Arrived in da Mota City and hied directly to Okemos which touches East Lansing which touches Lansing. Then off to check out the venues. Outside of the temple to Basketball is a life-sized statue (?) of Magic Johnson (okay maybe heroic scale at 12 feet tall). Inside the arena is being set up for a faux stadium concert cum opening ceremony for tonight.

We also stopped to check out the venue for the team’s long term “Big and Small of It” skit/presentation. A great old theatre, the Fairchild, with a lot of wood. The backstage setup is a bit tight. One team was in the hall inspecting their set. True to OM, the coaches were a distance away talking among themselves and the kids were worrying over the travel-produced scrapes and bruises that their props and inventions had taken on. One boy looked back to the coaches and his fellow team members; he had found a big crack. What to do? The coaches didn’t say anything. But one of his team members ran over to a powerplug and jacked in her solution. “Clear out! Danger! Red head with a glue gun!” she shouted.

Things were under a kind of control.

In other news, our team has been assigned an international buddy team — the Chinese who won in our division last year.