In search of common sense and a bus

Nobody has yet bothered to take down the week-old banners in the street where we are staying. Sagging now, they read: "Atlanta welcomes the Olympic torch at 12.01".

On the day of the opening ceremony, groups of people with cool boxes and umbrella hats gathered along the roadside. Shortly before noon, they were told that the Olympic torch was running "two to three hours" late.

12.01. Given the chaotic circumstances of the week which has just passed here, that doomed attempt at precision has a poignancy about it. Atlanta really believed it was going to get these Games spot on.

The press bus on which we are travelling to the opening ceremony has no air conditioning, and sweat is trickling down everyone's faces. A photographer - it is always a photographer on these occasions - is attempting to force open the rear door to allow air to enter. Having gone past the Olympic stadium, our driver has now looped round and is taking us through scenes which do not reflect well on our host city.

Scrapyards piled high with rusting vehicles; boarded-up houses with collapsed verandas, overgrown with plants; groups of resentful-looking men gathered at the corners of dirt roads. Incredulity turns to impatience turns to exasperation. Questions are asked up front, and our driver turns the bus around, cheerfully admitting that she has no idea where she is going because she is from out of town.

There are no direct routes in Atlanta. All press buses have to make for the main depot, like salmon beating upstream, before transferring their occupants on to another bus which will take them to the desired venues.

Setting off for the press centre, I find I am the only passenger on the bus and, when the press centre comes into view I ask the driver if he could drop me off. "I understand," he says. "But I can't."

As we move into the traffic jam building around the depot, I ask him what it would take for him to open the door. What if I was ill, for instance? He smiles. Is there anything I could do to get him to let me off? "I guess you could start beating me up," he said. He is a big, sandy-haired man. I sit back in my seat. A colleague tells me later that he found himself in a similar situation, and effected his escape by lighting up a cigarette.

It is time to visit the rowing venue at Lake Lanier, 70 miles away from the city. For days, colleagues have been returning from this front with the journalistic equivalent of shell shock. But my journey out, apart from a half hour detour by my Angolan taxi driver en route for the central depot, is eerily straightforward.

Fighting my feelings of guilt - why should I be spared when so many have suffered? - I finish my work and then join a small group of colleagues travelling out to the perimeter security ring, where we have been promised the last bus back will be held for us until 3.00pm. Arriving at 2.45, we discover the bus has left 10 minutes earlier.

Another bus, we are told, has set off from Atlanta, and should be with us at 3.30. It isn't. We amuse ourselves by keeping out of the blazing sunlight and draining our last reserves of water.

At around 4.00, an empty bus draws up in front of us. We ask the supervisor if we can get on it. He understands. But we can't. The bus pulls away.

Tantalisingly, it returns 20 minutes later, still empty. It is an athletes' bus, due to carry rowers back to Atlanta. As we pick up our bags to board it anyway, the supervisor steps in and orders the driver to carry on and ignore anyone who tries to stop him.

Bus drivers are stranded beside this parking lot, too. One of them explains that 20 extra drivers have been drafted in to improve the transport situation. But no one has thought to give them buses to drive.

Eventually one of them - a burly, moustachioed Chicagoan named John Peterson - announces: "I'm going to take these people where they want to go." So saying, he steps up to an old orange school bus with a top speed of 35mph and beckons us in.

Ten miles along the freeway, he realises we are running out of fuel. We need to find a Texaco garage which will recognise the official fuel card. We find one, and it has no diesel. The bus wheels round back towards Lake Lanier in search of the next nearest Texaco station.

Refuelled, we set off back to Atlanta, a happy band of brothers and sisters now. Six stray journalists, three stray bus drivers, and, in the words of the Texaco slogan, a star of the American road. John Peterson would like to drive us, not just to the depot, not just to the press centre, but up the stairs to our work stations if we so desire. Even he has to give up when we reach a city centre road block, but we are back. Searching for an appropriate gift, I give him my Literary Guild pen - "for a scholar and a gentleman."

The next day I need to visit the beach volleyball, 20 miles out of town at Atlanta Beach. This time, I decide to take a taxi.

Disembarking at the venue, I see several Games volunteers running towards me waving me away. A woman with a walkie-talkie tells me that the only way into the venue is on an official bus from the Atlanta depot. "No walk- ins are allowed," she says. I gesture to my accreditation. I invite them to search my bag. By now, a sheriff has arrived and I repeat my request. "I understand," he says. "But you can't."

I can see the flags fluttering on the stand. My taxi driver is waiting. As I search for words - the phrase "a senseless waste of human time" comes to mind - a car drives up containing three Japanese journalists, with an official sticker on the windscreen. "If I get in with them," I ask, "will that be OK." It will. We drive 50 yards, and I get out.

As I pass through the security check, a mumsy woman volunteer asks me if I am having a nice day. I tell her, in measured terms, what kind of day I am having. "You need one of these," she says, enfolding me in a hug and patting my back. And I think: I do. But I shouldn't.