to do an entry on the beach. We
stopped across the street for lunch, getting their sausage dish with rice and
beans. Now, I know my readers have
objected in the past when I record the emptying of my bladder and bowels, but,
such activities form an essential part of today.
Almost as soon as we left the lunch restaurant, I had to go to the
bathroom, badly, in both ways. I wanted
to go back to the hotel, but Raymond wanted to keep walking.
As we got close to the beach, my intestinal
requirement was becoming an emergency.
We wound up stopping at a coffee shop.
Now, I need to go into a little more detail. My best friend and I are trying to keep count
of my Official Us for the trip. In order
to get credit for the Official U, I must, among other things, be standing
up. That requires, well, that I not
combine my intestinal need with the Official U.
In fact, they must be separated by a full hand wash. Either order is acceptable, the U first or
second, but they must each get their own hand wash. Again, reader, all of this is completely
essential to what happened today.
Okay,
well, the intestinal requirement was too urgent to allow me to take the
Official U first. I took care of that
first and headed out to wash my hands.
There were two wash basins, and a women’s stall to the left and a men’s
stall to the right. As I was washing my
hands, I heard someone asking me if I was from the United States. She had come out of the women’s stall. I told her I was from New York. She was from Detroit. Great.
I still had to take that Official U, and I had to take it real bad. I could not hold it in long enough to sustain
a conversation. I finished washing my
hands and went back in to take the Official U.
Okay, so I figured I’d never see her again, all because of that Official
U count. I also knew that my best
friend would get a huge kick out of this story.
I did not know how much more interesting the story would get.
I then went to rejoin Raymond, and guess
what? He was talking to Miss Detroit and her other friend. They wanted to come to the steakhouse for
dinner tonight. In fact, they wanted to
hang out with us all day. Well, la di da. We headed down to the beach, and we agreed we’d
meet up and exchanged numbers. From here
on out, I will refer to the girl from the wash basin as “my girl” and the other
girl as “Raymond’s girl”. Well,
logistics were a bitch, and we later learned that not all of our messages were
going through.
Raymond and I went to the
beach after getting our coffees. We lit
up cigars, a special edition Hoyo de Monterrey for me, and took some ceremonial
pictures. My girl messaged me to say
that they were going to the shopping mall.
I asked which one, but she did not respond. It turned out, my messages were not going
through. Raymond and I walked along the
beach and, well, that’s when things started to get even more interesting. We saw a football goal without a net. Raymond wanted to practice his high bar or
uneven bar routine. He cut himself on
the post. He needed an adhesive
bandage. He raced ahead of me to the
point where I lost him. I realized that I
was on the beach right in front of the shopping mall at that point. I decided I would wait there. I had no way of reaching Raymond, since he
doesn’t have international service.
Reader, isn’t this a fun story?
I
was about to go back to the hotel. I
soon heard someone say, “Hey.” It was my
girl, with Raymond’s girl in tow. I
explained the situation. Raymond
messaged me. He went to Fogo do Chao to
ask for a bandage. It was not far. Okay then.
I told the girls what happened, a story they found all-too-amusing, and
we walked to meet him. They wanted to go
up the cable car to sugarloaf. Most of
the misadventures my girl and I got into are unpublishable, but we took solace
in the fact that they would not arrest American tourists for such minor missteps
during the Olympics.
We eventually wound
up at Sugarloaf, drinking very heavily for the next two hours, almost
nonstop. The views from the top were
breathtaking, and we paired off, Raymond and I each lighting up a cigar again,
a Montecristo for me, sharing the cigars with our girls, before breaking up and
exploring the mountain in pairs.
Eventually Raymond said he was going down, but it was unclear if he
meant down the stairs from the bar or all the way down the mountain. Yada, yada, yada, I didn’t see him again for
9 hours.
Meanwhile, my girl and I got
into more misadventures before we headed back down the mountain, stopping again
for another drink. We were both utterly
and royally toasted at this point. It
wasn’t even 7 PM. She had invited her
host to join us for dinner. It would
apparently just be the three of us, and my girl promised to impress me with how
much she could eat. She took great pride
in the amount of food she was capable of consuming and still maintaining an
average body type. She preferred that to
eating a more moderate amount of food and having a skinny body. I respect that. It is at this point that more of the
unpublishable stuff transpired.
We had
another drink at the bar while we waited for our table. Her host soon joined us. We got our table for three, and the two of
them put me to shame in how much they ate.
I suppose due to nerves, or because of all the fruit in our drinks, I
had lost my appetite. Also, I was
anxious about missing Phelps. His race
was at 10:12 PM. It was 7:40 PM when we
sat down to dinner. I was vigorously
timing everything, and I was also debating if I should just give her host the
ticket so that the adventures that occurred instead would have been truly
unpublishable and watched the stream on my phone or on TV. I was seriously debating it, but it was
Phelps, in his last individual race.
My
girl kept saying we’d meet up later, that the event only went until 11:30 PM, and
that we could just meet up after that.
Reader, without analysis, I will just highlight on fact. We had been drinking, heavily, almost nonstop
for four hours. She wanted to meet up
four hours later, at which point I did not expect her to have drank any less
over those four hours than she did over the four hours we were together. I also knew with a high level of confidence
that if I went to Swimming, “my girl” would likely no longer be “my” girl. It was Phelps. In his last individual race.
After we could no longer eat another bite, we
took the subway, and they got off at Ipanema, as we made plans to meet up after
the Swimming. My girl’s phone had died,
so I had to communicate with her host, who still had a solid 70% on her
charge. I was still debating handing her
the ticket. We said our goodbyes, and I
went back to calculating. It would be a
true Munich run, at the Olympics, for Phelps.
Once I got off the bus, I ran and ran.
I was outside the venue, and I heard the cheers indicating the swimmers
were entering the arena. I ran some
more. I heard another cheer. The race would last about a minute. I got inside the arena, only to see the
swimmers at the end of their race. I had
just missed it. “Did he do it?” I asked
the first person I saw. He held up two
fingers. Phelps had come in second. In fact, it was a three-way tie for silver. I had missed that. Fuck.
It was all for naught. I could
have left the girls earlier, or I could have stayed with my girl and given the
host the ticket. What I did was the
unhappy middle.
Though, I suppose, it
was kind of better this way. I will see
his final race tomorrow, which should be an easy Gold for Team USA, so the way
I will remember Phelps at these Games will be his GOAT win last night and his
relay tomorrow. I did not have to see
him come in second, instead only finding out about that secondhand. I had no time for souvenirs or concessions or
an entry. There were two more races to come,
and the medal ceremonies. I headed
straight to the railing for most of the rest of the session.
Katie LEDECKY, my new crush, won the 800m
Freestyle in commanding fashion, almost 2 seconds under the WR and half a pool
length ahead of the silver-medalist. Her
name has now become a noun, as in, “to pull a Katie Ledecky.” A 36-year-old from Team USA repeated his 2000
win of the 50m Freestyle, which was quite an accomplishment. There were four medal ceremonies.
The Phelps ceremony, he stood beside the
other two silver-medalists and the gold-medalist was at the top. The other three ceremonies led to our national anthem being played. I messaged the host, and
she said they were heading to Lapa, so I got a taxi there, which actually had
to take me past my hotel. I was getting
tired at this point and almost called it all off. I asked her what bar they were going to. No response.
When I got to Lapa, I called both of them. Neither picked up, and the host’s phone went
straight to voicemail, which meant it was probably dead, too. Well, that was that. I texted her and waited around for a
bit. No response. I took a taxi back to the hotel and
reorganized myself in the room a bit. I
then headed up to the roof, where I proceeded to light up a Partagas and write
this entry, which I will now close so that I can publish and get to sleep. I guess I will try to meet up again with her
tomorrow, as we are going to Athletics in the morning, which is right by where
they’re staying. I can make no promises
of what will and will not be publishable if that is the case.
8/15/16 (Rio
2016 Day 10), “The Return Journey”
