This morning centered around another Beach Volleyball session.  This time, we got to enjoy the #1 Men's team in the world from Brazil!  The blocker on that team was 6'8" and not much was getting past him, although their Austrian opponents were good as well and challenged the Brazilians all the way through a third and deciding set.  I was also able to see the Czech Republic lose to the Spain men and a three-setter match between the Italian and Russian women.   
Sand art outside of Horse Guards Parade venue - this will be an overhead view of the facility and surrounding buildings - amazing!
Completed sand art of Wenlock
Whitehall and London Eye on the left, Downing Street and Parliament/Big Ben on the right
Stop-motion sand (considering how far away I was seated today, this was pretty good!)
I had to leave a little early because Beach Volleyball overlapped with my Tennis session, but it actually worked out really well timing-wise.  As I was walking to the Westminster tube station to catch the District line out to Wimbledon, there was lightning then a huge thunder clap.  Fortunately, I made it to the underground station in time and apparently missed the first downpour of the day, based on the fresh puddles on the walk from Southfields station to the Wimbledon venue.  My weather luck wouldn't last very long: as I waited in the long security line to get in, we got hit by a decent set of rain clouds.  All matches on any court but Centre Court, with its retractable roof, ended up being canceled for the day.  Good thing I had a Centre Court seat!  I think it poured another couple of times - real soakers that echoed loudly inside.  The big match-ups of the day were Great Britain's golden boy, Andy Murray, versus Stanislas Warinka and Maria Sharapova versus Shahar Peer.  Not surprisingly, the most attended match was Murray.   



A time when it was not raining at Wimbledon
The obligatory strawberries and cream + tennis for all Wimbledon experiences

By the way, if any of my readers are photographers, I just thought I'd write briefly about my first time renting a lens.  I went to my local Penn Camera store and rented a telephoto lens with a fixed aperture to alleviate my concerns about low light in the Olympic venues, especially after a disastrous experience at a rodeo in Texas.  The exact lens I got was the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VR II, retailing for around $2,400 but rented for the week for just $150.  I have been thrilled with the results.  Sharp stop action photos even at midnight.  No, they're not all fantastic, but pretty darn good shots considering it's not attached to a full-frame camera (D90), and I'm not using any stability device - monopod or tripod.  While I like the results, it's still a little on the spendy side for me, especially considering I want to upgrade to a full frame body in the near future and don't need to be dumping more money into DX lenses.  Not all of my photos on these Olympic blogs are from my D90, some are off my point and shoot (like the strawberries above) because at 70mm, I wasn't getting the wide angle I wanted.  Plus, the lens is an FX lens, so the 70mm is more like 107mm - even more zoomed in!