This is the latest in a series of reports on my friend - a sportswriter for a Very Important Paper - who is now in Beijing covering the Olympics. Read about her long flight to China, how the Chinese deal with water bottles at security, and her adventures with exotic cuisine.

Haven’t written about my pal lately — apparently she’s been busy, busy, busy, writing about some guy who’s speedo-ing his way into the record books.

All I can say is, you may have more medals, Mr. Phelps — but you’ll never have a mustache as cool as Mark Spitz’s.

So anyway, my friend had some down time — and what does she do? Why, she goes to the Great Wall, of course. How was it? Well it was great, of course.

You ask — why the Great Wall? Well, it’s a “tourist must” and this sports-writing scribe is a bit of a traditionalist. After all, consider what she watched on her Continental flight to Beijing: ESPN? No. CNN? No. Discovery? No. Mary Tyler Moore re-runs? Ding-ding-ding, we have a winner.