Bainbridge to Beijing

We’re back in Seattle and watching the closing ceremonies on NBC. It brings back so many memories of being in the Bird’s Nest three weeks ago for the opening ceremonies. What an incredible experience in an incredible country.

With BainbridgetoBeijing winding down, I thought it might be fun to share some site statistics.

The site went live on July 15 and Google Analytics took a couple of days to spool up and start to track visitors. The site attracted 184 visitors on July 18 and averaged between 50 and 120 visitors per day from July 19 though Aug. 3.

Site traffic jumped to nearly 200 visitors for the next couple of days, then roared up to 350 on Aug. 7. It topped out at 432 unique visitors on Aug. 9 — the day that Emily competed — and has averaged nearly 350 visitors per day since then.

Overall, 2643 unique visitors paid 5,706 visits to BainbridgeToBeijing over the past month. They visited more than 14,000 pages and spent more than 3 minutes per visit. And it truly was a global site — visitors came from 46 different countries!

I’ll have a few more posts over the next couple of days, particularly if Emily sends any emails and photos from Beijing. I’m sorting through several hundreds of photos that we shot while we were in Beijing and I’ll share some more of them shortly.

Thanks for everything, y’all.

Michael Phelps has his 7th gold medal tonight in what was an incredible finish in the 100-meter butterfly. MS and I had mixed emotions on this one. Mike Cavic, who finished second, is from Serbia, but swam at Cal when Helen was there. Emily, MS and I ran into Mike Wednesday afternoon after lunch at the athletes’ village in Beijing. He’s a really nice guy and spent a lot of time chatting with us about the upcoming race.

This is one of those races where it looked like an optical illusion — how did Cavic not win that one? But it seems almost fitting that if Phelps was going to win his 7th gold, he should do it in dramatic fashion… by one one-hundredth of second.

Amazing!

When MS and I need a workout, we head over to Island Fitness. The good folks were kind enough to recognize Emily on their readerboard.

We usually spend MS’s birthday (Aug. 10) with Tom and Jodi Kelly at the cabin on Lake Cavanaugh, about an hour north of Seattle. So it seemed fitting when their oldest son, Charley, came to the Water Cube in Beijing to watch Emily compete in the Olympics.

Charley spent a year studying in Beijing while earning his degree from Loyola Marymount. He returned to China to teach and then took a job with CB Richard Ellis to practice commercial real estate in Shanghai. It was great fun to sit with him when Emily swam. And as usual, I was basically incapable of using a camera or video while any of the kids competed and as a result, didn’t get a photo of Charley in the Cube. So he was gracious enough to send this one along to us.

We got home in time to catch the swimming finals on the Canadian Broadcast Company, which is showing their broadcast ilive rather than tape delayed, as they are on NBC. What a pair of increidible swims tonight from Ryan Lotche and Rebecca Soni.

Sorry, no photos with this one. But just wanted to note that we had another long, adventurious day of travel when we headed home from Beijing.

We were on the Air Canada non-stop leaving Beijing around 4:20 p.m. Beijing local time. We started the day with some last minute packing (we did most of it Wednesday night) and a quick trip to Jinghelong Convenience Store for a handful of knockoff Egg McMuffins (1 yuan, or about 14 cents) and a couple of those killer eqq crepe things that cost 3 yuan.

We then settled in to watch the swimming competition on the Filipino satellite feed into Curt’s apartment. From there, we popped into the BofA Center for a quick lunch (a few dumplings!!!) and then went to the neighborhood massage spa for an one-hour traditional Chinese massage. The guy doing my massage tried to grind my musles into butter, but man, did it feel good.

The plane left Beijing right on time and arrived in Vancouver about 10 hours later. The movie system worked well, so I stayed up through the flight and watched the following: 21, 88, Iron Man, Aladdin, and part of Chariots of Fire. (Entertaining, predictable, great fun, a classic and an Olympic inspiration, respectively.)

When we arrived in Vancouver, we discovered that Air Canada only misplaced one of our bags (mine, of course). But because we hung around the luggage area so long, wating for that bag, we nearly missed the connnection from Vancouver to Seattle and our other three bags didn’t make that plane.

So we checked four bags in Beijing and arrived in Seattle without any of them. However, they assured me that some of the luggage will be here tomorrow.I’ll believe that when I see it.

We arrived home Thursday afternoon after a long day of travel from Beijing to Seattle. It was about 80 degrees when we landed at Sea-Tac and one of those clear, blue-sky August days that everyone in the Pacific Northwest relishes.  Here’s a quick snap from the ferry as we headed toward Bainbridget Island.

And when we arrived on Bainbridge Island and headed home from the ferry terminal, we found that our good friends over at Town & Country Markets, the world’s best grocery store, were up to their old tricks again on their community readerboard.

We’re getting ready to leave Beijing after 10 days and hundreds of incredible memories. We catch an Air Canada flight this afternoon at 4:30 p.m. Beijing time that takes us direct to Vancouver BC. From there, it’s a quick hop to Seattle.

Lots to do this morning, including trying to cram all of our new clothes and souvenirs into our suitcases.

I’ll file a couple of additional posts over the weekend — mostly photos that I haven’t had time to edit and download.

Emily took MS and me into the athletes’ village yesterday and we got the grand tour. Here’s some of what we saw.

As you enter, you are greeted by a wall of flowers with the official Beijing 2008 logo. It’s a great place to pose for photos.

All of the countries are assigned dorms. The US has two dorms because of the size of its team. Here’s one of the US dorms and the China dorm located nearby.

We ran into lots of people we know from swimming, including two of Emily’s Olympic team coaches, Jack Bauerle and Teri McKeever.

The athletes live in suites with individual dorm rooms. Emily is sharing a suite with Natalie Coughlin, Amanda Beard and Lacey Nymeyer. Here’s Emily and Lacey’s room.

There are beautiful fountains and paths meandering between the dorms.

No trip to the Village is complete without visiting the dining hall for lunch and the souvenir store. The dining hall is massive and serves just about anything you can imagine. It’s filled with athletes, all of whom are re-fueling their incredible bodies. The souvenir store is well-stocked and always busy.