Number Two (21 page)

“Oh, yeah? Is the USA House not convenient for you?”

You might say that.

“I'm just having a little trouble getting past security today.”

“Oh, yes, you need a ticket.”

Thaaanks.

“Yeah, I know that now. Is there any chance we might be able to meet up somewhere outside of the park?”

“Sure, I have to meet my co-worker at the USA House. Perhaps I could meet you at the media entrance for the Adler speed skating arena?”

Yes! The media entrance was
outside
the security gate. I knew this from the countless times I had been back and forth to watch speed skating because of my lack of actual responsibilities during the day. This might actually work out for the best!

“I'll be right there!” I said.

“See you in a few minutes.”

I hung up and saw that I had received a text from Dan. “Where are you we need tickets to get in I am at the security gate.” I really should have slept in like he did; I could have avoided my ridiculous attempt at gate climbing and be in the exact same position I was now.

“Adler speed skating arena media entrance. Get there now!” I replied.

I took off at a full sprint. Past the leaning barricades and the Ice
Palace and the parking lot. Past the smirking security guy. Past the craft services tent that was soon to be torn down and transported to some St. Petersburg county fair. Down the walkway next to the fence next to the road next to the other fence next to the open sewer in front of La Terrassa
.

As I started to let up in speed—partly because I was approaching the media entrance to the speed skating palace but mainly because I was extremely out of shape—I saw a familiar face approaching.

“They
just
decided to start keeping people out of here without tickets today? Do they maybe want to warn people? Do they maybe want to have people enjoy the park on the last day of the Olympics?” Dan, like me—like a lot of us—was having a hard time wrapping his head around the Russian way of thinking.

“Let's just get those tickets and see the game,” I said. I was too worked up about the possibility of missing the game to worry about logistics now.

Then my phone rang. It was Irena from Nike again.

“Jay, where are you?”

Oh, God, no.

“I'm right where we said to meet. At the entrance to the Adler media centre.”

“I can't get through to there. The other side of the building is locked.”

Oh, God, no.

“But I suppose I could meet you at the main security entrance.”

The
very
entrance I was denied access to in the beginning.

At that moment I believe Elton John's “Circle of Life” from
The Lion King
soundtrack began playing in my head. I told Dan the good news and we wandered back, slowly, casually, to the main security entrance near the Bolshoy Ice Dome. There, we encountered a sea of faces—security, volunteers, broadcasters, and would-be spec
tators. I looked around and tried to spot our Nike contact, but I realized I had absolutely no idea what she looked like. I probably should have thought to ask what colour her hair was at the very least, but in my elated state I had completely forgotten. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw her. I don't know exactly how I knew it was her, I just did. Okay, maybe the head-to-toe Nike gear was a tipoff. She was carrying a purse and was standing with a young blond-haired fellow, presumably the contact she had met at USA Olympic House earlier. She saw me approaching, smiled, reached into her purse, and pulled out not one but two golden tickets.

“I am so sorry this was so difficult!” she said.

“Not difficult at all,” I lied.

I thanked her and she was off—she wasn't even attending the game! Like so many other Russians, once their team lost the quarterfinal game to Finland they were no longer interested in the rest of the men's hockey results. I was reminded of another hockey-loving nation I once lived and worked in and am proud to be from—Canadians wouldn't be too interested in a gold-medal game without their home team playing either. Not that many differences between us when it's all said and done.

We walked past the very sweet and kind Russian volunteers with our valuable tickets in hand and strolled toward the Bolshoy Ice Dome. Underneath the dome was the entrance to the NHLPA players' lounge. We had spent plenty of time there over the course of our roughly three weeks in Sochi thanks to the fact that Dan's best friend happened to be former New York Islander crash 'n' banger and current PA employee Steve Webb. Early on during our tenure at La Terrassa, as we stayed up drinking until 6:00 a.m., Steve had surveyed the scene and dubbed it “the Frat House,” a moniker that stuck for the remainder of the Games. Steve secured passes for Dan, me, and several others in our crew to hang out and relax in the PA
lounge. This was no ordinary lounge. While not a huge space, the food they served was easily the best available within twenty miles of the Olympic Cauldron. Free beer and wine was available to all. Sure, the place was only supposed to be enjoyed by actual Olympic hockey players and their families, but we were willing to overlook that fact if they were.

At one point during the Games when I was hanging out in the lounge, I struck up a conversation with Latvian cult hero and former Carolina Hurricanes goaltender Arturs Irbe.
Irbe!
He always struck such a fascinating figure between the pipes with his diminutive stature and his bright white goalie pads and Jofa helmet with a cage. Irbe was working for the PA as a translator, seeing as he was fluent in Russian, but mostly he seemed to be just hanging out in the lounge. At one point during our conversation he explained to me how the game of hockey worked: “You need the coach, have to have the coach, then you need referees . . .” You can probably see where the conversation was headed.
Irbe!

We met up with Peter Schrager at the PA lounge. He, like many of us, had just walked past the security guards at the gate to the lounge and they'd pretty much let it happen. Basically, the security was on par with your favourite nightclub. Sure, they were going to put you through the ringer the first couple of times you tried to get in, but after a while you became a harmless regular. Amazingly, Schrager hadn't been able to find someone to take his fourth ticket to the game, so it was just the three of us entering the Bolshoy that day for my second stab at hockey history.

Once again, the location of our seats proved that I am the luckiest and most undeserving man in the world. We wandered down the steps of the arena bowl, past the gold-medal-winning Canadian men's curling team, and took our seats—three rows behind Carey Price—to start the first period.

The result of the game was absolutely never in doubt. In all my years of watching Canadian international hockey, from the 1981 Canada Cup to the world junior powerhouses of the 1990s, Canada's performance in the 2014 gold-medal game was equal to almost all of it because of its simple, devastating precision. It was the way Canadian hockey is meant to be played—a real team coming together and playing their roles effectively even though the role players were the leading scorers on their respective NHL teams. It really warmed my heart to see how the Canadians were able to dominate a great hockey country like Sweden. The atmosphere in the arena paled in comparison to the gold-medal win on home soil in 2010, but it was still incredible to be sitting right behind Henrik Lundqvist as Sidney Crosby beat him on a breakaway. And it was also a blast to see the smiles on the faces of Canadian fans as we walked out of the Bolshoy Ice Dome to a concrete platform that overlooked the Dead Sea.

As the sun went down we snapped a few pictures with the Canadians who told us they missed us and asked us to return home from L.A. as soon as possible. We were excited to return to our new home in L.A. after almost three weeks on the road, but I had one more important stop to make first.

D
an left Sochi right after the closing ceremonies. He changed his flight to leave early because he really missed his wife and kids. But like me, he was supposed to stay a few extra days in Russia. Our production manager, Celeste, had arranged for the entire crew to go on a tour of Moscow with a private guide. Moscow had never been at the top of my list of must-visit major world cities, but I figured since I was over there anyway it would be foolish not to go. So as soon as the last firework had gone off outside the Olympic Stadium, I began packing up my things for Russia's capital. But of course, not before bidding goodbye to Irina, Dasha, Igor, Toma, Anya, Kostya, and even the hotel's owner, Boris, who never seemed to wear anything but a Bosco Russian tracksuit. Boris didn't say a word to me the entire time I was there, but he was smiling proudly when we left, probably thrilled to be rid of us. It was a good thing
we had literally rented the entire place or he may have had a few more complaints about us—other than just the ones that came from his staff.

Toma and Anya, the long-suffering waitresses who had been put on twenty-four-hour shifts throughout the Games, were in tears as we jumped into the Audi Q7s for one last ride to the airport. There was the usual talk of “You need to come visit us in the States!” and “You should all come work for us!” and “There are so many opportunities there!” but we all pretty much knew this was the last time we would see these wonderful people who had totally transformed my feelings about Russia and their citizens in such a positive way.

Shortly after returning to Los Angeles, we received word that most of the hotel staff had been laid off immediately after the Games. I wondered what happened to everyone who worked tirelessly in that hotel for those two hectic weeks. Most of them didn't live in Sochi, so they likely returned to their respective home towns and went on with their lives. But I like to think they look back on those few weeks fondly, and I hope the friendliness of our crew was a big part of the reason why.

Moscow turned out to be a very interesting trip to say the least. I wasn't fully prepared for what I was about to see and I certainly wasn't prepared for the traffic. When people ask me about living in Los Angeles and I tell them I love it, they usually say something like, “You love everything except the traffic, right?”

To which I reply, “The traffic in Los Angeles is like the traffic in Athabasca, Alberta, compared to Moscow.”

We had arrived in February and the city was cold but still walkable, and that was a good thing because trying to take a cab anywhere was an exercise in extreme patience. The cab ride from the airport was an eye-opener—because of the traffic as well as the Communist-era apartment buildings that lined the freeway
all the way to the core. If I had Vladimir Putin's ear, I might suggest that he stop picking fights with former Soviet states and instead put those rubles into Moscow's city infrastructure. There were entirely too few roads and entirely too many cars in that city. I had never experienced anything like it.

Once we were all secure in our hotel—a major upgrade from La Terrassa but still filled with the rich and pungent smell of cigarette smoke—we made arrangements for our guided tour of the city the next day. Then, we sat down for what was probably the first
real
meal any of us had eaten in weeks. Unfortunately, I can't remember where we ate, or what the meal consisted of, because as usual we were drinking vodka. Not in fancy cocktails but in shot glasses, icy cold with some sort of chaser on the side like a fruit juice. Sounds like a reasonable way to enjoy a good-quality bottle of Russian Beluga. Problem was, the servers in this quality establishment, like all quality Russian establishments, refused to let your shot glass go empty. Russians don't drink the entire shot, but rather sip it like a normal drink. And so, always doing our best to fit in, we followed suit. But the servers would literally be standing right behind us as we drank and ate away, so the second you took one sip of your vodka a dour gentleman would immediately appear behind you and fill that shot glass right up to the top again. Needless to say, this was a very dangerous way to drink vodka, and before we knew it, we were stumbling back to our hotel, completely lost and just praying we could remember which floor we were on so we could pass out in our comfy accommodations free of any dogs or cats that might already be sleeping in our beds.

The next day we met in the middle of Red Square for our guided tour by a lovely middle-aged Russian woman named Helena. She walked us all around the Square to the candy-cane coloured St. Basil Cathedral and then past the outside of the Kremlin, while Russian
children and their families skated on the outdoor rink. The whole world should be lucky enough to visit Red Square someday and witness the incredible architecture—a true marvel of engineering and beauty. We continued back toward the main entrance of the square where Helena had arranged for us to leave our cameras with security near the gate so we could go see Lenin's Tomb. I had heard about Lenin's Tomb, but I suppose the reality of the thing had escaped me. The former Russian premier was literally embalmed and kept under glass so that the entire world would have an opportunity to see Russia's most important leader with their own eyes.

Surely this had to be a joke, right?

“The Russians tried traditional methods to preserve Lenin,” said our guide Helena, as we prepared to head inside and down the stairs to the final resting place of the great leader, “but they didn't work. So the Russians developed their own way to preserve the body.”

Sure they did! The Russians! How great is that? The process of actually keeping a body from breaking down completely didn't exist when Lenin died, so they came up with their own way of preserving him. And preserve him they did! Who could possibly question this?

We were led down a very dark set of stairs, past a gun-toting Russian military guard, around a corner past another gun-toting Russian military guard, to what appeared to be an altar that we had to climb a small set of stairs and pass two more gun-toting Russian military guards to reach. All of this was performed in single file, as if we were queuing for cafeteria food. As I climbed the stairs to the tomb, I could see him out of the corner of my eye. He looked like a Madame Tussauds replica of Vladimir Lenin, right down to the little beard. But he was the
real
thing. Evidently, the Russians had found a way to preserve him in a glass tomb for all these years.

I was highly confused by it all. Didn't the Russians find this just a little
weird
? Not to mention the fact that when I tried to stop for just a moment and take a closer look, another gun-toting Russian military guard barked at me in his mother tongue and told me to “keep moving” or perhaps to “not question our presidential embalming techniques and just go with it.” I don't speak the language so it was difficult to be sure, but I certainly wasn't sticking around to ask for clarification. The whole exercise was over in about two minutes. We rounded the tomb, keeping a steady pace the entire way, and then climbed the stairs past two more gun-toting Russian military guards and finally emerged back into the light of day in Red Square. The experience stayed with me throughout the day—it was like a microcosm of Russia itself. You couldn't explain it and you weren't allowed to question it. You just had to go along with it. Just go along with
everything
.

As I boarded the plane back to L.A. the next day, I couldn't help but think that this may be the last time I was boarding a plane after covering an Olympic Games. And sure enough, just a few months after the Sochi Games had ended, NBC announced that they had reached an agreement with the IOC to continue broadcasting the Olympic Games in the U.S. until the year 2032. It was foolish to expect Fox to outbid NBC for broadcasting rights when they had already put a ton of money into securing the next two World Cups. And where was the first of those two World Cups taking place? Why, Russia, of course. The Sochi Olympic stadium had already been designated one of the 2018 World Cup venues. Was it possible that at least a few of us would end up back here in four years to cover an event that was arguably bigger than the Olympic Games because of our experience staying and working in the area? Was it
possible we might all once again stay at La Terrassa? Perhaps by then the open sewer would have a lid on it. It would be a pretty sweet reunion, but the food would probably still be terrible.

When we returned to Los Angeles we were met with a lot of positive feedback for our humorous pieces from Sochi. In addition to our well-received tour of the Olympic venues—which we did outside the Olympic venues because of our lack of access to said venues—we also did several “one-part investigations” on hard-hitting issues that were affecting the Games: toilet quality, Olympic pin collecting, and of course stray dogs. A few veteran Fox directors told us that they were the funniest things they had ever seen broadcast out of the Fox Sports building, which may seem like a hollow compliment until you realize that Frank Caliendo and Rob Riggle have plied their comedic trade on the
NFL on Fox
studio show for a number of years. Others weren't so kind: “What the hell were you guys doing over there?” asked one production assistant bluntly. Covering the Olympics, we answered. That's what we do.