The olympics week 2

I have not added postings about the work I am doing for the Olympics mainly because I havn't done any! I have been on standby ever since the opening night and it really doesn't look like I will be doing much for a few days.

I have been able to watch some of the Olympics including the Opening Ceremony recorded by my wife as that was the only day I have worked so far. I was sent out to take a family from their hotel to the Olympic Village and then wait for them to take back. When I got to their Hotel they had already taken public transport to the Village so I drove down to the bus park at Stratford to wait for them. 6 hours and 49 minutes of waiting later, during which I saw the Red Arrows and some of the fireworks, the family appeared and we set out through some very busy East end streets. It took me the best part of an hour to do a 18min journey but I got them home at about 3am.

I hooked up with another driver at Hyde Park and we drove back to the depot finally getting back to the lodgings at half five in the morning. Needless to say I was a tad tired the next day!

A couple of days off saw me traveling back home to see the Wife (don't tell her that I missed her!) which gave me a chance to catch up on what had happened.

Now I am back at work and still on standby!

Oh well, maybe will get a duty tomorrow, still getting paid for sitting around which is nice.

The Olympics Day 4

So here we are 4 days into our training and we have finally got our security badges, phones and have almost completed our training with on 1.5 hours left to do tomorrow.

I cannot see us getting assigned anything tomorrow and expect they will give us thursday or saturday off as it will be all hands to the wheel on friday for the opening ceremony.

Todays training involved us visiting various hotels in London to find out where to pick up and drop off guests. Our bus driver almost got us on the news by taking his tri-axle continental sized coach round the narrow streets of Covent Garden! Somehow we got out but not before scaring a lot of people!

The Olympics

The London Olympics start on Friday and I am already part of it. I have already helped Harlow Steel Band at the Sparks Will Fly event at Chelmsford and the torch relay through Harlow, both times seeing and photographing the torch and its bearer. Now I am working as a driver of the VIP coaches from Heathrow to the events.

I am not allowed to post details of my actual jobs but I will be putting pictures and updates on my blog and Facebook page about my personal experiences.

So far we have had a very high speed bit of route learning and have stood around in the main temporary depot at Heathrow waiting to be processed. We were told to go to our accomodation and come back tomorrow to finish it all off so I still don't know what we are actually doing yet!

We are in student accomodation in High Wycombe and the rooms are functional to say the least.

Oh well, off to bed as up early tomorrow to get back to depot to get our security pass, phone and uniform.