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The Olympic Games take some organising.
Almost as much, in fact, to the logistical operation to get three fifths of our family to see the road cycling events in lush Surrey which start tomorrow with the Elite Men's Event and through into Sunday afternoon when we have tickets for the Women's two laps of the picturesque Box Hill.
My wife spent the equivalent of a day, some months ago now, logged on to the on-line ticketing system for London 2012. A bit of a marathon in itself with a few false starts through the obstacle course and on more than one occasion the final hurdle was reached only for the system to refer her back to the start before any prize could be had.
She was succesful in getting the sunday race tickets and these formed the main part of my July birthday presents .
It is now friday lunchtime and we have all been up since 5am getting everything ready for the 4 hour, optimistic, drive down to the accommodation. It will be late and dark when we turn off the M25 into deepest, darkest, decadent Surrey and so I have familiarised myself with the cross-country route using mapping and satellite systems-yes, I am that only person in the UK without a Sat-Nav sucker-stuck onto the windscreen.
I will undoubtedly misidentify the junction to the minor road which forms a short cut to the hotel as an aerial view on a lap-top often bears no resemblance whatsoever to the three dimensional, real time and horizontally propelled world of the car actually on the road.
I have a poor record of this type of preparation and application in a journey. A few years ago this resulted in my driving almost into the abandoned but rather militarised Turkish Zone of Cyprus whilst trying to find a large resort town on Cyprus for my brother in laws wedding and more recently getting hopelessly lost near Stansted Airport in a search for our booked rooms which were occupied for only 5 hours before my daughter caught a flight to New York. She did notice me squinting a bit at motorway signs which I put down to my age and crusty contact lenses. Still, as a bonus we did get to see the twinkling lights of Canary Wharf and a nice KFC on some High Street, probably Ealing. I can imagine you making a mental note to look up the proximity of the airport to London Docklands and having a giggle at the expense of my poor sense of direction.
We may not actually need to take much with us but in order to be fully prepared for the uncertainties of the British weather in July we have to make preparations for a mini-expedition. I managed to save a compact emergency poncho from being sold at last weekends car boot sale and this may become a key part of our equipment. As my youngest daughter says, there is no such thing as bad weather just a poor choice of clothes. I tend to agree with this.
Our trip is, with travelling, about 48 hours. The travelling part will take up, say, 16 hours by car, train and on foot. Sleeping and eating, hopefully another 24 hours, miscellaneous activities such as queuing at an Official Olympic Souvenir Kiosk and other forms of shopping, around 4 hours. I have allowed 3 hours for human error-mine which leaves the anticipated time to enjoy the cycling events of about 1 hour. This sounds about right as we hope to see the Mens Race flash past on the Dorking Road and the two circumnavigations of Box Hill by the womens event.
I am really excited and looking forward to our experience of the Games.
Footnote; We made it and thanks to my wife's attention to detail everything went to plan, torrential rain excepted. Perhaps the best souvenir was only discovered on catching up on the TV coverage of the Men's Race a few days later when back at home. See below the great Vincenzo Nibali in the foreground and with my wife, son and myself as enthusiastic blurry figures looking on. I still have the T-Shirt.
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