Olympic diary: A trip into the mountains for our first-time ski reporter

BEIJING – I'm gassed, people.

On Monday, I covered a skiing event for the first time in my 33 years as a sportswriter. It just happened to be during the Beijing Olympics.

Getting to the Yanqing Alpine Ski Centre was, well, special. By the end of the day, I ended up on 14 different motorized vehicles to get me up the mountain and to the races.

It started with a taxi ride to the train station. Then a bullet train to Yanqing. Then a bus to get to another bus to take us to the ski resort. That bus was late, and I felt bad for the volunteers working at the transit center because some of the international media were already ornery over the start time being moved up to 9:30 a.m., which made all of us get on the first bullet train to Yanqing. Now the bus to the resort was late, and a couple crotchety hacks were taking it out on the staff.

The volunteers get all the flak when it's the people who couldn't have buses waiting for us when we arrived from the train station who deserve to be criticized. All of these volunteers are in their 20s and don't have much life experience. Gotta give them a break.

Where was I? Oh yeah. So we finally got on the bus to take us to the resort. Then we had to take a bus that did 15 miles an hour as it wove its way up the mountain. We get out, get on the elevator, enter the media center and are in.

In for the men's race.

Wrong event! I had to hop over to the women's giant slalom and was directed to the gondolas. It took two gondola rides — my first ever — to get on the other side of the mountain for the giant slalom. Hooray!

At the end of the day, I felt a lot smarter. That bus ride up the hill was too darned slow. So I took three different gondola rides — each with its own impressive views of the surroundings — to get down to the level where I could take one bus to get to the bus to take me to the train station. Again, that's where the journey stalled. There was no bus for 45 minutes. Bad planning.

But the bus finally arrived, and we got to the train station with 20 minutes to spare before the train to Beijing left.

To summarize, the round trip consisted of:

Left the hotel at 7 a.m. Returned just after 8 p.m. I was wiped out upon my return but STILL needed to write a story. I forgot to mention that I worked the USA-Switzerland women's hockey game on Sunday that started at 9:10 p.m. Got back to hotel at 1 a.m. and slept just over four hours before getting up for my Alpine ski journey.

And I do it all again Wednesday when Prior Lake's Paula Moltzan competes in women's slalom. Time for a nap.

P.S. For those who read my firsthand account of being placed in close-contact management, here's an update. Monday was my last day of being tested twice. I'm no longer considered a close contact danger. It really affected my daily schedule. Nurses would knock on the door at 7 a.m. for a throat swab, then I would head to the media center and work until 3 p.m. or so. I would head back to the hotel and take a nap. Nurses arrived at 7 p.m. for a second swab. Then I was off to cover events such as hockey and curling. I had to negotiate with the staff a few times to get tested in time to make it to the events.

That was the thing. I couldn't eat with people but could cover events if I spread out and didn't get close to people. Then, I was at the National Stadium for the Opening Ceremony but was asked to leave because foreign dignitaries were around and it was too great of a risk even if there was a small chance of me 1) being infected and 2) getting close to Putin and giving him the virus.

I felt relieved this morning when I was told my two-a-days were over. Does anyone actually like two-a-days?