It was hard to get around except by official bus.
In private, discussions of the referendum were unavoidable: on an official bus to the opening ceremony, Danny Alexander and Nick Clegg pressed Ed Miliband to be more ambitious on agreeing to a joint strategy on more powers.
Though McCain publicly called the accusations "shocking and beyond the pale," a campaign aide told me that when McCain first heard Lewis's remarks he sat in silence inside the campaign's official bus.
The BBC TV satire on the games organisers, Twenty Twelve, had included a story where an official bus driven by a Nottingham man who did not understand his satnav got lost.
I arrived at 3.45pm local time (3pm UK), nearly five hours before kick-off, and the press room was already heaving - few are prepared to take any risks with the Johannesburg traffic, especially after an official bus took four hours to get from Sandton to Soccer City on the opening day.
I chatted freely with athletes in their dining hall, and joined some of them on the official bus back to the stadium, three miles away.
Forbes caught up with Bettis as he made the rounds during Super Bowl week in Tampa, where he talked about the unusual pressures on players leading up to the big game, his unique relationships to key members of both of this year's teams and gave us an official "Bus" prediction for the game.
Telephone calls to union officials and bus company executives were not returned.
According to security officials, the bus was stopped at a police checkpoint about seven miles south of Samarra on Saturday afternoon when the bomber strode through the checkpoint and walked up to the vehicle's open front door.
On the tour, while Pan Am & Greyhound representatives discuss business with local travel officials, the bus will be parked, and the rest of the group will try to interest the people.
But the city canceled school -- Thursday was the ninth school day lost because of snow since 1978 and the fifth under Mr. Bloomberg -- and transit officials suspended bus service until the storm had blown through, something they did not do as the December storm was bearing down and hundreds of buses got stuck in the snow, blocking plows and other traffic.
