After a full English breakfast (part of my room charge) I was sitting outside the hotel enjoying the sun. I couldńt help notice that there seemed to be way more people milling about or gathering. Up until now, London has essentially been a ghost town. The city has asked the locals to try and avoid the city while the Olympics are on; take a vacation, work from home. The message was basically stay away if you can. For each person that does actually leave, 3-5 more are going to come. The expect 1 million people a day to take in various shows. Probably one of the largest Olympics todate.
The crowds continued to form so I suspected something was up. I ran up for my camera and when I returned, the street looked like this:
It turns out, the Olympic torch was going to by right by my hotel.
Brad took us to the ASDA (supermarket) so we could buy lunch. There is absolutely nothing available to eat at the Neasdon Control Centre. Eating pre-made sandwiches is really going to take itś toll on me this trip, but we have little options. Once at the NSCC, we met the Express Medical nurse who would administer our DAMPS tests. We had to blow into a tube to test for booze and pee in a cup. That sample will be sent out for analysis for everything you can imagine and more. Once that was done, we settled back into our little office and worked on stuff from Toronto. Another long boring day ahead.
Well, at 6pm, we finally got a ´failure´ or disruption which required some action from Graeme and Jeni. They spent the next 90 minutes basically calming down the operators while a maintainer was sent out on the track for the repair. Part of the train carriage had caught onto our ĺoop´ cable and basically ripped out 100m of it. The repair was completed and the trains were back up and running. Some passengers experienced some pretty major delays getting home that night, but all in all, it was not that serious and had nothing to do with our system.
After the shift, Ken, Jeni, Graeme and myself enjoyed a few drinks and a couple of pizzas on the hotel patio. Itś a nice spot to unwind at the end of the day. Tomorrow will be a ŕest´ day for me. They have had to spread these out so we could maintain full coverage. My plan was to meet my friend Lynne, who is here for her grandmothers funeral, for lunch in the city. Should be a good day off.
