London Olympics / Driving the DLR / Heaven Foam Party

After visiting Faversham and Canterbury (the latter being kinda nice and quaint) I decided Kent as a county is not really worth visiting again and then quickly headed back up to real civilization - London!
I'd managed to get myself a cheapish ticket to see the Men's Freestyle Wrestling Championships (60, 84 and 120kg) which was out at ExCeL.  All the Olympic tickets came with free travel cards which was a really good idea and all the years of weekend works definitely paid off as the Underground was actually running better than any time I remember.

ExCeL during the day

ExCeL was impressive, nicely connected up to the DLR and fairly easy to get around.  The security check was straight forward and food/beer inside was predictably expensive even by London prices.  Some people didn't turn up so I got to steal front row seats, right behind where they stand on the podium to receive their medals.  Good view of the ceremony and bums in spandex.  I was near where the winner would come out and celebrate with fans from his country so got sweated on by a few Olympic medalists (not a claim I've ever heard before, nor probably will since).  Sadly I lost my spare battery in Amsterdam so my camera died.


I won't bore you with the rules or a run-down of all the matches but would like to point out a few highlights.  Skip to the next paragraph if you like.  Both the 60 and 84kg were really exciting, lots of flips, doggystyle holds, a couple boners (on the wrestlers, guess they were excited too).

I sat between the Japan supporters and the blonde
haired lady. The group to the right  is where the
winners came to greet their fans.

The Iranians were very vocal with their support - at one point nearly breaking the seating supports as they spent nearly 3 and a half hours stamping or jumping up and down to make noise.  It got really annoying with 20 guys shouting "IRAN", especially if there was no contestant from Iran.  The Iran - North Korea match was really fun, the Iranian got the NK and spun him over and over (it looked a bit like they were the hands of a clock slowly rolling anticlockwise).  He got 7 or 8 points from this and the NK didn't bother the last 10 seconds and just gave up.  Cuba got their first ever medal for this event - it was really close but he came in second.  The 60kg ceremony was interesting too as the medals were given out by North Korea whilst the flowers were handed out by South Korea.  I kept on watching them they didn't even make eye contact.  Azerbaijan got gold in both 60 and 84kg, while Uzbekistan beat Georgia to win the 120.  The 120kg was more like sumo than the lighter classes, no flips just pushing.  I saw who won and then left before the medals were given out so I could beat the crowds heading back into London.

On the DLR train back I sat at the front left so I could look out onto the tracks (the DLR is driverless).  The conductor asked me to move to the right "sorry son, that's my seat" and proceeded to open up the controls.  We got talking and he explained they 'drove' manually Friday and Saturday nights in case drunks fell onto the tracks as well as Sunday mornings just for training.  Driving is a strong word - push the lever up, press the button, pull the lever down and then the train drives itself.  At Westferry he even let me press the button to drive it to Limehouse!

Back in town I met up with a few friends and hit a few bars.  Including one with a couple pole dancers, one of which who was quite the gymnast.  Then we hit the Heaven foam party - saw TK outside but couldn't find him again after.  (Picture not from that night).  Had no swimshorts so we ended up putting all our clothes in the locker and jumping into the foam in boxers and shoes.  Both of which got super wet - squelching out foam for days!