Just awesome

I wish I could describe today so you could experience it like I did, firsthand. I'll try my best.

First of all, I did more work in the first half an hour that I was at the Velodrome today than I did the previous week. It was a good feeling; I was stationed at the photo positions at the top of the first turn, facing the starting line. You can't ask for a better view than that.

I made sure that the photographers had everything that they needed and weren't doing anything they weren't supposed to. Their favorite thing is to stick their huge camera lenses out onto the track, which is pretty dangerous for them and the riders, who sometimes ride up to the top of the steep inclined track. Most of them were pretty good about listening, but some I had to keep telling them to do or not do things. I didn't like that part, but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do.

I met so many great photogs today. A man from the Netherlands was here for his tenth Olympic Games and showed me some of the photos he had taken today. Some were at the Water Cube, and he had fantastic pictures of Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte. My favorite photogs of the day were the guys from Greece. They were SO funny and so sweet; I told them I heard that the photographers would be unfriendly and they laughed and said some are, you've caught us on a good day. We chatted about where we were from and they joked about getting the show over with so they could go rest. They still had to go work at the Bird's Nest after the Greek team was out of the running (sadly) for the team sprint event. I told them I had a friend who was Greek-American (hi, Alex!) and also tried to pronounce their names, quite unsuccessfully, but it was fun.

The races were great, but in the first qualifier, a Polish rider crashed his bike. I hoped it didn't have a negative effect on the rest of the evening, and nothing else happened after. The rider was just scraped up, so that was good.

Then, Bradley Wiggins from Great Britain broke the Olympic record (held by him) in the individual pursuit qualifiers. It was amazing to see him fly around the track! The crowd was going crazy!

Finally, the events wrapped up with the team sprint finals in which Great Britain took the gold, followed by Germany and France. The medal ceremony was fantastic to watch close-up. I was basically up and to the left of where they were on the podium. Sweet.

It was time to go home. After five hours on my feet, I was ready to go and we missed the first shuttle back to CUC so we took the subway. Smart choice, because who sat down next to us but Chris Hoy's family! Chris had just won a gold medal (and helped set a new world record) in the team sprint and his girlfriend was holding his bouquet two seats down from me. His dad sat next to me and we chatted. It was really cool to see how happy he was for his son, but at the same time used to having him do well. At 32, Chris has won almost 30 world championships and already has three Olympic medals now. His dad said that they're hoping for three golds by the end of the week in Beijing. He gave me an autographed postcard of Chris, so nice! I'll add it to the collection: a Chinese volunteer friend of mine gave me a postcard autographed by three members of the Great Britain team this morning, including Rebecca Romero and Victoria Pendleton.

I can't wait for tomorrow. Goodnight!