A true story of how we almost missed the Closing ceremonies:
After a day at the 4man races my friend and I decided we’d like to watch the closing ceremony from the USA House (it’s right next to the stadium.) We are accredited and have passes and have been there before so we thought, no problem. But, everyday there are changes to the rules in Russia so, maybe it would have been OK yesterday and then not OK today. We walked and bused and trained and walked some more to get to Olympic Park only to be turned away and told we needed a special ticked with our accreditation to get into the park tonight. Humm. OK. volunteers were turning away hundreds of other folks who also didn’t know you needed a ticket to get into the park that night.
Did we know someone at the USA house who could come and give us a ticket, a volunteer named Paulina asked? She turned on a special WIFI hotspot for me to message a new friend I had met who volunteers there. I messaged her and waited. We were just going with the flow. We decided that if it didn’t work out we could always find a place to watch and go from there. 15 minutes later there was a golf cart on the way with tickets and an Olympic Medalist to pick us up! WOW!
He was also looking for his friends so, I went to find them. I collected two Americans from the Olympic rings and Chris Fogt showed up in his closing ceremonies outfit complete with Bronze medal hanging around his neck. Paulina had said not to let our friends leave the park and we warned him but, he said it would not be a problem. He handed Paulina the ticket and someone from USA House had given him tickets for the wrong day except for 2. My friend and I quickly said to give them to Chris’ friend and we would work something else out and he insisted that he would get back to the house and send the correct days tickets to us right away. We said he didn’t have to do that but, he insisted. Then he tried to get back through the gate and security stopped him and wanted a ticket for him. "This is my ticket,“ he said. Showing security his bronze medal. It didn’t work. They would not let him pass. A very uncomfortable 15 minutes passed interrupted with many many volunteers wanting a photo with Chris. In the meanwhile, everyone kept their cool and patiently just asked for some help and common sense.
Paulina disappeared for a few minutes and then showed back up with special passes for all of us. She really did save the day. The the most wacky, fun and fastest golf cart ride happened to get us back to the USA house. We watched the closing ceremony on the big screen and walked outside to see the spectacular fireworks. Things my not have gone smoothly but, there were always folks here who wanted to help. Sort of an analogy of the games as a whole.