U nfailing politeness ez rental cars and good cheer from the Brits (except for the ever-present security forces) , stirring events in a multitude of sports, rain every day (mostly in spots), and a massive screwup on ticket distribution throughout, highlight the 2012 London Olympic Games .
I am here in London on a home exchange, living in a house in Southeast London while the London family stays in mine in Malibu a very economical ez rental cars way to see the Olympic Games. The organizers of the Games decided ez rental cars to farm out the distribution of tickets to the 30 or so venues for the 40 or so sports inside London and throughout England, and it just has not worked well at all. Non-Brits can get tickets to the Games only through authorized resellers, and for Americans is it a company called CoSport. In trying to obtain tickets before the Games, I found the CoSport website (the only way to get tickets) very user-unfriendly, as I had a lot of trouble setting up an account and getting a password.
It also seemed that it was easier to get tickets if you went with the package CoSport offered transportation, hotels, and finally tickets. I only needed tickets, as I used reward mileage to get here, and had my free house. It also seemed ez rental cars that your chances of getting tickets to choice events increased if you took tickets to some of the less popular sports. And for Brits, it was even harder, as ticket distribution was done by lottery, unless, of course, you had privileged access, and thousands, it sees, were in that position in this very class-conscious country.
So it was that I arrived in London ez rental cars without any tickets to the Games. No problem, I thought my experience in 1984 with the Los Angeles ez rental cars Games told me that there were always tickets to the sporting events floating around. But I soon found that this was not the case for London 2012. My first experience with this was on the Opening Day of the sporting events, July 27, when my girlfriend ez rental cars and i went to Olympic Park to check it out and perhaps see an event. But we needed tickets grounds passes to even enter Olympic Park, and we did not have them. OK where can we purchase them? We were told that they can be bought, but only online (and my Blackberry cell phone does not have this feature), and by the way they were sold out for that day. We could not even enter the venue.
Later, ez rental cars we went online on our laptops to pick up tickets, ez rental cars and found that CoSport had no currently available tickets for any venue at the Games for any of the next 16 days of the Games. I am sure it has been reported in the States that there were a lot of empty seats for the various events in the early days of the Games, ez rental cars as Olympics ez rental cars sponsors bought up blocks of tickets and distributed them, and many of the recipients chose not to attend some of the events for which they had tickets. Also, a vast number of seats at the various venues were set aside for the media covering the Games, and they also blew off attending some of the events, leaving their seats vacant. And members of the IOC and its constituent organizations, and the various hangers-on and coaches and officials of the 200+ countries (including such countries as Puerto Rico and Guam) all got their ticket allotments. It almost seemed that the events were being put on not for the live spectators willing to pay for tickets to watch the events, but for the worldwide television and print media audiences and their representatives here.
So after trying repeatedly to get tickets online, we decided to blow off the Olympics for a few days and tour the sights of London and visit a beautiful town on the North Sea in northeastern England, ez rental cars Southwold, from which my ancestor, Jeremiah Vail, emigrated to Salem, Massachusetts in 1639 (he soon left Salem, ez rental cars after testifying in support of an accused witch who was found innocent, to the town of Southold, Long Island, where he lived out his life).
Back in London, my girlfriend ez rental cars having returned to the States, I decided to try again to get tickets ez rental cars to the Games. But CoSport, for every event, still showed online that tickets were Currently Not Available ez rental cars . Every single event for every sport no tickets. ez rental cars And when I tried to get tickets from the 2012 London Games organizers, I was directed back to CoSport as the only place where I could buy tickets.
So it came to pass that I decided to take my future into my own hands, and not rely on the incompetents at CoSport. I went to Olympic Park, and held up a sign All the way from L.A and no tickets. Have you got one? I will pay fair value. A guy came up to me and said he had an extra ticket for one event and would sell it to me for 20 pounds, the face value of the ticket. As we completed our transaction, we were surrounded by plain-clothed London bobbies and threatened with arrest. Rather than going to jail for trying to get into an Olympic event, they let me return the ticket to him if he gave me back my 20 pounds, which we did. They explained that it was illegal in London to pay for tickets, even if it was only for the face value of the tickets. I muttered something like it was this kind of mindset that led to the American War for Independence in 1776, and went on my way.
Moving to a new spot, I again held up my sign, putting a sad look on my face, and along came a Frenchman and his two kids who told me he had an extra ticket to tonight s Athletics (the Brit word for track and field) event, as his wife had not been able to come. He gave me the extra ticket, for which I was very thankful, so thankful that I voluntarily offered him a gratuity, which he gratefully accepted.
The event, it turned out, was the highlight of the Games, and I had finish line seats for the 100 meter event, which Usain Bolt won in Olympic record time, the second fastest 100 meters ever run. The seat was on the far side of the field from the finish line (the media occupied ez rental cars all the seats anywhere near the finish line on the other side of the stadium), but I got a fantastic view as Bolt bolted to the finish line, pulling away from the field in the last 20 meters or so. All the runners in the final ran sub-10 second times, except ez rental cars one, who pulled up lame in the last few meters. And there were blocks ez rental cars of empty seats in the Stadium, even for this, the premier event of the Olympics.
The next day, I decided to try my luck again, and went to Greenwich ez rental cars Park, near where I was staying, to see if I could get into the equestrian jumping event that day. Mitt Romney might have been there, but his disastrous recent trip to England may have convinced him not to attend, after he questioned England s readiness for the Games. The London press called him Mitt the Twit , and Prime Minister David Cameron commented that the 2012 Games were being held in a large city and not in the middle of nowhere (his characterization of Salt Lake City, where Mitt ran the 2002 winter ez rental cars games). And there is even a Romney Street ez rental cars running through ez rental cars Greenwich Park. Pity Mitt won t be there.
ez rental cars When I arrived at Greenwich Park ticketless, I held up my tickets please sign, and immediately a tough-looking soldier in full combat gear came up to me and told me I couldn t do that. I replied that all I was looking for was an unused extra ticket someone might give me for free, but his response was to take me by the arm and escort me from the premises. I next tried the North Greenwich Arena, where a gymnastics finale was going on, in an indoor facility thankfully (as it was raining ez rental cars again by now). Holding up my sign, I was surrounded by several of London s finest bobbies, in their funny domed hats, who told me to buzz off.
So it was I went back to Olympic Park, and thanks to a tip from a friendly American guy I met on my last trip there, ez rental cars I went to the West Ham entrance and not the Stratford entrance, which always is extremely crowded and filled with security and bobbies, who seem to be everywhere in London. Terrorists don t have a chance here. West Ham is a 20-minute walk to the Park, along a walled, marked path, and there were many places where I could hold up my sign to the entering attendees without attracting unwanted attention. Along came Liz, a college administrator in London, who offered me out of the goodness of her heart a ticket, for free, to the 3 meter diving event at the Aquatics Centre, ez rental cars the scene of Michael Phelps earlier triumphs. Her daughter had been unable to attend this event, which was one of the few she was able to obtain months earlier through the lottery.
It was a men s 3 meter diving preliminary, ez rental cars not the most exciting event at the Games, but I was thankful for her generosity. Two Americans passed ez rental cars on through to the semis, to be held the next day. As usual, there were empty seats in the facility. After the diving event concluded, I decided ez rental cars to see if I could get into the Basketball Arena, where the all star U.S. team was playing Argentina. (By this time, they were not selling grounds passes at all to Olympic Park you could only get in if you had a ticket to a sports event that day held at Olympic Park.) Held up my sign again nothing. People were entering, many a half hour late and wearing media credentials and not holding tickets and looking rather bored, ez rental cars unlike the five or six fans of the American and Argentine teams waiting outside to see if someone per chance had an unused extra ticket.
I got another idea if some of those bored people decided to leave early, maybe I could go the the exit and obtain their ticket ez rental cars for what was now an empty seat and get in. I scored one, and went back around to the entrance and presented the ticket. It was scanned, and I was told that the ticket had already been scanned and could not be reused without being sent through the official channels for reissuing tickets. I countered that by then, the event will long be over, and that there is an empty seat in the Arena, and I was a citizen of one of the teams playing.
A huge security guy at the gate responded that these were the rules, we don t make the rules, we hav
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