Editor’s note: Josh George is a junior in communications. He is competing in track and field at the Paralympic Games in Athens, Greece. He’s keeping a journal, and he agreed to share it. Although his busy schedule does not allow for regular updates, he will update his journal whenever possible.

9/10/04

Dulles, Va. – Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard this wild ride to Athens, birthplace (kinda) to the Olympics and host city to the 2004 Paralympics. The athletes, having already been through processing (where they received massive amounts of red, white and blue) and briefing (a wonderfully boring process explaining the logistics of such a huge event), are now wandering in and out of hotel ballrooms, all donning white shirts and pulling blue suitcases.

Sept. 9 marked the day the gimp squad took over the Dulles Marriott. Horde after horde of ill constructed or properly dysfunctional human beings, sporting fake limbs and wheelchairs, condensed in beautiful northern Virginia.

WE are some of the world’s greatest athletes. WE are the ones who decided that we are only perceived as being ill constructed and dysfunctional, when in reality we are the most capable competitors heading to the purest of athletic competitions. But right now we are bored senseless and full of anxiety – see also: excitement, giddiness – and are trapped in a horrid game of “hurry up and wait.”

Scan any hallway in the hotel and you would be able to pick a wide multitude of humans with physical differences. There’s the fastest one-legged man, or maybe you prefer the world’s fastest blind swimmer, or maybe the world’s fastest man sans three limbs. And of course, we are all wearing the exact same outfit.

Team USA is off to Athens to paint the town red and score some hardware.

9/17/04

Athens, Greece – It wasn’t until the fierce smell of the village buses permeated my nostrils that I fully grasped that the Games were officially here.

The bus that took me from the athlete credential center to the U.S. block of apartments was filled with Slovaks and Russians, and when the bus dropped me off, I found myself staring at a series of red flags – the flags of the Chinese – waving back at me from the neighboring apartments.

The plane ride flew by, thanks to a chartered plane and my exhausted body. I got about five hours of sleep and was raring to go when I finally got settled into my room. Unfortunately, nothing much was going on, so laying low seemed to be the plan of action.

That evening I did get my taste of the dining hall. To my chagrin the filthy smell of fast food greeted me as soon as I entered. McDonald’s happens to be the proud sponsor of both the Olympic and Paralympic Games, and they scooped up prime real estate in the front of the hall.

The dining hall may be the coolest building in the whole village, though. Freaks of the world unite to gorge our faces. We’ve got Hungarian midgets eating Greek lamb, and one-armed Swedish swimmers sipping soup next to a slew of Americans in wheelchairs chowing down on Asian cuisine. Walking through, I overheard at least twenty conversations – none of them were in the same language.

The village itself is an exercise in cubism. The fine nouveau chic style of furniture that one might find in upscale New York furniture boutiques was taken to a whole new level in the design of the apartments that serve as athlete housing. Since the athletes moved in, flags from all over the world have swayed from the balconies.

9/19/04

Athens, Greece – It started with a sudden explosion of fireworks and the bursting of flame atop a magnificently large torch. The evening of the 17th, the 2004 Paralympics officially opened.

The ceremony was brilliant. The stands, filled with 70,000 fans, resembled one of Poseidon’s giant waves frozen in space and time. The sides of the stadium swooped through the air, with suspension beams piped in large arches over the two long ends of the stadium. At either end of the track, there were two enormous screens that served as scoreboards and JumboTrons.

For the opening ceremonies, the track was covered in a rubber mat and sported a gigantic tree in its infield. Like the Olympics, the nations entered the stadium in alphabetic order according to the Greek alphabet. This left us, the United States, entering the stadium fairly early in the production.

Try to imagine what it feels like to march into a sold-out stadium, in a foreign country, with 300-plus of your countrymen, to the roars of the crowd and the loud thumping of bass drums.

You can’t imagine it.

It is the most amazing adrenaline rush in the world. It was also kinda nice that my parents were sitting in the stands right behind the section where our team sat. To know that all my friends on the team and family in the stands were experiencing the same thing as me was incredible.

That kind of fun is over, though, and now the real fun has begun. Competition began today with the opening rounds of the 10,000- and 1,500-meter races for the men and the 800 for the women. Unfortunately, I am not competing in any of these events and have to sit and twiddle my thumbs until the 22nd. Grrrrrrr, I’m chomping at the bit.