London Olympics 2012 Countdown

With just 17 days to go until the Opening ceremony the venues are finished, the bunting is up, the cities beautification programme has been completed and the officials say "We are ready" for the influx of people and to the let the games begin. The one thing that clearly seemed lacking was the excitemnt of the people that actually live in London. I can remember when in 2005 the announcement was made as to who would host the 2012 games and momentarily I was filled with an incredible excitement. That boost was soon shattered by the terrible events that occurred in London on July 7th. Then there was the Olympic Logo for this years games which was truly dreadful. The madness that they will have "Olympic Officials Only" lanes on the already packed London roads network and the anticipation of in excess of 1 Million extra visitors expected during the 6 week period. For most Londoners it will their daily commute that becomes the biggest bind, when an already overcrowded network has to find a way to squeeze in all those extra visitors. Will it work? Time will tell. Meanwhile the whole ticket ballot process was actually quite complicated and you literally had to bid for tickets you would like. Millions applied and got nothing while others applied and got several sets. So aside from the initial rush of joy at winning the games for London, like many, I lost my interest when we failed to get any tickets. Suddenly 2 months ago they decide that there are thousands of tickets still available and that people that had applied unsuccessfully previously would be given priority. You could bid for just one event in this round. I set an Outlook reminder for 15 minutes before the set sale time and urgently raced through the screens trying to see if I could get anything. Perhaps Mens Volleyball could be nice? One of the bigger venues maybe? The website was slow but enabled you to proceed to the screens you needed in readiness to hit that all important "Buy" button at the given time. Then, like any booking system, I displayed the "Please wait" display, expecting any second a time out or website crash. I actually had to wait 17 minutes in total, all the time a countdown timer saying "you will be served in 17 minutes".... 16, 15...14...13......4...3....2...1. When the screen finally flickered and said showed me my confirmation that I was now the proud owner of Mens Diving Semi Finals I couldn't quite believe it. We were going to the games after all and not just going but we had tickets to see our first choice event! Suddenly I was excited again! Yesterday I came home and had a recorded delivery package at Concierge. The Tickets had arrived and came with a Travelcard for Zones 1 to 9 on the day of the event. The excitement was back and with now only a few weeks to go guess the only thing we have to endure now is the overcrowded trains, buses and tubes and for now I am a very happy man and looking forward to watching the Diving in the Olympic Park. Hmmmm men in Trunks!