The Sports Report in Panama

Ok, so the Saladino Effect has gone a little over the top at this point. He is now in every other commercial, every politician has solicited his endorsement, and every baby - boy and girl - will be named Irving or Saladino or both for at least the next month. So as the Olympics draw to a close coverage once again returns to the America's pass time. As I sit here and watch the sports highlights I can't help but notice the stark differences between the coverage here and back home.

Good ol' ESPN loves their Yankees and Red Soxs, Ozzie Guillen's mouth, Brett Farve's arm, Tiger Wood's knee, whether Boston Celtics will repeat (who thinks about the NBA in August), and the insignificance of preseason football. But guaranteed to be in every hour of Sports Center are some of the best plays in the sports world and an attempt to cover at least most of the games of the day, and then there are the plays of the day and web gems. Most local sports casters have a local and shorter version of this same format.

Contrast that to what you get in this country. The leading story on any reputable sports cast here in Panama is with Mariano Rivera. The likely future Hall o' Famer is probably the most famous sportster to come out of Panama. After watching 7 of his 9 pitches to win, loose, draw or save for the Yankees the focus switches to all the tier two Panamanian ball players. A tier two ball player in Panama is defined here has any player in the Major Leagues that is not Mariano Rivera. One might see Carlos Lee fan twice and hit an insignificant ground ball to the second baseman; or Carlos Ruís catching for the starting pitcher of the Phillies... in the bullpen before the game.

All of the insignificant plays that these and the other Panamanian players make will be well documented, but will they note the great catch made by Ichiro to save extra innings? Not a chance. Will they show Ronaldinho's spectacular bicycle kick goal? Maybe. Will they show any other sport besides baseball and soccer? No way!

I am reminded of the banner that I saw in Costa Rica right before the World Cup 2006 in which Costa Rica lost three out of three games and was eliminated. The banner read: "Congratulations Costa Rica, we made it to the World Cup Tournament!" They were happy just to have made it. In the same way the Panamanians want to see the Panamanian players no matter how significant or insignificant to be able to share in the glory of just making it, and forget the actual great plays, results, and commentary on significance.

And to this I say, rock on Manny Acosta! Carlos Beltran hit the game winning double off you last night, but someone hand to throw the loosing pitch. All of your countrymen (all of whom claim to be related to you by at least a cuña'o) down here will love you for making it onto the mound in the majors and will happily forget the details. We made it!

Us Americans and our Gold Metals

Ok, so Michael Phelps won 8 gold metals to become the most decorated Olympian ever, the Redeem Team is on pace to destroy the competition, the USA as of today leads the overall metal count. These are all great stories of triumph and success, and to be honest they are all a little trite. Swimming hands outs metals like confetti on new years days, and the USA is actually loosing the gold metal race with China which probably means that they are going to roll their red asses across the Pacific and assimilate the the USA into their Borg-like factory system based on a a wierd combination of capitalism and communism.

Is this history in the making? Probably. Is this the best story of the Olympics? Hell no! The Olympics has always been about making a bunch of money off all the people coming to the host country, and a little thing called friendly international competition. I could write a thesis here about how much I love the Olympics as each sport is actually a little society with simple rules, punishments for breaking said rules, and rewards for being the best. For example in the long jump the rules are simple. Run as fast as you can at a pit of sand and jump as far as you can. If you step on the line it doesn't count, you have three jumps, good luck.

My favorite stories are the ones of the underdog; never the ones of the people that are suppose to win. Rooting against the Yankees is more fun than rooting for them, watching the "Redeem Team" kick the crap out of everyone they play against is a little is boring. I want to see the Kenyan or Nigerian runner who historically should be shooting his neighbors for being a different shade of "dark chocolate", but instead decided he was going to take his long legs and start running. No only would he run well, but he would defy AIDS and so much more just to make it to the Olympics. Then he would continue to eat his Wheaties, and run 26.2 miles faster than anyone else in the world. These are the stories!

Panama finally has it's first gold metal in the history of the Olympics, EVER! Before this year Panama had two Bronze metals for basically showing up to the games. With a long jump of 8.34 meters Irving Saladino long jumped his way out of one of the toughest neighborhoods in all of Panama into Panamanian sports history with the first gold metal by an central or south american team this year, and the first gold one for Panama. So the rich countries can celebrate celebrate all their gold metals by taking the winners out for a "good job pizza", but I'll be dancing in the streets on August 21 with the rest of Panama City to the hero's welcome for Saladino as if he had single-handedly stopped the Russian invasion of Georgia.

Survival Guide to Carnival in Salvador

Many people have asked me to describe what Carnival is like in Brazil. It is not an even that is lived, it is survived! It is an assault on the sense and even for someone who has a space bubble as small as mine there were enough people to make me glad that I didn't have social anxiety disorder. Everywhere celebrates the festivities, but there are two major hot spots in Brazil for the week. Rio de Janeiro, and Salvador da Bahia.

Rio is a great town with some amazing beaches and is know throughout the world as THE place to be for Carnival! From some first hand accounts that I have heard this is very true as many international tourist come here to catch some sun, music, and exotic diseases. Rio has the a stadium built on a stretch of road exclusively for the Carnival Parades. In theory these are the best parts about Carnival in Rio, and these are exactly the reason why we went to Salvador.

While all of the international tourists flock to Rio; all of the Brazilian tourist exit en masse to Salvador. While all those people are in the stadium watching the parades, in Bahia we were people Rio have got nothing on the Guiness Book of World Records largest street party in Bahia estimated at well over 2.1 million people each year. Throughout this post there are pictures from both as we watched the Rio parades on TV as a break from the dancing in the streets in Bahia.


Dave and my Peace Corps from Panama friend, Jon, met us in Bahia for the glorious week of chaotic madness. We spent the days laying on the beach taking momentary dance breaks from our attempts to turn our skin color into that of a lobster. Once it would cool down in the evening we would go out to the streets with several million of our favorite pick pockets to watch all the famous musicians from around the world perform on their moving stage.

We would take turns buying beer in the streets, dancing as the floats went by, and trying to get the other two to look at (in that special way) the pretty girls with five o'clock shadow, hair legs and baritone voice. I will admit to being headbutted by a pair of flying lips from a dude in a pink leotard and bunny ears who was almost a full head taller than me. I had no idea it was coming. After five minutes of laughter Dave said he saw the whole thing coming, could have stopped it, but then decided it would be funnier to let the whole thing play out as he said "naturally".

part of the parades. Lastly all theI wish we could have taken more pictures, but due to security concerns we did not take our cameras out for more than one hour in the week. One is just asking for trouble taking a camera around, even a disposable camera. Everyone is a pick pocket during this time. It is not that they are malicious about it, Brazilians just feel like if they can buy the next round on your dime they will. Being tall and blond is as good as wearing a neon sign that says ROB ME! We never had more than $15 each at any given time, and thought it would be fun to write offensive phrases on bits of paper and stick them in pockets like folded money.

One pickpocket earned himself a cuffed ear from Hospital (aka my left fist), he's lucky I didn't turn the other way otherwise he would have run right in Cemetery. Dave still got the best of one pick pocket by complete accident. He felt the ominous pokes of interested fingers, waited for the smash and grab, and when it happened he turned and pushed the guy right into a line of police that he had not seen. The cops caught the guy as he stumbled back, looked right at Dave and in a language that sounded like the adults in Peanuts asked a question. It did not matter that we do not speak Peanuts Adult-inese, we understood the question perfectly. "Yes," Dave responded and pointed at the guy, "he tried to rob me." and with that the public beating began. Dave and I walked off as the judge, jury, and executioner hauled the would be robber off for a fun night of pissing blood at his local cell.

After a couple of days the quantity of people started to get on our nerves. We were tired of feeling on guard all the time. We didn't get tired of the random girls coming up and kissing us though. We learned the all important lesson that one may not speak the same verbal language, but we learned that all speak body language.

At this point I shall leave the reader to use their imagination to fill in the details...

Road to Carnival

By going to the Boca/River game we successfully traveled 6 hours in the wrong direction for getting to Carnival. We spent 12 hrs in Mar de Plata to see the game and go to the beach. We spent as much time on the bus as we did in getting there. It is as if we were 19 again and had made a beer run from Portland, Oregon to the Canadian border. Upon leaving on the 2 am bus back to BA we decided to go for the luxury seats so that we might be able to sleep a bit better as there would be four days of hard traveling to make it to Carnival on time.

We soon discovered that after a night on ANY bus you reach Vegetative State 2. This state is recognized by a sore back, and restlessness. We had a few hour to kill in BA so we were able to collect our thoughts and prep ourselves for the 20 hr bus to the Brazilian border. We brought the chess set, books, food, Rubik's cube, and a Portuguese study guide, but by the time we got off the bus at the border we had passed into Vegetative State 3.

Vegetative State 3 is indicted by long periods of lost time, zoning out, unresponsiveness to punches in the arm, and emitting a body odor that no cologne can cover up. We were lucky though because we had to cross the border independent of the long bus systems. Even though we had to think and process information in a country that did not speak English or Spanish, by the time we got back onto the long haul bus we were only back to Vegetative State 1 which is the lack of desire to talk because everything you have have to say that is interesting or uninteresting has already been said.

While at the border we did have to opportunity to jump out to see the famous Iguaçu Falls. No one picture can capture the immenseness of the falls. Interspersed through this blog post are a series of pictures that show parts of the falls, but the quantity of water, shape, and grandness of the falls is unmatched. They are probably 60 meters tall, but over a kilometer long. There are national parks on both the Argentine side and the Brazilian side, and both have their perks. In terms of getting to the water and getting wet, the Argentine side is better, but the Brazilian side is more photogenic. It was nice to just stroll around and have a look at something that was not the inside of a bus.

No movies in any of the Brazilian buses was a huge disappointment and a large part of the reason why I forgot where we transferred. It could have been Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro, this memory loss along with with the drool covered shirt indicate that I reached Vegetative State 5 on this bus. Vegetative state 5 is recognized by the desire but in ability to sleep or think. One may feel as though the brain has been removed from the body.

We got to the city about midday, and discovered we had to get across town in 15 minutes to make the bus. As that was not going to happen we ended up with the afternoon in what we discovered was Sao Paulo as we came back down the vegetative state chart. We had lunch and watched a movie, and the back to the bus stop were we got back on the bus for our final and longest leg. All night and the next day and night we traveled on the bus. It is unknown what the final vegetative state was because we had obviously blacked out and thus had been above level 6 (if level 10 is brain dead and breathing machine).

In the bus yard in Bahia da Salvador, after all the passengers had gotten off, the maid came on to clean the bus and found us still there. She freaked out, started screaming and babbling in some strange language that I didn't recognize, and beating us over the head with her mop. That brought us back to life enough to grab our bags, tumble off the bus and start to give human form to the blobs that we called our bodies.

"We're soooo there!" Dave exclaimed.

"Hang on," I said, "I need to sit down for a couple of minutes."