CHAPTER 5 :
BEIJING TRAINING
Unlike the rest of the United States Olympic team, who is entrenched in San Jose University to proceed to China afterwards, Otto is already in China. He takes the time to acquaint himself with the other cell phone throwers, like Marianne Kwyjibo XI. "Otto, can you do me a favour, please? I want to speak with Bart Simpson, if only through a chatroom" Marianne asks. "Marianne, you want me to link to Bart Simpson in the United States? Wait until we're in the Olympic village in Beijing and I'll get it done for you" Otto answers. "I agree to communicate with Bart only when I'll be in Beijing only if you accept to watch the women's cell phone throwing World Cup event. And not just to watch it but also from a competitor-allocated seat."
Janick, at the same time, informs him of the latest happenings in the cell phone throwing world. "The United States cell phone throwing team has a long history of doping in international competitions. You are well aware that Andy Kincaid has been banned for clenbuterol, just like Ryan Cauley; also, Chelsea Fickbohm has been stripped off the World Cup for two years and banned from competing in the upcoming Olympic Games. She was the NCAA #1 female thrower, also Lawrence University team captain and U.S. record holder, and finally second on the World Cup rankings, before an excessive red blood cell percentage was detected in her blood" she says. Otto ends the conversation by, "Too bad our own phone pitchers cannot compete in the Olympics!"
He cheers on Robin Turgeon (the only United States female contestant) when she enters the home plate. To the eyes of Otto, she is among the neglected ones, but still worthy of pity. To this end, she begins to spin just like he did yesterday. The end result is that she establishes a personal best of 38.00 meters, just enough to earn her a second top 10 position in an international competition. The meet itself was uneventful until the final throw, where both Janick and Milena were tied for first. Both women threw cell phones but Milena was subsequently declared the winner by a single centimetre. After that, she declares, "Due to fears of pollution within the Bird's Nest, I fear that I will have to withdraw from the Olympic Games."
However, China Eastern's stretched resources forces him to drive a transit bus to Beijing, whereas a busliner like a Nissan Space Arrow might have been more appropriate to go from the Shanghai Sports Palace to the Beijing National Stadium. "I'm your driver, Otto. We are going to make three stops along our way: Zhaozuang, Jinan and Tianjin." Wang, also a passenger on that bus, translates the whole thing in Chinese. And so the first half of the batch, whose last names begin by letters A through N, are all aboard Otto's bus. Therefore both Marianne and Janick are in that bus.
"Are you ready to rock?" Otto asks. He puts a Deep Purple CD into the bus' audio system, and the whole bus begins to rock as he drives his way out of Shanghai northbound towards Zhaozuang. Before the trip starts, the baggage of the athletes were stored under their seats, so some of them seem to experience uncomfortable trips because of their legs clogged between two baggage bags. And he also drives as though he was driving the same bus between Milan and Torino, at about 140 KPH. He drives past cars, avoiding pileups as large as 7 cars. Some of these pileups are the indirect consequence of his reckless driving while another of these pileups is caused by an empty car delivery truck The latter is not actual pileup, more like the truck took all seven cars that were in a single file.
"Otto, I'm scared! We're going too fast with that music!" Marianne shouts to Otto, even louder than the Deep Purple music being played onboard. "How could your screams of horror pierce through the oh so loud but real music, which is about where you can find smoke related to water?
Once arrived in Zhaozuang, three and a half hours of driving northwest of Shanghai, Otto announces that they have an hour to eat whatever they want, except for food containing forbidden substances. As for Otto, he goes out with Wang to eat whatever they want, like that Chinese restaurant named Mao's. "Chow mein for me, please!" Otto ordered. And Wang has invited both Janick and Marianne to sit at his table. They would eat General Tao's chicken and, in Janick's case, onion beef. However, the complimentary soup was a fa san soup, i.e. peanut soup.
The red napkins on their table leads to questions on Marianne's part: "Did someone bleed on these napkins?" Wang answers that, in Eastern China culture, red represents the pleasure of the table arts. And also that it is the same red ink that it is used in the red paper that one can purchase, either in rolls or in packages of 500 sheets. However, Wang pays the whole bill, as he actually sees a benefit to this. A tax benefit, that is. Hopefully, the bill isn't too high, despite the increased appetite due to the three athletes' metabolism.
As they get back in the bus, the other China Eastern bus arrives. "When we arrive at the Bird's Nest, you have to leave us alone. For the time being, do not put on your national uniform. I will drive until we get to Jinan so you can get some rest. I don't want you to arrive at the Beijing National Stadium tired from 11 hours of driving!" Janick instructs Otto. As such, he gets a seat directly behind the driver's seat. He realizes that Janick drives somewhat differently from Otto, even with Wang's English-written directions. She does not drive as aggressively, but more aggressively than Armin Tamzarian, the principal, shortly after Otto crashed the bus for the 15th time.
"Dude, just put in the music of your choice! This CD system is just like any car-mounted CD system!" Otto tells her.
At least, the buttons aren't written on in Chinese, unlike the clearly visible fire extinguisher who has Chinese-only operating instructions. The bad state of the roadworks leads to a massive working site, where Janick applies full throttle only to stop using all braking power, even the handbrake, leading to athletes whose teeth hurt even if they don't break as the teeth of "Toothbreaker" passengers do in Euro Krustyland, located in Orleans, France, before the attraction park caught fire at the time the kids were in Kamp Krusty.
She realizes that she is among the best-trained Western roadhogs to ever drive a bus in the People's Republic of China and Chinese roadhogs are well-trained in construction site procedures. And that most driving accidents that do not involve either DUI (driving under influence) or mechanical issues are caused by the responsible driver's lack of training. And Marco comments, with an Italian accent, that "Our training of dangerous driving under construction sites is just not up to Chinese standards."
Italy is well known in the competitive roadhog world as the best speeding drivers in the world, for their own training grounds have speed limits of 50 mph in the open streets, and up to 140 kph (87 mph) on the expressway. Marco Balzarotti, Italy's top cell phone thrower and also a medal contender in Beijing, therefore has the honor to drive the bus to the Bird's Nest, due to his proven track record in speeding (he once drove a Nissan Altima GXE 2001 at 210 kph without getting a speeding ticket). Who will drive between Jinan's Lanshao Gymnasium and Tianjin's food court? That's the question Otto is asking.
"Teach Kwyjibo how to drive!" Wang said. "She was purported to be unable to drive, but be aware that driving a transit bus is not at all like driving a normal car!" Otto is still on his bus seat, sleeping like many of his fellow athletes. However, due to the working site stretching over 50 kilometers at the time, this led to Mr. Huotari asking Janick, "Are you sure this is the right road? From the looks of it, it's like they are extending the Great Wall of China!"
And it continues until they are 20 km from the Lanshao Gymnasium, who is conveniently located near a baseball field. For athletes specialized in throws, baseball fields are often synonymous with throwing, but this time around, they are playing a red-eye baseball game, with four innings, with two teams.
Marianne, even if she purchased a MLB-compliant baseball bat back in Shanghai, is confused. "Baseball? Give me a break. We were supposed to do something else than playing baseball." She sees Otto throw a baseball at her, as he is the starting pitcher. The baseball itself hit her but not so hard as to actually lose balance. When a pitcher's ball hits a player, the opposing team has two balls. And Janick throws another ball at Marianne, who actually hits it and scores a home run. One of the "early birds" at the other end of the baseball field gets hit and, unlike Marianne before her, falls.
The game is over, Marianne's team wins, 10-4, and then they get into the gymnasium. So as Otto bench presses, Marco is off training his abs and the Estonian champion, Timmo Lilium, is on a treadmill. Otto will have to watch closely for him in the Bird's Nest, as he was 5th behind him in the Shanghai World Cup event.
"Hold on, Otto, twenty more on the bench press and you can move on to the treadmill" Wang tells his protégé. "No, treadmill is so old. Using the step machine is best done with Lynyrd Skynyrd music!" Otto protests. "I'll let that slide because the step machine also works out the things a treadmill does. But this is a last-minute, red-eye workout sequence. After 10 minutes at a heavy intensity setting, go do 3 series of 45 sit-ups. We will have ample time to rest in the bus."
The Zambian woman seems drawn to Otto and she does sit-ups with the rhythm of Black Sabbath music. Not that she doesn't stand heavy metal, but she seems somewhat irritated. She complains, "My ears! We listened to such music for the first half of the trip! Let me choose the music if I am to drive!" Otto informs her that she is to drive the bus to Tianjin and an Italian roadhog is to drive on the final stretch to Beijing. And Otto is off refuelling the bus before the other athletes in the bus are done with their last-minute training sessions. At the PetroChina petrol station, he asks for diesel-ethanol. That suggestion leads to swears in Chinese, because there are two tiers of diesel-ethanol: the Basic and the Advanced. He estimates that about 200 liters of Basic diesel-ethanol are necessary to get to Beijing and to commute between the Olympic Village and the Beijing National Stadium for nine days of competition in the Bird's Nest.
Marianne gets out a few minutes before the other athletes so she can get accustomed to the controls of the bus. "This is the driving wheel; be careful, yet cool when using it. And tight turns can work out the arm muscles. Also, the left pedal is for braking and the right pedal is for the throttle. Keep an eye out for the speed and the fuel gauges." He has a full understanding that Ms. Kwyjibo is no driver. And the speed limits are 100 KPH on the freeways, 50 on the streets and 75 in working sites. She already knows what are stop panels: the red octagon usually means that a vehicle must come to a complete stop before the line (or the car in front of his/her vehicle). "Let's see what you're made of behind a driving wheel, once everyone is onboard!"
It's all because they get to drive on the designated Olympic lanes between Beijing and Tianjin that Otto has to teach Marianne how to drive. These Olympic lanes are temporarily designated to be usable only by athletes, officials and journalists covering the Olympic Games. The athletes all go inside the bus in world record time without even paying their fares (China Eastern locally sponsors the Olympics after all).
"How do you turn this on?" Marianne asks. Otto says that she has a button to touch, but that button has only Chinese writing on it. Once that button has been flipped on, she can engage the gear to drive. And she begins to drive quite slowly but not so slowly as to have cars collide from behind. Unlike the previous two drivers, she is a lot more defensive on the drive and arrives in Tianjin about 30 minutes before the second bus. This means the second batch took a lot of time in Zhaozuang and Jinan. They get into an "all-you-can-eat" buffet with different food from all around the world.
Wang asks to the sole male United States cell phone thrower, "Otto, what's wrong?" And Otto's answer is, "I made Ms. Kwyjibo fall in love with me, while I try to woo Janick. I'm not in the mood to eat, dude. I'm crystal-clear to Marianne's eyes" He does not even dare eat anything, so Wang screams directly into his ears, "SEK TOH TI!" Literaly translated, sek toh ti means "eat more" in Cantonese and, as such, Wang urges the bus driver to eat more, and he repeats "sek toh ti" each and every time, to which Otto answers, "I don't understand." Until he claims that "it is our only chance to eat before the Opening Ceremonies."
Instead of eating, Otto just throws the contents of his water glass on Wang's face. To this, he adds the throwing of a cream pie with a slice missing, like a Pac-Man in its cream white version. As he did it with cell phones when he still was in the Shanghai Sports Palace, he spins around before throwing his implement, targeting not Wang but Marianne. The cream pie is about to hit the black-skinned, Zambian schoolgirl but the cream pie hits her right-hand table neighbour instead.
"Was he targeting you?" he asked Marianne. She answered, using her wits, "I assure you that he didn't target me." Her table neighbour counters by saying, "I'm sure he got distracted by the arrival of that Mini Cooper (a car universally known as being a small car) who was crammed with clumsy clowns." These clowns are, in order, Chinese fake versions of Pr (Professor) John Frink, Krusty the Klown, Gabbo, Hollis Hurlbut, Captain Tenille in his one-man-band form, Thelonious and Howard K. Duff VIII. And these fake versions are so ill-made that they are hilarious to non-Chinese eyes, even if they tripped over the car's door. Every non-Chinese patron of that all-you-can-eat buffet laugh at these ill-made Chinese copies trip on each other as they enter the buffet. And, despite his failed pie prank, this joke was enough to make him laugh all the way to the buffet tables.
He finally commits to eat what was eaten in the last restaurant stop. And, like Homer before him, he tried eating all that he could but Wang grabbed him out of the buffet table because they were in a hurry. Because everyone else has finished eating, even Marianne and her table neighbour, who got his face washed, and they had a tight schedule to respect. Marco closed the door manually but Otto is sandwiched between the door panes and Wang smashed his face against Otto's back. As a result, the coach falls on the ground and the Italian road hog is forced to open the door. Wang comes back crawling and he gets up by the door just so he gets in.
On the road to the Beijing National Stadium, the Mini Cooper smashes the rear of the bus because Marco brakes so hard before going through the Olympic lane on the expressway. The mini car containing the fake clowns is sent flying along with its occupants, not knowing that they were just sentenced to death. All of them. This proved to be a distraction for the second bus, whose anchor leg is driven by Ms. Sae Carneira herself. They have a run-in with the police because the mini car crashed just in front of the bus.
Milena tells the policemen, "Their driver is so clumsy! Open the car's door!" When the policemen try to open the door, they have to smash one of the columns supporting the roof to free the bodies trapped in the vehicle. "The accident began when the driver suffocated to death. Luckily, they died minutes after their death sentence was delivered, for none of these clowns were in the courtroom of the Tianjin High Court. They all died either on impact of by suffocating" the policeman stated.
But as Marco feels uneasy on the Olympic lane of the highway, Milena catches up on the first bus by putting on her best speeding skill, obtained by driving a transit bus in Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam). Even if she was purchased from Angola and she obtained Vietnamese citizenship afterwards, she still had to work in the afterseason. On the kilometres left to drive between the outskirts of Tianjin and the Bird's Nest, in northwestern Beijing, the sheer speeding skill of the Afro-Asian woman allows her to enter the Olympic district with only two bus lengths shy of Marco's bus.
Wang tells Marco, "We're getting cornered by the second bus! Make to the finish line at all costs!" Our opponents are gaining ground at every second!" And then ensues an epic driving battle up to the Bird's Nest main parking, in which Marco tries to collide with the bus driven with Marianne, but to no avail. "Marco! Milena is a very good driver when it comes to overspeeding but she is no good for lateral collisions! It's no use pitting her in a lateral collision clash! You are risking 100+ lives if you continue!" Janick warns.
And a photo finish device, installed by a Dutch athlete, awaited both buses engaged in this speed clash. Both drivers wanted to get all the speed possible from their vehicle and the checkpoint being the traffic lights, Marco was in the lead 500 meters out from the main parking of the Bird's Nest, albeit by only 3 cm. To the eyes of the spectators in line to enter the Stadium, this epic battle of the sexes was also an epic battle of the races, since it pits a black female driver against a white male driver. And Marco was demoralized because he is not as good to brake as his opponent, making him lose by 3 cm.
"I fear that the polluted air of Beijing will affect me as a cellphone thrower. I fear that my health will vanish as a puff of smoke if I competed here. Therefore I will withdraw from these Olympic Games" Marco stated in front of a TV reporter. At this moment, the other passengers search for their national teams and put on their national uniforms in the maze-made parking of the Beijing National Stadium. Marianne got lost; Robyn and Otto found the US team quite rapidly and the rest were left to their own; even the Chinese, with their Fei Zhang (or Zhang Fei for the locals), who was offered a wildcard to compete in Beijing due to his country being the host country.
After all the athletes get in a heavily lighted stadium at night, here is the time where the Athletes' Oath is sworn. Ping-pong player Yining Zhang (or Zhang Yining for the locals) holds a corner of the Olympic flag and, having engaged in rote memorization of the Athletes' Oath for weeks prior to the Olympic Games' Opening Ceremonies, stands ready to officially swear it. "In the name of all the competitors…" she begins. She obviously tries to hide her heavy Chinese accent and, in doing so, she pulls the Olympic flag out of its socket. The Olympic flag ended up covering her entire body and the entire crowd laughs at her as she falls over due to the force she used in pulling the flag off.
Other Chinese athletes, such as Zhang Fei (unrelated to Zhang Yining) and Guo Jingjing, hastily put the flag back into its socket. Yining has to restart the oath from the beginning, "In the name of all the competitors, I promise that we shall take part in these Olympic Games, respecting and abiding by the rules which govern them, committing ourselves to a sport without doping and without drugs, in the true spirit of sportsmanship, for the glory of sport and the honour of our teams."
The next night, Otto comes to a short-course (25m) pool in a park near the Olympic Village and is issued a strange challenge, not by a cell phone thrower, but by a swimmer. Obviously, it's not about swimming for speed, but for something else that relates to water. Otto borrows a LZR Racer swimming suit from another swimmer, obtained through Ms. Kwyjibo. Because the swimmer from whom Otto borrowed the LZR Racer is Kwyjibo's national teammate and his event heats are not scheduled until tomorrow.
"Otto, I challenge you to a plunge for distance!" she shouted into Otto's ears. "I have a new exercise for you, to develop anaerobic endurance: all you need is to dive from a standing position, a starting block for instance. But the trick is to remain motionless for 60 seconds after you get into the water or your head breaks the surface, whichever comes first. The distance from the starting block to the point reached thereof, is the distance of the plunge. There is a tip I can give you: take a good impulse from the starting block in a forward motion and avoid either belly flopping, diving in a tuck position or entering the water vertically" the swimmer explains to Otto. "In other words, dive like you would in a start! OK, I'm in" Otto exclaims.
She doesn't know that he learned everything he knows about plunge for distance from Anita Bathe when he first met her. He met her when the bus was leased to a tour operator for the summer and she happened to be in the tour. She first talked to him on an hotel pool deck, actually.
"State Comptroller Atkins talked good about you, especially as a cell phone thrower: I happen to be the grand-niece of Mr. Atkins and I am Wilkinson. Julia Wilkinson." She dives first just so Otto can get to see how to perform a plunge for distance properly. But what Ms. Wilkinson does not know is that a plunge for distance competition is like a cell phone throwing competition in the way that it's the best dive out of 3 that is retained for the final score. At least, in the state in which the PFDF (Plunge for Distance Federation) recognizes it.
Otto quickly understood that it is better to hold our breath until the 60-second threshold has been passed. While Anita did tell him about the basics of the sport, she never really trained Otto in it. Julia's plunge was recorded at a distance which would unofficially be a women's world record! "And if Wilkinson was proven to be a complete swimming failure, at least she can try to break Frank Parrington's world record of 86.75 ft (26.44 m) established in 1933" he thought.
The officially recognized women's world record set by Charlotte in 1917 is 18.89 meters (62 feet) but the high school US record is held by a Florida girl of which only surname and her record is known: Bullock's Personal Best is 62.00 ft, set in 1928. Therefore, there are two world record holders. Many potential women's world records may have been set between 1947 (the date at which the PFDF's ancestor disbanded, therefore terminating official endorsement of plunge for distance international competitions) and 2008 (the year where the PFDF was founded). But it wasn't broken in an official meet. However, many national records were broken earlier this year – and the German record held by Anita Bathe is just 3 cm shy of the world record. And Julia's unofficial personal best (should it become official, she would be the first woman to dive past the 20m threshold) is 22.40 m or 73.50 ft.
Otto hears Wang's voice in his head, "If you don't have variety in your workout, you will never achieve your training goals." So Wang can think of it as though the benefits of doing a few plunges for distance would be useful in a cell phone throw, whereas Otto would rather think of it as useless. As such, he thinks about surfacing before the 60 seconds ran out. But he remains motionless for about more than half that time, as he surfaced 17.38 m away from the starting block 33 seconds into his dive. "I feel uncomfortable diving without surfacing for so long" he confesses. He probably feels so because of his father's affiliation with the United States Navy, though he is definitely not afraid of swimming.
"Otto, your swimming suit…" Marianne scolds him. Because even a single plunge for distance with a LZR Racer required said suit to be washed before it could shift wearers. This time around, it's Zhang Fei (from a Western interpretation) who gives him a challenge: it's a push-up challenge. It's the one who can last out the most push-ups that wins. And the winner wins the right to eat a free ice cream cone, at the expense of the loser.
The former bus driver begins performing his push-ups at the same time as Mr. Fei does, under the eyes of Marco. Mr. Fei performs over 400 push-ups in the time Otto needs to do about 250 and to collapse afterwards. "This is not a very cool way to begin an Olympic participation" he thought. He has to pay all four athletes ice cream cones (not containing any doping substances, of course) and to lead them to the ice cream station.
Hopefully the ice cream station was not too far from the park and these four athletes (Julia, Marco, Otto and Zhang) waited in line while yet another athlete caused a commotion by starting a food fight nearby by throwing its hamburger like a shot. Obviously, the athlete was a shot putter, the son of Korea's Hoo-yang Kim (one of the wounded in the Los Angeles 1984 Olympics) and targeted Julia for no apparent reason. However, Otto was directly in his targeting line and the headwind was strong enough to slow the thrown hamburger down and hit Otto's face instead.
In true sportsmanship, Marco called off the food fight, despite the public continuing the food fight. As they flee the waiting line and their chance at ice cream, Otto shows Julia how to play another sport (from her point of view). Knowing Otto, it would be cell phone throwing. In his right mind, Otto knows Julia has absolutely no chance to defeat him in the sport for which he came to the Olympics. Except if he was on crystal meth, but he since learned from Wang that crystal meth is a banned substance that could cost him his cell phone throwing career. To this end, they go to the baseball field nearby and "Julia, wait in the line for the home plate!" She does not suspect that the very shot putter that started the food fight was just behind her in the line.
"This place is crammed with throwers of all kinds, except javelin" Marco thought. And he kept a rubber-made implement of the size and weight of a real cell phone. Julia is aimed at by a Chinese kid who throws a discus from the pitcher's mound instead of the home plate. This time around, Julia just can't avoid the throwing implement and, in a burst of anger, throws the rubber-made cell phone at the pitcher's mound from the first base, in hopes of hitting the child. An argument ensues between the boy who was on the second base and the one on the pitcher's mound.
"You threw the discus at her because she seemed like a rotten banana to you!" the first boy claimed. "That woman is not a rotten banana to me; she was able to hit you with the cell phone from the first base!" The cell phone has been thrown at 19.40 meters because Julia wanted to hit the child instead of throwing her best. "You… hikikomori! This baseball field was built on funds stolen from Japan!" the Chinese boy claims. "No! As a little emperor, you convinced your parents to pay for the baseball field!" The Japanese hikikomori waited at night to go out and commit violent acts. He is engaged in a knife fight with his Chinese counterpart, the "little emperor".