Flashes of Panic

Well, despite our earlier success in gaining entry to other venues, today’s expedition was less productive. We walked over to the team handball venue, almost as close to our hotel as the Bird’s Nest is, in hopes of catching a game between sessions. Unfortunately, it turns out those venues, on the south side of the 4th Ring Road, are not part of the Common Domain.

Our OIACs, I should mention, do in fact have some kind of RFID insert, because we hold them up to a reader when we go through security. Usually the reader’s red light goes green, but today it turned yellow, which I presume means a valid credential but no entry allowed. (Invalid credentials would stay red, I guess.) Spectator tickets have the same kind of machine-readable tag embedded, because the spectators do the same stunt with their tickets at security. So we weren’t allowed in.

I’m speculating that had we gone up to the Main Press Center and caught a media bus to the venue, as we did when we went to archery, we would’ve been fine, because we wouldn’t have had to go through that security gate. But maybe they would’ve checked our credential to get on that bus? We don’t know.

Most of the events we’re looking at conflict with the track schedule. (Field hockey, for example, has a lot of interest for us, but they play their games in the morning and evening, which is also when the athletics sessions are held.) The soccer (excuse me, football) final is in the Bird’s Nest, but on Saturday, which is one of our precious no-morning-session days which means we’ll likely be trying more non-Olympic tourism. It may be now that our other-events exploring will be less than we’d expected.

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