Dave Fox's Outbursts!

Impostor Pelicans

Mykonos, Greece
Gyros Count: 3

Twenty hours after leaving home Seattle, I landed in Athens and hopped a flight to the first island I could. I had four days to de-jetlag before I started working on my tour.

Mykonos is a bad place to get over jetlag though. The island, one of Greece's most tourist-clogged, parties all night. Wide awake at 4 a.m. when it was only 6 p.m. in Seattle, I started making my way back to my hotel, only to get horribly lost.

It's easy to get lost on Mykonos. The island's streets were intentionally designed in the most labyrinthian manner possible to confuse and discourage would-be pirates.

I first came to this island in 1977 on a visit with my family. My mother had been an exchange student in Greece years earlier. In 1977, I met Petros the Pelican, the island's mascot. Petros is a celebrity here -- but on an early-morning walk, I discovered his dirty secret. He is a little bit like Santa Claus: There are many pelicans masquerading on his behalf.

I had always believed Petros was a one-and-only pelican, but near dawn, as I rounded a corner near the beach, I counted four of the birds. They were having a meeting to discuss whose turn it was to play the role of Petros for the day.

Gyromania 2004

I am off to Greece tomorrow. I leave Seattle in the early afternoon and will be in the islands by Tuesday evening. I spent 17 days in Greece last year, during which time I managed to eat 17 gyros. (The photo is of gyro number 17, which I struggled to gobble down on an already full stomach on my last day in Athens.) This time, I will be in Greece for 32 days. Is it possible to eat 32 gyros in 32 days? Is it smart?

You can't buy gyros in America like the ones they sell in Greece. They are smaller there, and tastier. One is a light lunch. Two is a filling meal. Three is... well, let's not go there. They cost a couple of euros and they contain all four food groups, making them not only tasty but also quite healthy, unless you happen to be a lamb.

My strategy (and the only way I will possibly pull this off): Gobble down as many as I can during my first four free days in the islands. Once I begin tour guiding, I eat a lot of non-gyro meals with the tour groups, reducing my opportunities.

Stay tuned to this blog for gyro updates and other meaningless babble from post-Olympic Greece.

The Olympic Blowtorch: I Asked For It

We laughed at the Greeks, smug Americans that we are. A couple of months ago, many of us were predicting the nation that gave birth to the Olympics was going to make a mess of everything. Roofs would be sitting on the ground next to the stadiums they were supposed to be on top of. Subway lines from the airport to downtown would stop halfway there and everybody would have to hitchhike. They'd forget to put lighter fluid in the torch, and the guy who was supposed to unlock the stadium doors for the opening ceremony was going to be on a coffee break while thousands of athletes, spectators, journalists, and stray dogs lingered outside waiting to get in.

I admit it. I joined in on the new Olympic sport of Host Country Bashing. "The Greek Olympic Committee has announced all preparations for the Games should be completed by March, 2007," I wrote in an earlier blog entry. In my annual Happy Dysfunctional New Year article on my other website at davethefox.com, I predicted a new event: the 1,000 meter Athenian Traffic Hurdle. We were wrong. Greece just hosted an awesome Olympics, completely void of the subway derailments, topless stadiums, terrorism, and rabid dog attacks on synchronized swimmers that we predicted.

After I posted my tongue-in-cheek critique of the Athenian Olympic preparations in May, I received a letter from Ranya, an Athenian who was raised in the United States. Ranya wrote, in part:

I am very sorry to say that all the international community does is try to criticize the Greek Olympic Games. The Greeks are people that although they may be late in performing things, at the end, everything turns out well. I think the final result is what counts the most and not if you follow certain time programs. I was raised in the States and this criticism against Greece is very upsetting to me. Furthermore I don’t believe that the States should criticize Greece about the security of the athletes or if things will be ready on time because I believe that the Olympic Games 1996 in Atlanta were not the best example for the international community.

I wrote back, assuring Ranya that Greece has been one of my favorite countries for years. I said I was actually jealous of the laid back manner in which Greeks live their lives. I was still secretly skeptical that they would get their Olympic preparations done in time. I promised to put Ranya's e-mail on my blog... but then... well... I ran out of time to do so before leaving to go guide my early summer tours in Europe. I was guilty of the same offense I was accusing the Athenians of -- not getting things done on time as promised.

I was not the only writer having fun predicting Olympic disaster, and I'm not the only one feeling a little bit sheepish now. Sports Illustrated correspondent Rick Reilly wrote, "Sorry about the way we acted. We were paranoid and stupid and just flat out wrong. Our bad. If you want, we'll sleep on the couch."

Greece just pulled off one of the best, most flawless Games we have seen in a long time. We made a much bigger mess of things in Atlanta. The Greeks proved all of us skeptics wrong. And I also have to admit I feel a bit silly for mocking the Greek Olympic mascots. I wrote that they looked like "somebody took a blowtorch to plastic Bart and Lisa Simpson dolls and melted away part of their heads." I still kind of feel that way, but having researched the issue of Olympic mascots further, I discovered Izzy, the mascot America came up with for the Atlanta Games. I don't mess around with hallucinogenic drugs, but I imagine that Izzy must be the creation of some poor American who was watching the Smurfs on LSD.

So to Ranya and the rest of Greece, I must echo Rick Reilly's comments. I was wrong. I am sorry. I am coming to your great country in two weeks. I am looking forward to riding your new subway line from the airport. I am looking forward to ruins free of scaffolding. I am looking forward to the best food in the world, and intoxicating folk music, the bluest of seas, and a people with an enviable passion for live.

If you want to take a blowtorch to my head, I will understand.

We waited ten years for this?

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Reality Slide Shows

A co-worker of mine (who shall remain nameless) at Rick Steves' Europe called me the other day to ask me for a favor. A travel class / slideshow on Greece was scheduled for tomorrow (Saturday), but the person who was scheduled to give the talk for some reason or another did not know she was on the schedule. So this co-worker asks me if I can teach the class.

I've spent a lot of time in Greece, but I didn't have a presentation ready. So I told her if she could provide me with the slides, I'd be happy to do the talk.

I picked them up yesterday and I've spent most of today going through them and figuring out what to say about them. But there's something horribly voyeuristic about using somebody elses slides in a presentation. The slide tray includes honeymoon shots, a guy's bare butt on a nude beach, and a strapping, bare-chested Australian-looking hiker standing in a rather modelish sort of pose. I'm not quite sure How I'm going to explain these shots to the audience yet, but it's going to be one of my stranger presentations.

The class is free at the Edmonds Theater tomorrow (Saturday, June 5) at 11 a.m. For more info, visit ricksteves.com/classes.

Phevos and Athena: The Mascots are Melting!

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