Good, Bad and Ugly All in a Day's Ride

The chaotic state of transportation at the Turin Games has its good side and bad side. The good side is that anybody can catch a ride. The bad side is that the bus system at some venues resembles a soccer riot.

Take the trip some of us experienced getting to and from Sestriere for the men's downhill. It was a six-bus, seven-hour ordeal. The first bus broke down. The second bus got lost. The third, a van from the finish line in Borgata a few kilometers back up to Sestriere itself, never made it. After standing still in traffic for 45 minutes, the passengers unloaded, and hiked up the mountain.

The fourth bus was a harrowing trip in a Greyhound-sized affair down the mountain to the village of Pragelato, home of the ski jumping events. The bus careened around hairpin turns with ankle-height guardrails.

There was supposed to be a hub in Pragelata for transferring to other buses. Instead, the driver skidded to a stop on the main boulevard of the village, shoved open the doors, and announced, "Finito." His shift, he explained in Italian, had ended.

We tumbled out the doors into a crowd of thousands of people, all trying to leave the mountain, most of whom seemed to be exultant Finns who had just watched the ski jumping. When a bus would pull up, hundreds of people would rush the doors, like panicked crowds trying to leave a burning building. Sometimes the bus drivers opened their doors, and sometimes they just kept going.

The carabinieri came, to break up the fistfights.

We found a volunteer and told her we were stranded. "Yes," she said, "it's terrible."

Finally, we made it onto a bus. We gazed around. And wondered if we were on acid.

All of the passengers were wearing horn hats.

They were singing what sounded like Finnish drinking songs.

Three hours later, the bus finally chugged into Turin.

Where the driver got lost.