Lost And Found At The Rio Olympics

VICE Sports staff writer Aaron Gordon is in Rio for the 2016 Summer Olympics and filing daily dispatches.

The six-lane highway from the airport to Olympic Park, like all of the other key throughways in the city, had a solid lime green line painted adjacent to the lane markers, designating one lane an Olympic Lane.

If we were a rational species, big problems would bother us the most. You know, stuff like massive corruption, government waste, human rights violations, and people's homes being destroyed, all for a three-week sporting event. But we are not rational, so it's the little things that send us over the edge. I suspect the Olympic Lanes will anger more people over the coming weeks than anything else.

Rio has one of the worst traffic situations in the world—at least in the top five. Meanwhile, the IOC has insisted on several transportation concessions from the Summer Games host, including its own fleet of buses and cars, and its own dedicated lanes on the busiest roads in the city, the better to drive said fleet through. So a six-lane highway jammed morning, noon, and night has now become a four-lane rage queue. As drivers try to keep their shit together, cars and buses with giant "RIO 2016" markings on them zoom by at roughly the speed limit.

I was in one of those buses, as most media members will be, and I felt awful about it. So I took public transportation the rest of the day. And I got extremely lost several times.

Personally, I love public transportation. More specifically, I love learning about a city's public transportation system so I can complain incessantly about its flaws. I think the best way to get to know a city is through its (often) neglected public institutions. You can learn so much about a place—its geography, its people, its foibles, its saving graces, really, its personality—by simply fucking up every aspect of trying to ride a bus.

Not only did I fail to properly swipe my bus pass; I also couldn't get through the little turnstile. I needed some very nice man sitting near the gate to help me open it. I have replayed this terribly embarrassing incident over in my head all day and I still have no idea why I couldn't get through the gate. Perhaps I have a very weak pelvis.

My real problems with the bus, however, occurred on my way home from Botafogo, a neighborhood very far from where I'm staying in Barra da Tijuca. I took the metro as far as I could toward Barra, but then I had to get on another bus.

It turns out, in Rio, you cannot simply assume that because a bus route went up a road in one direction, that same bus would go down the road in the other direction. As I found out, you can get on the bus on the other side of the road and it will still circle back to follow the same route as if you got on the bus from the first side.

This is confusing, not just in description but in practice, so I drew you a diagram of what happened when I tried to take the bus home from the end of the metro line to my Airbnb:

I'm just as confused as you are. Oddly enough, Google Maps doesn't seem up to snuff on its Rio bus lines; it had no idea the INT 3—or as I call it, the Ryan Fitzpatrick Bus—exists, but I could still follow my route on my phone. Being lost in the digital age is a different kind of lost. You know exactly where you are relative to where you want to be, but you can still have no idea how to get there, which is the only part that matters.

I'm told that in Rio weird bus things are just a fact of life, so nearly everyone is perfectly happy to help you with directions (unlike some other cities I know and live in). One man walked me two blocks so he could physically point to where I needed to be. Another went out of his way to take me to the bus stop so he could hail the bus I needed for me. This was all extremely kind, if also hideously embarrassing, but once I got home I realized it all accomplished the goal I had. I got to know this big, weird city just a little bit better, and it became a little more human, too.

I don't think these people helped me because of the Olympic Spirit. I'd wager they'd do it again in a month. But this also made me realize that zooming Rio officials and media around the city in express lanes, rarely to interact with anyone outside the Olympic bubble, belies the whole point of host cities. The Olympics doesn't introduce a city to the world any more than a Tinder profile helps you get to know someone.

During a walk in Ipanema, I saw some cameramen setting up a tripod for some B-roll shots of the skyline, mountains, and water. It's all there, of course, but right behind them was a couple fighting, the sounds of which would be dubbed over by the Olympic theme.

The Opening Ceremony are two days away, and after seeing the thousands upon thousands of RIO 2016 vehicles, swag-clad volunteers at every corner, and TV sets throughout the city, the Games feel like a simulacrum. When and where do they intersect with reality? What does the Rio de Janeiro Brought to You by NBC have to do with the bus I sat on for an hour? I don't have any answers just yet. I may never find them. But I'll soon get a closer look.

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