Become a journalist and see the world. It sounds good doesn’t it? Travel to exotic places and meet exotic people. Cover international events and have the whole world hanging on your every word. Stay in first class hotels.

Wait. Scratch that last one; especially if you are in Russia to cover the Winter Olympics.

The opening ceremonies of the 2014 Olympics open tonight on Sochi but international journalists are not happy about their accommodations. It’s not that the hotels are bad, many of them are not completed. That’s right, Russia is in the national spotlight and they don’t have places for the press to stay. I don’t think they are going to get a good review.

The internationally recognized news organization CNN booked 11 rooms five months ago for their crew members. When they arrived, only one room was ready (and the curtain rod had already fallen in it). I’m not talking about the maid still needing to make the beds in the other 10 rooms. The construction workers still needed to make the rooms.

Apparently there were supposed to be nine hotels built for the worldwide media. Only six are completed. So a full one-third of the world press is scratching their heads and wondering. But folks in this business are a strange lot. When life gives us lemons, we make lemonade. When life gives us oranges and vodka, we make screwdrivers.

So the press have been making the best of a bad situation and sending out humorous tweets.

“I have a room! No heating or internet, but it has a (single) bed at least,” Shawn Walker tweeted Tuesday morning. Five hours later, he wasn’t as happy. When he returned, the elevator was broken. So he set off up the stairs. When he got to his floor, the fire door that is supposed to remain unlocked was, you guessed it, LOCKED.

One person reported that the reception area of his hotel had no floor. That was topped by Mark MacKinnon whose hotel had no lobby. He responded with the massively informative tweet “For those of you asking, when there’s no lobby in your hotel, you go to the owner’s bedroom to check in. #Sochi2014.”

Another winner was Stacy St. Clair who tweeted “My hotel has no water. If restored, the front desk says, ‘do not use on your face because it contains something very dangerous.’”

How do you top that? When the water is restored, you tweet a picture of two glasses of strangely yellowish water with the comment “On the bright side, I now know what very dangerous face water looks like.”

Don’t switch loyalties

While I was a sports editor for nearly two decades, I’m not a big fan of professional sports. I don’t like the astronomical salaries that athletes command and demand. It’s not that they don’t deserve to be paid, it’s that their high price tags are passed on to the consumer in high ticket prices. As far as the sports themselves, I absolutely abhor professional basketball. Baseball might grab my attention late in the season, if it’s the Cardinals. But the National Football League is another story.

As a child, I rooted for the Saints, because it was the closest thing to a home team and being from Mississippi, everybody knew about Archie Manning. When Shreveport native Terry Bradshaw made the journey waaaaaaay up to Pennsylvania, I became a Steelers fan. And you had to like the Packers when Brett Favre returned the excitement to Lambeau Field. But deep down, I have always favored the silver and black. They were the bad boys of the 1970s. The Raiders might have been the most penalized team, but they were good enough to overcome themselves and win.

And if you are a Raiders fan, there is no way you can root for the Denver Broncos, ever. Really, never ever. I think it’s somewhere on the back of the Oakland tickets in small print. When the Broncos made it to Super Bowl XXI, I pulled for the Giants. But for some reason the following January, I decided not to root for Washington and stuck with the AFC, even if that meant the Broncos and John Elway.

The Broncos were the slight favorite and jumped out to a 10-0 lead after their first two possessions and seemed in complete control. But everything changed in the second quarter. Doug Williams threw an 80-yard touchdown pass on the quarter’s first play, swinging the momentum. By the time the dust settled for the halftime intermission, the Redskins had scored five touchdowns and owned a commanding 35-10 lead. They tacked on a fourth quarter score for 42-10 final.

I pulled for the other team in the late 90s Super Bowls, but was still glad when Elway finally got his rings to cap a storied career.

But this year, I wasn’t just pulling for Peyton Manning. I mean it will be a while before the Raiders get everything back on track and start playing games in January. I hate to admit it but I was pulling for the Broncos. While I have nothing against Seattle, Denver had my support. Then the game started. Suddenly it was January 1988 again. Denver gave up a safety on the very first play of the game and it went downhill from there.

Lesson learned. While I still like Peyton, I can’t root for the Broncos. (On a side note, Denver does have a really nice airport.)