Wetter, wearier and more exasperated

Sitting by myself at a McDonald’s at 2 o’clock in the morning, because it’s the only place near the Main Press Centre that’s still serving food, and thinking to myself: This is a crime against gastronomy.

- ROSIE DIMANNO

Spectators wear ponchos during last month's rainy opening ceremony at the Paris Olympics. Columnist Rosie DiManno says her deployment there was peppered with technological challenges, torrential rains and expensive cab rides.

But I must have had 127 baguettes with cheese by now. That’s what I’ve been subsisting on these past three weeks, because who has time to go out for a nice sit-down meal? Apparently, all my journo colleagues, regaling me with their tales of fine dining. Why am I the only one who’s still scrambling to file on deadline with a six-hour time difference? I’ve had decades of cranking out post-game columns within 20 minutes and only ever once missed a deadline — Wayne Gretzky’s wedding in Edmonton, and that was just for the Star’s Ontario edition: For the farmers, as former sports columnist Dave Perkins used to say. He could bang it out in 10 minutes.

Wish I could say that my Olympics went as swimmingly as Summer McIntosh’s gold-burnished Games. The Rosie Games were not so fine.

It began with my arrival here 22 days ago. Landed at the airport, schlepped my bags to the transport desk, asked about buses to the media hotels. For the first time in my 18 Olympics, there was no such thing. Now that was an ominous indicator of how lowly journalists were pegged by the Paris 2024 organizing committee. But after my browbeating of the poor young woman at the desk — I am occasionally the Ugly Canadian — she located a private driver with an official Olympics vehicle.

The next few days were OK as I oriented myself with the Metro and the venues and caught up with acquaintances I hadn’t seen since Beijing. And then — the opening ceremony.