{"id":6798,"date":"2016-08-10T09:25:40","date_gmt":"2016-08-10T13:25:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thekjblog.com\/?p=6798"},"modified":"2018-01-24T10:21:51","modified_gmt":"2018-01-24T14:21:51","slug":"rio-opening-ceremonies-michael-phelps-and-sleep-depravity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kjimages.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/10\/rio-opening-ceremonies-michael-phelps-and-sleep-depravity\/","title":{"rendered":"Rio Opening Ceremonies, Michael Phelps, and Sleep Deprivation"},"content":{"rendered":"
If you are following me on social media, you know that I tried to write a blog post last night and promptly fell fast asleep about 2 minutes into it. Either my own writing bores me to tears or that my body finally said enough.<\/div>\n
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When people say the Olympics are rough, they aren’t kidding as I have been averaging about 2 hours a night since the opening ceremonies. This being said, the Olympics are one of the few things, that I’d give up my precious sleep for. \ud83d\ude42<\/div>\n
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Opening Ceremonies<\/strong> – This was my first to cover and it was pretty amazing once we finally got started. \u00a0These Olympics are in three big clusters – Copacabana, Barre, and Deodoro and throw in Maracana for some soccer and opening and closing ceremonies.<\/div>\n
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Well I am staying “at the Copa” (Yes, Barry Manilow has been stuck in my head the whole time.) While Copacabana is beautiful with lots of great \u00a0food and restaurants, the media transportation is severely lacking. In fact, we left our hotel at 10am to wait for the bus to the stadium for the opening ceremonies and we waited for over an over before finally giving up and catching another bus that went through the media center first. All in all it was four hours before we set forth on the stadium grounds.<\/div>\n
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All of the major agencies wired several positions in the stadium and my spot was off to the center about middle ways up. Even though we have a cable in those spots, there is no guarantee at these things as it pretty much a first come first serve thing. Once we were allowed up to our spots at 4pm, the mad dash to secure a spot ensued. Luckily we were early but had to wait another 4 hours in our spots before the ceremony actually started.<\/div>\n
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Once it did start, it was quite the spectacle! Here are a few of mine…(I was so hoping Pele would light the flame, but oh well.)<\/div>\n
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\u00a0LOTS of fireworks at this thing!<\/div>\n
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\u00a0Did I mention fireworks?<\/div>\n
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Technology is amazing these days!<\/div>\n
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Some guy on a boat. \ud83d\ude42<\/div>\n
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Tom Brady’s wife Gisele walks the stadium runway as the girl from Ipanema.<\/div>\n
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Great moment as Michael Phelps is the flag bearer for TEAM USA.<\/div>\n
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\u00a0Brazilian marathoner Vanderlei De Lima lights the flame…<\/div>\n
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And I am still trying to figure out what this is…<\/div>\n
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Once the ceremonies were over, we went outside to catch the media bus heading back to Copacabana and guess what? Yep, it never came after we waited about an hour. \u00a0So, we decided to risk our lives in one of the craziest cab rides ever from Maracana (Which is sketchy at best) back to Copacabana. Want proof, check out my video of a part of our cab ride. We did get back in world record time though \u00a0\ud83d\ude42<\/div>\n
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