TOKYO — I'm covering the Olympics. I am on a bus. These sentences are redundant.

These are the six states of wakefulness at this or any Olympics for a reporter:

  1. Running for a bus.
  2. Waiting for a bus.
  3. Hoping for a bus.
  4. Sitting on a bus.
  5. Eating quickly to catch a bus.
  6. Sitting in a venue, watching a sport, praying the buses will be ready and not overfilled when you need to leave.

Over Saturday and Sunday, I spent a total of seven hours standing at bus stops. I counted. I had time.

That's not a complaint. It's a fact. Well, it's a whiny fact.

If you work for NBC or the IOC, you stay in a luxury hotel and have drivers. If you work for a newspaper, you stay in a lesser hotel and hope the buses run on time, or at least run. Rachel Blount and I both waited for buses that didn't come this weekend.

The way Japan is handling the Olympics during a pandemic, we can't take public transportation until we've been here for 14 days, and even then the language barrier will be daunting.

So, we wait. And hope. And wait.