I really planned to go to sleep, but it sounds like eager fans are anxious for more photos. I was partially hesitant to upload any, because I haven’t taken many good ones for a while. So I’m sorry these aren’t as exciting as previous pictures, and I haven’t even made a good effort to show the normal things around the venue. Hopefully this will give you a little taste, and I can get some better ones soon.

We get the day off tomorrow, and I plan to visit Sestriere, the mountain media hub, and largest town up here. After that, I’m planning to head to Cesana and have dinner with a whole bunch of Asburians. Anybody in Italy is welcome to meet us around 5:00 at the Cesana temporary housing.

Erika and Kim arrived tonight, and they’re the last of the Asbury kids to get here. They were quite confused, like everyone is when they first experience the confusing mountain world of the Torino Olympics. In return for some advice on bus schedules and directions, I was able to get some lotion for my very tan and very dry face. This entry sounds a little bit like a ninth-grader’s Xanga, but you can’t expect any more at 1:15am. Enjoy the new photos, and I hope to write more tomorrow.

It’s 9:50 in Pragelato, Italy, and I am exhausted. It seems like a month ago that I was relaxing in Venice, and about three years since I last enjoyed a Cozy Burger. That said, while I miss my home(s), I am in the midst of the most exciting opportunities. More importantly, the experience is showing me how blessed I truly am, and opening my eyes to the 99% of the world that most Americans never get to see.

I’m a little upset that I haven’t written for so long, because I have so much to catch up on. Namely, everything that has to do with my job here. I may have to glaze over some details, but I hope to convey just a bit of the excitement that’s building here.

Monday
If you’re looking for a lot of excitement, you can skip this day. Looking back, it was the day I met everybody, which has now became one of the best parts of my time here: the people I work with. As you know, I am working at Pragelato Plan, the cross-country skiing venue. I have learned that the Finnish are some of the world’s greatest cross-country skiers (and have been assured many times that they will be bringing home at least the first two gold medals). As such, they are also the world’s greatest cross-country TV producers. 80% of our cameras our from YLE, the Finnish television network hired by TOBO to produce the games. They are working with the Swedish, who are also experts in this sport, and have brought about 20% of our cameras. There are two production trucks, one Swedish and one Finnish, and together they will produce the multilateral signal from the venue.

On Monday, I met many of the Finnish, as well as a few more of my colleagues (sometimes European words sound so much nicer than American words, like coworkers). Unfortunately we were all rather helpless the entire day, because many of the scaffolding platforms had not been completed, and it was impossible to build cameras on them. My first hour working for TOBO was spent in a catering tent, sipping coffee. We were told we could just relax there, but I had gotten pretty tired of sitting, so I decided to walk around. Apparently, some of the Finnish camera crew were able to begin setting up the cameras that were not on platforms. I began my real work by loading up a van with expensive metal boxes.

Oh, I almost forgot, there are two snowmobiles used by the camera crews, for Steadicam shots of athletes. For this, they brought in two Norwegian snowmobiles and drivers, who are extremely nice, and somehow seem like the Norwegian version of a NASCAR fanatic.

Anyway, Monday was pretty boring, and we played the waiting game for so long that all of the different places that I waited blurred together.

Tuesday
There was still plenty of waiting on Tuesday, but I was learning a lot about how things work, and how to be more efficient and where the places were that needed assistance. I started the morning by riding out on a snowmobile with the Finnish jib operator Geitte (I’m taking guesses at spelling with all names). For my less-nerdy friends, a jib is kind of like a see-saw, but one side is a lot longer and has a camera on the end of it. The opposite side contains a monitor, joysticks and lots of controls. The whole thing is balanced so that it is easy to swing a 200-lb. crane as fast as a skier flies down a hill. I helped Geitte to set up the camera, move around some boxes, and prepare her camera. I also helped to make sure that the camera would never get close enough to the athletes to hit them (although it is quite close).

Speaking of weights and distances, thank you very much for making me look like a complete idiot to the rest of the world. You don’t realize how often you describe how large, heavy, long, hot, cold, or short something is, until you realize that absolutely nobody uses the English measurement system. Distance is somewhat easy to convert in your head, but it’s frustrating to pause for a few seconds when you’re trying to quickly communicate how far things are. If I told you that somebody was 500 meters away, how long would it take you to figure that out?

Anyway, after things got going though, I didn’t have much to do. We did a fax, where each camera position is checked, and the operator shows the director some of the shots they can get. When this was over, it was lunchtime.

Lunch is in our catering tent, which is large enough to hold all one hundred (or so) TOBO production employees. While it is still outdoor catering, it is remarkably good, with several choices of decent food. We have all worked very hard and eat a lot, taking plenty of time to get back to work. Oh, forgot to mention that we started at 8:00am.

After lunch, I went with Giette, and two others to move this jib (the see-saw part is 8 meters long… you do the math). It’s quite a large contraption, and we had to move it 600 meters downhill, by snowmobile of course, but this still took four trips. After it was moved, I stayed with the two other employees to “help” set it up. I say this, because I contributed about 10% of the effort. The two other workers were the new Finnish operator, Juha (another guess; it’s pronounced ‘eeyo-ha’), and a German technical assistant, Mikael. Unfortunately for me, they both spoke German fluently, and like most here, their English was not as strong, so much of their communication in setting up was impossible for me to understand.

Even if I had been able to understand nothing, I still learned a lot from watching them set up, and it was great to watch their German efficiency firsthand (everybody here speaks very highly of this). They were both very kind in helping me understand how the jib is put together; it’s a pretty complex device, with several pulleys, many support cables, and a whole bunch of wires. Also, in moving it to the new location, we converted it to a 12 meter jib, which is very long. Over 120 kg of weights were used to balance it; again, enjoy the math, especially with a computer next to you. Oh, and the German word for those little clips that rock climbers use is “shenkle.”

Building the jib took a little over an hour, and then they went through the same fax procedure of testing the cameras. Although Juha was supposed to be the camera operator, a jib is rather complex, especially a long one, especially in uneven terrain, especially with fast-moving athletes. For this reason, they tried something that I’d never seen done before, and they had Mikael move the actual jib (elevation and rotation), while Juha operated the camera (pan, tilt, focus and zoom). This meant Juha would hold two joysticks in his hand, while walking with Mikael around the jib. This really isn’t sounding as cool when written down, but it produced some amazing shots. Since Mikael didn’t have to watch the monitor, he was able to watch the camera end of the jib, letting the camera glide just a few 2.54 centimeters above the snow. We were in a great location where the skiers go over a bridge and down a hill, and I’m sure this shot will be used many times, with beautiful results.

I helped them to pack up and stow the camera, and we left the venue around 5:30.

Wednesday
Like I said, each day has been getting more exciting, and today was great. I was a little worried at first, because I had walked around for about a half hour, looking for things to do, and none of my three supervisors had anything for me. I finally found some of the Italian students who had been waiting by another scaffolding platform, which was still under construction and so they could not do the rigging that was needed. I walked with them back to the “specialty equipment” room, which feels like the secret laboratory of our compound. Here I met another Finnish camera operator who was preparing to leave for his post, and his name was also Juha (it’s like the ‘John’ of Finland). He said he could gladly use an assistant, and I learned that he was a wireless camera operator. He uses a unique rigging device for his camera that is rather hard to describe, and I’ll have to wait for the picture of it. If you’re eager to research it, look for EZ-rig, made in Sweden.

Juha was perhaps the most understanding towards my anxious-to-help-looking-for-things-to-do-intern predicament, and was very willing to give me as much of a chance to be involved as possible. This is pretty hard, since a lot of the camera operators have to sit around waiting as much as I do. His task is to get close-ups of the athletes at the start and finish lines, especially before and after the races, to capture as much emotion as possible. He walks around in the big clusters of athletes and gets those types of shots. My job is to standby with extra batteries and to act as a spotter should he need anything. This will be especially important during the races, to help him identify athletes as they cross the finish line. In cross-country skiing, most of the races have staggered starts, so the first-place winner could be finishing fifth.

The exciting part is that I’ll be able to get a headset to communicate with him (and the one other wireless operator). During the downtime of the fax, he lead me practice with the camera, which has the absolute latest wireless technology, which actually works two-ways, allowing a controller back in the production trailer to adjust his exposure, giving him one less thing to worry about. The camera has literally identical controls to the cameras I have used in the past, although this one costs ten times as much (more with all of the wireless attachments), and is high-definition.

After all of the rehearsals, just before lunch, he gave me the entire rig (which goes on like a backpack), and handed me the camera to take back to the compound. While this is of course a very menial task, I was quite honored that he trusted me with a $30,000 camera, and that he was going out of his way to get me involved. As I began to walk back to the production compound from the stadium (it’s a five-minute walk, over some temporary bridges), he ran up and offered to take my picture and e-mail it to me as a souvenir. I made my way back to the compound, literally walking on ice the entire way, nervously carrying the 30-lb. camera. Five minutes after I had packed it and started charging all of the batteries, Juha walked in with my backpack, which I had to leave behind at the venue, because of the rigging equipment. It sounds like I’ll be working with him most of the time for the rest of the Olympics. He operates a fixed camera for one of the events, but is on the handheld the rest of the time.

I’ve been writing a lot about the specific production opportunities I’ve had, because I think that’s what will interest most of the people at home, but let me just write a few things about the people here. Everyone is extremely kind and great to talk to. As you’ve probably gathered, we have a lot of downtime waiting for other things to happen, and during this time, I’ve been able to meet and learn about a lot of great people. Juha has two children, three and seven years old, and his wife is at home, both working part-time and raising their kids. To make up for the month that he will be spending here in Italy, he bought her a Christmas present of a two-week trip to Dallas (where she grew up) and Mexico. They’ll be leaving for that a few days after he gets home.

There is yet another Juha from Finland who speaks excellent English, and who I could tell was an interesting guy before I even talked to him. During several of our waiting periods, I got to know him, and he talked for several hours about Finland. I can give you a rather detailed history of Finland, starting over a hundred years ago, and this is from several people, not just Juha. He told me about his summer cottage, how he hand-makes a fishing lure every night here in his hotel room, how you can drink the water directly from the lakes in Finland, and how he has two saunas at his house and two saunas at his summer cottage.

There have been dozens of other people that I have gotten to know really well in the course of three days, and I don’t mean on a cursory level either. I think it’s much more satisfying to learn a lot about someone than to talk about the weather with several dozen people. Perhaps it’s because everybody is from such different places and everybody wants to hear another’s story. There’s Tommy my roommate whose father is Irish, mother is American, grew up in Torino, and moved to Edinburgh when he was 19. There are the absolutely hilarious CCU operators (they call them vision monitors here) from London, who make the hour lunchtime go by so quickly, today with their intent desire to learn Italian from the “15-minute Italian” pocket guide.

I want to write so much more: I haven’t even discussed the absolute craze of languages here. The crew speaks Finnish to each other, and the production is in Finnish, many have to speak Swedish to some of the operators in the trucks, the Germans who assembled the jib, two French students, and everybody else who speaks Italian. And absolutely NOBODY who speaks Spanish, although that may be just as well for now.

It’s almost 12:30, and we start again tomorrow at 8:00. The bright sun and cold wind really take a lot out of you, and I know I’m just expending a lot of energy. To any Asburians who haven’t left yet: bring plenty of chap-stick and skin cream. I can’t wait to write some more, and I’m sure tomorrow holds even more than I expect. I got some pictures today, but I’m too tired to upload them now. Thank you all for the e-mails, it means so much to hear from home, Kevin is the only other person at our venue from the United States, and it’s still my favorite country. Buona sera and goodnight!

I’m more exhausted than I’ve been in a long time, but I really hope to post a longer entry tomorrow. Things are amazing and I can’t wait to tell you about them all. But my eyes need to be open for that. Goodnight!

Happy Birthday, Stephen!!

After a final tour of Lingotto and the IBC, we headed off to Pragelato, which is where I’ll be working for the next month. JD and Josh came with me, although they don’t begin work yet, they just wanted to see the mountain.

What should have been a one and a half hour bus ride became three, because it turns out the torch decided to take the same route as our bus, so we had to follow it the whole way up. The torch motorcade consists of several special torch buses, some mini-floats with musicians and celebrities and neon lights, and several dozen motorcycles, police, etc. So we were stuck behind it the whole time. And we weren’t even behind the actual torch, there are several different motorcades, and we were behind the next leg’s motorcade.

This was very serendipitous though, because after our bus dropped us off in the middle of nowhere (Pragelato has to have a population of <1000, and it’s at least 30 minutes from any larger towns), we waited about 45 minutes, and we were able to get some pictures with the next torch runner, and the handoff actually occurred precisely where we were standing. It was pretty exciting because we were riding the official media transport busses up the mountain (and it was just us and two Italians in a large, pristine bus), and many of the locals along the way would wave at us, because they were already waiting for the torch to follow.

After the torch excitement, I found my housing, which is a temporary, three-story hotel. It’s one of the most unique buildings I’ve stayed in, because it’s completely temporary. The rooms look like saunas, because the wood is not painted, and even still smells like a lumberyard. They are, however, very spacious, and we have a table, chairs, 4 dressers, and plenty of room.

Wow, there’s so much that I want to write, and it’s hard to get it out quickly enough, sorry if everything is a little sparse on details. After dropping off my suitcase, I met up with Kevin, who is another Asburian, and will be one of my two roommates here. We both needed to check in at our venue, where our uniforms were awaiting us. The whole bus system was ruined by the torch motorcades, so we finally caught one heading the right direction (there’s only up and down). I talked to several NBC interns on the bus, who sound like they have a similar deal, except they’re staying at the resort directly on the venue.

The bus drivers only speak Italian and are still learning their routes. This meant we got dropped off at the wrong stop. I can’t really blame the guy, because there are three Pragelato stops, and one isn’t on any maps. We finally got to our specific venue, and after about 20 minutes of wandering around, we found the TOBO offices. It’s actually a bit of a surprise, because I imagined that TOBO would have a huge area and a lot of support personnel already in place. Instead, there is only one temporary structure for offices (which there are four of, plus a common room). I met the Broadcast Venue Manager as well as the Broadcast Logistics Manager, who helped us find our uniforms, and introduced us to the 7-8 Italian students who had begun work last week.

The students were very kind, and since their shift ended in ten minutes, they took us back down to our hotel (we live on the same floor as them). Three of them invited us to dinner with them, which after 9pm is only available at the hotel, and is a decent cafeteria, the only problem is that it costs 12 euros. Sidenote: if you come to the Olympics, make sure you have a Visa card, because nobody is allowed to accept a Mastercard if they are on an Olympic venue. It’s almost disgusting the way they limit it, because even the tiniest off-venue stores accept Mastercard.

Anyway, we had a great dinner with some of the students, Paolo is studying to be a building engineer, which may not even exist in the US; it’s a hybrid between a civil engineer and an architect. Erika is studying to be a chemical engineer and Sara is majoring in languages, fluent in English, French, Spanish and Italian, and learning German and Japanese.

After dinner I came back to my room and spent a half-hour trying on my uniform, which is the most amazing thing I have ever seen. There is no way I will ever be cold. The cost is supposed to be within a few dollars of $1,000, and I definitely believe it. The jacket even has an iPod pocket, removable hood, everything. All of the fabrics are waterproof, the long underwear is actually very similar to Underarmour, and everything is made by Asic, (same as my sweet running shoes), which turns out to be an Italian company. What an amazing uniform.

There’s so much more that I want to tell, but I need to go to bed sometime. Tomorrow is my first day of work, and also my first day off. The venue is going through a security lockdown, which will supposedly last until 15:00, meaning actually 17:00. We may get a call in the evening to come in and do some work for a few hours at night, but it’s looking unlikely. It will give me a chance to catch up on some more writing tomorrow, and maybe get some more pictures of this area. The view is absolutely amazing, you can see for miles down the valley, and I’m surrounded by gigantic rocky peaks. I’ve uploaded a few new pictures, so take a look. Ciao!

Just a quick update: I’m sitting on the hard tiled floor of what has become the Asbury apartment in Italy. Brandon Bigham is renting it for the length of his contract, which is from like January 20 - March 3. However, dozens of people are coming and going at different times, and that makes it pretty exciting, although very cramped. Right now it’s Brandon, Josh, J.D., Daniel (J.D.’s brother) and me. There is one double bed and one not-quite-love seat. So it’s the tile floor and some thin blankets for me. I’m looking forward to checking in to my official Olympic accommodations tomorrow.

We took Dr. Owens’ grand tour of the IBC today, which was pretty interesting. I have my accreditation and my boots, and I’ll be getting the rest of my uniform tomorrow (it looks amazing). The only problem is that the boots were designed for the red TOROC uniforms, and the TOBO uniform I’ll be getting is blue. So they kind of look like little elf boots. But at least they’ll be comfortable. I actually didn’t take any pictures in my travels around Torino today, but I’ll need to do that sometime, the Olympics stuff is really pretty nice, plus the Lingotto mall, which is where the IBC building attaches, is huge and very nice.

Tomorrow we’re going to head up to the mountain venues (about a 1.5 hour bus ride), and I’ll be able to check in at my venue, then explore Cestriere, which is where the Mountain Media Center is located. Hopefully I’ll be a little more excited about taking pictures, too. I bought 30 AAs today for 8e, and that should last me a long time. I also just uploaded a bunch of pictures from my second day in Venice, and was already reminded of how beautiful it was. Time for my last night of temporary sleeping.

It’s 8:45 on Thursday night and we’ve made a small change in plans. Instead of heading to Torino tomorrow morning, we’re going there tonight. We figured that it’s better to travel while it’s dark and get in a full day tomorrow, since it’s a five-hour train ride. Venice was still beautiful today, and San Marco’s square was great. Honestly though, after you’ve seen everything for more than a few hours, there’s not much change. Of course, it would still be great to stay around and continue to soak everything in, but I think this trip is more of an exploration and discovery trip, rather than a soaking.

We got on the train at 4:30, had a 50 minute layover in Bologna, and we’ll arrive in Torino at 10:10pm. About a half-hour ago, I saw the first bit of snow on the ground, although it’s really to dark to see more than a few feet away from the train. I talked to Dr. Owens before we boarded in Venice, and got the address of Brandon Bigham’s apartment in Venice, and it’s just a two-mile taxi ride from the train station. I haven’t taken the time to upload any pictures from today, but I may do that a little bit later tonight. I’m a little bit tired of writing for now, but I should write more tomorrow, Venice is hard to describe in few words.

It’s 10:45pm and I’m sitting in the deserted (not desserted) kitchen of my new hotel in Venice.

Now, I promised pictures of the beautiful Italian countryside earlier, but as soon as I got out my camera (after Florence), Italy pretty much turned into Missouri. Very flat, and kinda brown. I did have a great time eating on the train. An entire car was a restaurant, and they had very decent food. The fact that my hot sandwich came with a side of Pringles and Pepsi (neither of which I’d seen before in Italy) was kind of funny, but they were still delicious. Probably because of the environment of this “bistro coache.” It was decorated as nice as any uppity American coffeeshop, and had little standing-style tables everywhere, so you could stand and eat and look out the windows. Being able to eat and work from a train was a great experience this morning, and I’m looking forward to it again on Friday.

Our train arrived on time, and despite Venice being quite literally the most confusing city in the world to navigate, we found the hotel with no problem.

We’re staying at the Villa Rosa hotel, only two blocks from the train station. We heard about it from one of the guys who had stayed at the hostel in Rome. It’s a very quaint old building, with a funny, confusing internal layout, but it certainly feels like you would expect a cozy little Venetian hotel to feel like. And for only 50e per night for a double room, it’s as cheap as any hostel would have been. I’ll even get to have a free breakfast in this same little kitchen tomorrow morning.

My plan to see Venice is pretty simple: just keep walking. Armed with a mini-map, and even a GPS if things get hopeless, I’m still just planning to walk and find things as I go. And that’s what we did when we got here.

Of course, this does have some humorous side effects, like walking in a gigantic circle without noticing, but it is much more interesting than walking down the two main streets which are obvious tourist alleys. My only specific goals for tomorrow are to get to Piazzo de San Marco, and to ride on at least one boat.

Dinner was one of the best meals I’ve had so far, yet one of the simplest (and cheapest). I was a little tired of pizzeria type food, so we found a great little store selling kabobs. The owner was one of the few people outside of hotels that has spoken English, and it was good to talk to him for a while. His name was Samir and he’s from Tanzania, although his pronunciation was very different, so he could mean somewhere else that I just don’t know how to spell. It is just east of Morocco, in northern Africa, so he grew up speaking Arabic and French. He learned German and English in a university, and Italian when he came here.

This trip has definitely inspired me to work harder to become more fluent in foreign languages. It is kind of confusing trying to pick up Italian, along with the Spanish that I know, because they’re so similar, but different enough to make a difference. Anyway, if you want to eat the best kabob you’ve ever tasted, steer yourself to 45.437465N, 12.321128E, and make sure you order it with everything (including the spicy chili).

While on the subject of nerdy things like GPS, let me just say that I am kind of interested to see how this works out. While it’s nothing groundbreaking, it’s still very new. I set my GPS to record where I am every 10 seconds in Venice. Since my camera also saves the exact time I take each picture, I’ll be able to plot exactly where in Venice I take each picture. I didn’t try this in Rome, because much of it was indoors, though it still would have been interesting.

It’s a little after 11 now, and we’re going to get an earlier start tomorrow, especially since we’ll get breakfast here, so I’m going to hit the Venetian hay. Ciao!

Right now I’m traveling north from Rome to Venice on a train that has some very comfortable accommodations. We’re in a little set of three seats, two facing one direction, and one facing the opposite. There’s nobody in the seat next to mine, and there are two outlets on this little tray thing in front of me, which means I can write and work during the entire trip (11:00 - 15:30). According to my GPS, we’ve been moving at about 130mph.

The landscape is beautiful, the hills are very rolly, plenty of snowcapped mountains in the distance, and there are vineyards and olive tree farms every few minutes. The economic scale seems relatively similar to rural appalachia, and we have gone through several nicer suburbs. Rather than a baseball diamond spotting the landscape, there are occasional soccer fields, and the only animals I’ve seen are the occasional sheep.

We’ve stopped in Florence for several minutes, but we’re on our way again, and that should be our only stop. I think that’s enough writing for now, I’ll take some pictures, and I’ll see if I can geocode them so you can see where in the country I took them.

Well, I realized that I never gave a clear link to my photos. Plus this layout is messed up in IE, and I’m sorry about that, you’d think I’d take the time to fix it, but I have a few other things to do…

Anyway, you can always see my latest photos at Flickr. Tonight’s pizza was great!! Goodnight!