Well, I finally arrived in Beijing, a little over 30 hours before the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympic Games.

The flight wasn't too bad. The 14 hours and 7,047 miles seemed to fly by, no pun intended.

I had my choice of 338 movies, numerous TV shows (including Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie and several other oldies), HBO specials and music.

So I watched an episode of 30 Rock, an episode of The Simpsons and a Lewis Black comedy special. Mostly I read. And caught about three hours of sleep.

Now I don't know how many of you are Lewis Black fans, but the guy is funny, even if he seasons his comedy with rapid-fire F-bombs. And his skit included him talking about his flight to New Zealand for a show.

His took 22 hours and he finished it by saying, "If the people of New Zealand want to be part of our world, they should get off their island and push it closer.''

I felt that way too.

Anyway, Tuesday was not a blue sky day in Beijing. Olympic organizers had to be cringing when they woke. If Beijing were on the Maine coast, we would say it was fogged in. This wasn't fog. It was nasty stuff.

A couple of quick observations, since I've had three hours sleep in the last 40 hours:

On entering the airport, besides being greeted by a couple of the Olympic mascots, Huanhuan the Olympic Flame and Yingying the antelope, you're overwhelmed by a huge sign of Michael Phelps. I guess he's popular here too.

Their highways are immaculately clean. The guard rails even have flower boxes on them.

Heavy police and military presence. Seemed like every exit off the highway was guarded. And in some cases, the policeman was standing under a huge blue umbrella.

Bicycles are everywhere.

The city seemed awfully quiet around the Olympic Green. Maybe I missed something, but the excitement just wasn't there.

More tomorrow.

Time to sleep.

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