News & Observer | newsobserver.com | 2008 NCAA Men's Bracket

BEIJING — The American in me did have an incredibly entertaining time watching myself get transported out of the Beijing airport and on to the hospital for my sprained right ankle late Tuesday night.

I was thrown into Chinese culture head first. Any thoughts of cautiously dipping my toe into Beijing waters were dashed as soon as the airport ambulance tried to leave the airport.

The ambulance stopped. My Chinese guardian angel, who was still with me and still translating for me despite the late hour and an eight-month pregnant wife back home, told me I had to walk through the security checkpoint.

It had a guard shack and a guardrail and guys in uniforms with guns and everything. It was awesome.

I wasn't nervous, though I'd been making jokes for weeks back in N.C. about all the things I could do to get hauled off to a Chinese jail. It was too funny. I would have hauled out my camera for a quick snapshot with all involved but it seemed like a bad idea at that moment.

Guys in uniforms were checking my passport and my Olympic journalist ID and they kept saying, "mei guo ren" followed by other words, which means "American" and I'm guessing something akin to "idiot who fell."

Finally, I'm waved through and I'm gingerly trying to get to a second ambulance just beyond the checkpoint - I've seen too many Cold War movies not to start having qualms about the situation - but there are two vehicles parked out where we're heading. And not parked, like parked and waiting, but parked like they'd just screeched to a halt to complete a mission.

Keep in mind, it's midnight Beijing time. Honestly, I have to use the facilities and all I see are these two guys, just standing there in front of the open doors to an empty van.  Watching me like I'm about to get in. I ask my guy, "Hey, is that the ambulance? Do they just want me to jump in or what?"

My guy laughed. He had worked in the Tampa area for an Chinese company so he probably could tell I was having my "American in Communist China" moment worrying about being hauled off to the gulag. No such luck. It wasn't the ambulance. They, too, were just watching the clumsy "mei guo ren."

That would have been the highlight of the night were it not for the taxi ride to my hotel in southwestern Beijing. The first thing I did when I got in was ask, "Do any of you speak English?" No one answered.

We had driven maybe 20 minutes from the hospital when my very calm, meaning he didn't lay on the horn, taxi driver stopped. Then he and my China Eastern Airline escorts, very nice man and woman who had come to the hospital, brought my luggage, and made sure I got to my hotel, seemed to be trying to figure out where my hotel was.

I'm guessing it was given a new name for the Games - Media Center Hotel, very original - so they weren't familiar with it. All three got out of the car to ask the soliders having a post-shift smoke on the corner. Yes, more soldiers. Or policemen, I couldn't tell. 

They would have gone on talking but I finally stuck out my arm, pointed at the English words MEDIA CENTER HOTEL in bright red lights on the sign out front, and said, "This is it."

Apparently, that translates. Crisis averted.