Olympics. In which I am interrupted by a deadline of Olympic proportions.

We interrupt the regularly scheduled blog post from New York to bring you the following special announcement.

One of the most amazing travel experiences I have had was with Mari at the 2012 London Olympics.
I can't even begin to describe how much carefully detailed, time-consuming planning and list-making were involved, but I should warn you that if you ever do want to experience a summer Olympics you need to start about 16 months in advance (hence, this special announcement).  I plan to dedicate a future series to our own 2012 summer travels and experience at the games (including fleamarketing and souvenir shopping, of course), but there is a deadline quickly approaching for US citizens to apply for Rio2016 event tickets and I thought I should post an alert in case you are hoping to mambo your way down to Rio for the 2016 games.

CoSport.com

is the official ticketing site.

If you have the slightest interest in attending the Rio2016 Olympic Games, then you need to create an account on the CoSport site and submit a ticket request by 2:00 PM Eastern Monday, May 4.  (Yes, the Opening Ceremonies are "just" 15 months away.)  Creating a CoSport account is a painless process, much like creating an account on any website. Even without an account, you can still peruse the site and (after clicking on the "Individual Tickets" link) view a complete schedule by event, date, and time.  The games will kick off with Women's Football (don't get excited NFL fans, it's "soccer") on Wednesday, August 3, 2016, then Men's Football on the 4th, with the official Opening Ceremony on Friday, August 5, 2016.  The Closing Ceremony is on the evening of Sunday, August 21.  Everything you need to know about venues, costs, and time schedules, including descriptions of the events themselves, can be found on the very well-organized and meticulously maintained site.

There are a few basic things to keep in mind about your ticket request starting with the fact that it is a REQUEST only.  Just because you are able to select an event and add tickets to your list, does not mean that you will be receiving those tickets.  You MAY receive everything you request, but that is doubtful due to the basic laws of supply and demand (more on that sad truth in an upcoming paragraph).  Your request is NON-BINDING and you will NOT be asked to submit credit card information.  If you do go a little crazy and have a little crazy luck and are offered tickets to everything you want, you still have the option of selecting only what you realistically can fit into your schedule (believe me, you will need a schedule) and budget (believe me more, you will need a budget).

In other words, go for the gold at this point.

Within a week you will receive e-mail confirmation of your requested tickets that were actually available and you will have the opportunity to select the tickets you wish to purchase and make (full) payment through May 15.  At this point, you will need to have a VISA card because (as you know from watching all those Olympics TV ads) VISA is the official card of the Olympics and the ONLY card accepted for ticket purchases and at the Olympics venues.  That's not one of Don Draper's old advertising slogans, either.  They are NOT kidding (more on how I survived my non-VISA drama another day).

When I submitted my first request back in April of 2011 for the London games, I was naively optimistic, but not realistic.  I had requested two tickets for each of 15 events.  When I received confirmation of my request the following week, there were only two events confirmed. Two.

TWO!

Of course, like a naive first-time Olympics spectator I had envisioned being at the opening ceremony, but receiving those tickets seemed to be like playing a global game of musical chairs with 99% of the chairs removed after that first round!  I was equally disappointed that I had not received any tickets for the swimming, diving, track and field, or tennis events that I had requested.  After all the build-up and the years of anticipation since the Olympic committee had announced the winning London bid seven years prior in 2005, it looked like a lost cause and I was ready to concede and give up on the whole Olympic (spectator) dream scheme.  Lucky for me, Mari never lets me get too far down in the dumps.  "Let's just go" was her charmingly supportive response to my looming and very self-indulgent depression.  So go we did.  More on that excellently epic three-week left-side-driving athletic-supporter adventure another time!

Like me, you may only receive 13% of the tickets you requested in that initial request, BUT (unbeknownst to me after that initial disappointment) you will then have additional opportunities to purchase tickets as more tickets are eventually and periodically released through CoSport (a benefit to signing up for a CoSport account).  One of those two ticket pairs we received in our initial request was for the Men's Football final at Wembley Stadium.  A huge arena, yes (which undoubtedly contributed to our successful request), but an extremely popular event as you might imagine.  Held on the last Saturday afternoon of London2012, the day before the Closing Ceremony, that Mexico v Brazil match was one of my most thrilling and entertainingly hilarious travel highlights (with special thanks to the colorful Brazilians seated a few rows back and their uniquely enthusiastic and loud commentary).

If you are going to follow through, be prepared on Tuesday, May 19, at 10:00 AM Eastern to get yourself online and purchase additional released tickets.  Be prepared also to spend at least a dizzyingly frazzled hour trying to get through as millions of sports and travel fans like you do the same.  DON'T GIVE UP.  Keep refreshing.  Use multiple computers.

As a member of the CoSport site, you will receive irregular updates and alerts from that day forward as more tickets become sporadically available for different events, usually with only a day or two advance notice.  (I logged in daily and often found new tickets before I had been alerted.)  Eventually, after months of daily log-ins to CoSport, I was able to collect tickets to 12 excitingly varied events, although still no swimming, diving, or tennis. We did, however, make it into Olympic Stadium for a truly monumental evening of athletics.

I look forward to revisiting our London2012 summer in a future secondhand series (lots of photos, lots of people, lots of travels, lots of people, lots of shopping, lots of people) and we are also looking (very far) forward to a Tokyo2020 summer adventure.  The Rosetta Stone Japanese Level One software has been lying in wait since the announcement was made (nearly two years ago) because I know Mari and I will need a little practice before hitting up the vendors at the Meiji Park weekend flea and the Jingu monthly flea.

"Kon'nichiwa Y'all" will only get us so (not very) far, I'm sure.

A fond farewell and a few final faves from New York next time.