B. Lewis with bow; T. Lewis with arrows

Fortunately for me, my brother Tracy - who rowed at OCC and San Diego State - was quite a bit older, so when it came to rowing, we did nothing more than cheer each other on.

In rowing there has been a good supply of brother-partnerships, (Winklevoss twins, Frank and Alf Hansen, the Abbagnales, the Landvoigt twins, the Battling Borchelt brothers). There have been brothers who rowed in the same boat, (Joe and Tom Amlong, gold in 1964 8+). But it's hard to come up with even a solitary example of two brothers who competed against each other - until now.

For David and James Livingston, it did happen, in spades - head-to-head - against each other in the biggest race in Great Britain, the legendary Oxford & Cambridge Boat Race.

Drawing from their training journals, the two men separately wrote their own stories, and then intertwined the sagas into an excellent non-fiction book, Blood Over Water. The over-the-top preparation by both Oxford and Cambridge crews for this solitary race, which will not only define the whole season but will define the rowers' futures to no small extent, makes the Harvard-Yale race look like a couple of pikers on a donut run.

There are a few pretty good training ideas included. There are a couple of fresh Brit slang-terms for a quick leg-over. The best part is the brutal honesty about what it's like to compete against your brother. The reason it rings true, I think, is because this book has not been put through the "with-machine." Most athlete-writers employ a ghost writer: It's Not About the Bike by Lance Armstrong WITH Sally Jenkins. These professional with-writers suck all the energy out of a book. As a reader, I want the story to go down blind alleys, not bland freeways; I want misplaced metaphors; I want the bad jokes left in; I want to read about the drunken brawls, the busted blisters, about the way a friend of James celebrated her twentieth birthday.

The honestly can be downright scary, as written by David: "He turned and ran off, out of the kitchen and down the hall. I took up the chase. James ran left into the living room, which joins the kitchen through another door. Realizing I would never catch him, I threw a seven-inch knife at him. It ricocheted off the wall and bounced onto the floor. We were both left shaken. Did I really want to hurt him this much? I think I aimed for the wall but I couldn't be sure.'

That last line says it all. Every younger brother has thrown the knife. And then been relieved beyond words when it bounced off the floor.

Blood Over Water

Most of the ones here simply lacked character. The sea cucumber dumplings I tried did have character (or had they simple gone bad?) but I wouldn't be in a big rush to order them again. They love sea cucumbers here, absolutely love them, so next time your cursing those pesky sea cucumbers clinging to the bottom of your single scull, scrape a few off and mail them to a friend in Beijing. You'll be a hero. Dumplings notwithstanding, street food is the best food. Dirt cheap for starters. You can't go wrong with a hearty helping of "bing", which is traditional flat bread, often infused with an egg, although I prefer my bing unadorned. One warm large bing and one cold Yanjing beer costs one thin US dollar.

London 2012, that will be exciting. Rio de Janiero will probably win the 2016 bid. At each Olympics, a special "Olympic Lane" is exclusively reserved on all the major highways for "Olympic Only" traffic. Here in Beijing, that Olympic lane is respected as though Mao himself set down the decree. In Rio, I can imagine kids playing soccer in the Olympic Lane. It'll be complete madness, which makes it all the more fun.

No leaf blowers. Men and women with long, home-made brooms sweeping up fallen leaves.

No graffiti, tagging, stickers, scratched glass on subways. When did we in the US decide it was okay to spray paint anything that wasn't moving?

Trampoline competition is a full medal Olympic sport. Anyone's who has seen the Simpson's episode (fifth season) where Homer puts a trampoline in the back yard... and decides to charge money... will no doubt recall Homer's classic line: "Get off so someone else can get injured." Having seen the competition in person, I still don't get it. How about Whitewater Sculling instead?

What sort of sick society is this where you can't bribe your way past a security guard with an Olympic pin? On the bus... a Westerner is the subject of great, unabashed curiosity. It's really something to be stared at non-stop for an hour.

Volunteers are stationed at every corner... high school kids... not a one of them knows a thing. But they are very helpful.

10 year old kid running up to me in the Olympic park... full tilt sprint... breathlessly asking, "Are you American?" I said yes... and the kid screamed with pure, absolute delight... then turned and ran back from whence he came.

People, young and old, out on the street until late at night. The reason, I was told, is that the apartments are often very cramped... and no AC. The only relief is to hit the streets. Plus there is nothing on TV except shopping channels and bizarre soap operas that involve guys with terrible wigs, bad make-up, magic wands, dragons.

Our planet has lots to fear from China, since a billion-plus people are entering the "gimme" phase of existence. It doesn't help that Audi, an Olympic supplier, has brought over hundreds upon hundreds of pristine, jet black A6 sedans, to be used as taxis for Olympic officials. (These A6's are equipped with a 2.0 liter engine, which is pretty tiny for such a big car, although I suppose it hardly matters since they rarely go over 40 miles an hour in the city.)

Number of Time zones in China - 1

Metal detectors at every venue sound off every time a person walks through... then you get the "Beijing Olympic Massage", a kid running a metal detector wand up and down a half-dozen times. "Turn around please."

Take that, Larry King.

The Czech sculler went charging off the line and opened a big lead in the 750 meters... open water over American Michelle Guerette in the next lane.

It's damn annoying to be waked down by the person in the lane next to you, but it happens all the time in single sculling. The smaller the boat, the more boat speeds vary through the course of a race. (Lipa of Romania had 4 lengths of open water at the 1000 in Barcelona... then won by 3 feet.)

And the smaller the boat, the heavier the load on the blades. So that monster Power 10 you just took at the 500 meter mark to get a big lead just might come back and bite you. Plus, although the water was fairly flat, the conditions were slow. So the trick is not to get too distracted or discouraged when the person next to you is sending out a steady stream of wakes in your direction.

In the third 500, Michelle dug in and cranked off the fastest 500 split of the field, which brought her dead even with the Czech sculler and Karsten of Belarus, (who won the gold in 2000 Sydney... winning by .01 over Neykova of Bulgaria.) Neykova had a pretty good lead with 500 to go, (2 seconds) and she looked strong, with no signs of fading. Michelle continued with an amazing last 500... her fastest of the whole race- and almost caught up to Neykova.

Joan Lind ('76). Charlotte Geer ('84). Anne Marden ('88). And now Michelle Guerette! Fantastic.

Swimming is one of the few Olympic sports that everyone has attempted at some point. Who hasn't timed themselves in a 100 free, only to realize that an elite swimmer would be in the car on his way home by the time we finish.

In the 200 IM, Phelps simply motored ahead of everyone. This isn't a small college meet, where you might have one top athlete who wins everything... this is the Olympics with athletes from all over the world who have spent 1,000 collective years in training, and Phelps wins by a full body length.

Michael Phelps is obviously in a class by himself, just like Ian Thorpe or Steve Redgrave. To me, they seem blessed with a 12 cylinder engine (while the rest of us mere mortals are lucky to have 8 cylinders). Add to that massive engine, a killer work ethic, years of experience, no bad luck. Finally, they possess a bullet-proof winner's psyche, which really comes in handy on race day.

When they handed out the bouquet of flowers to the medalists, you could imagine each guy thinking: "Great, what the hell do I do with these? Ebay? Re-gifting?"

I have an idea. Instead of flowers, give the guys a big sharp spear. "Cool... I've been wanting a big sharp spear." The bronze medalist would immediately stab the silver medalist, just a surface wound, probably in the ribs, to test the thing out. "Yep, it's sharp." Or better yet, give them a choice of four things on a tray. And they all choose at exactly the same time: Omega Seamaster OM-19 watch (replica, of course... got to keep the costs under control), or new 160 gig IPod, or a sharp spear, or they could choose the wild card, the inevitable, the always tempting small red box... inside might be the keys to a Aston Martin DB9 or it could be a gift certificate to Tosco's Ice Cream or a coupon for 50% off teeth whitening. Then we'd see which athletes were the real risk takers. From swimming, I walked a few miles to the Beijing Science and Technology Institute to watch Judo. Along the way I saw a fellow Westerner fawning over the small red scooter. Turns out he had just bought the thing... an electric-powered scooter, street legal, 50 mile range... for $500. The man was from Melbourne, Australia. I asked him if he knew Andy Cannon, the legendary rower, sailor, race car driver, gas station attendant and adventurer. The man said he knew Andy, but only by reputation. I was surprised since Andy knows pretty much everybody, and Melbourne is his home town.

Judo is one of those sports that I probably wouldn't watch if not for the Olympics. The Open Weight competition was held on Friday, heats, reps and finals, all crammed into one glorious day. To speed things up during the early rounds, two matches were held at the same time on adjacent mats. This often made for odd, disjointed cheering from the crowd of somewhat inebriated, swarthy looking Eastern Europeans, beer being served at the venue along with just about nothing else. Each bout is five minutes long, which is just about right amount of time for the opponents to get to know each other fairly intimately. A match can end before five minute if a match-ending throw is successfully completed. A match can also go longer than five minutes if no points are scored during the first go 'round.

The women competitors (+78 kilos), might have taken one pass too many through the buffet line. Their biggest opponent appeared to be gravity.

The open weight men (+100 kilos) looked like second-tier bouncers from some back alley Moscow nightclub, The Iron Fist. The Judo venue should probably be checked for radiation. I felt bad for the American guy, who, in his repechage, was nearly broken in half by Iran's version of Andre the Giant.

The ritual of Judo is well worth the price of admission. It's a remarkably patient sport; the match does not commence until both players are poised at exactly the right place, their jacket or gui neatly arranged and tucked under their belt. The referee stands mute and unsmiling between the two... then a quick raising of his hand, and he jumps out of the way, quick as a cat.

Most of the fighting appears to revolve around achieving just the right grip on the lapels of one's opponent's gui. One guy gets a grip... the other guy slaps it away. Repeat about 157 times. Finally one guy will get a decent grip, then trip his opponent, then crush him under his weight, then choke the life out of him. Doesn't get much better than that.

I wonder if the IOC, on its misguided, ill-fated mission of trying to keep the Games modern (with such brilliant additions as BMX demolition derby, which I don't recall anyone lobbying for) will put Mixed Martial Arts in and take Judo out. I can imagine the MMA federation saying, "Hey, you get rid of those jammies, make the ring an 8-sided affair, add a bucket of blood, and the ratings will go through the roof."

The world is big enough for the Olympic Games and for the X Games. Just leave it at that. And while you're at it, bring back the pair-with coxswain. There is a modern day Conn Findlay wandering around, searching in vain for his event.