Centipede, guys in orange suits, the Surf Shack. The Mag's Anne Marie Cruz has entered...the International Zone.

The Athletes Village was somewhere between skeletal and complete back in July, the last time I was here. The arcade games were covered in plastic, unplugged and lifeless. The innards of all the pool tables were exposed, since their felt-lined surfaces hadn't been screwed in. The stores in the sponsor-run strip mall (IBM, Kodak, etc.) had no shelving, let alone anything to impulse-buy. And the only noise on the streets was the last gasp of winter wind.

Overheard

"They got rid of the Miss Universe pageant, and now they have this."

—An Aussie volunteer, while watching synchronized swimming on TV.

Now, I waited for Aaron Peirsol just outside the International Zone (consisting of the strip mall, the plaza of flags and the security checkpoint) -- the only section of the village invaded by media. I traded in my credential for a red paper pass -- good only for two hours -- and got ready to download his post-silver medal pictures onto my laptop. Moms and dads perched on the concrete stairs while coaches milled about expectantly as buses dropped off athletes. No one famous, though.

"There you are," said Aaron -- a.k.a. Pinesol -- sidling up to my white plastic café table. He was fresh from a downtown tattoo parlor, where he and Klete Keller got permanent Olympic rings.

"Brooke Bennett got hers in Atlanta," he told me as my Powerbook was x-rayed. "But they switched the blue and the yellow rings. So I wore a t-shirt with the rings on them, and said 'Make sure it looks like this.'" Aaron lifted up his shirt and the waistband of his boxers to expose the rings, just above his right hipbone. They looked like Froot Loops stuck to his skin.

"You know how when you get punctured, you flinch?" Aaron continued. Me? Some days, I flinch at sunlight. "Well, the guy keeps puncturing you. Deep. Really deep. For 15 minutes. You have to force yourself to stop moving. They're still swollen." Ouchy. "It's starting to scab over, though."

Once inside the IZ, we hunted around for a place to park. Not in the noisy IBM Surf Shack or the game room. And definitely not outside, where local performance artists calling themselves REM Maintenance Team -- five people in orange jumpsuits with weird contraptions on their heads, desperate to be Devo -- banged on pots.

"Didn't this kind of stuff bother you before your meet?" I asked, moving away quickly.

"Nah, we're about five or six blocks from here." He motioned to the Information Office, empty except for the bored volunteers manning the tables of leaflets. "Let's sit there. No one's ever in there."

I fired up the computer, trying to look as tech-savvy as possible. Just to spite me, the screen coughed up a connection error. Several minutes of manual wrangling later, I mumbled something about usually being good at troubleshooting, and wanting to buy a new memory card to spare him the technical difficulties.

"No, let's figure this out," Aaron said. "It's starting to bother me, too."

Finally I double-clicked the right folder, and suddenly thumbnails of his 65 pictures appeared on the screen. We grinned wildly.

Aaron gave me a tour of the album: The team ferry ride from Darling Harbour to the Opera House; his 200-meter backstroke; young'un Michael Phelps with a big homemade card sent by his friends and family. (I'd tell you more, but I don't want to ruin the surprise.) As the computer downloaded the photos, I flipped through a pamphlet entitled Sports Dentistry and the Elite Athlete. "Look at this," I said, pointing to a close-up of someone's open maw with a severe arch eroded into the front two teeth.

"Ugh," Aaron said, wrinkling his nose.

"'Swimmers who spend a lot of time in chlorinated pools may be damaging the enamel of their teeth,'" I read aloud, laughing.

"Lemme see that." Aaron took the pamphlet. Seconds later: "It says chlorine ruins your teeth." Yep. "I thought you were joking. You'd think chlorine would prevent tooth decay."

My time was almost up. I wanted to wander around the rest of the village, to feel it fleshed out by the thousands of Olympians (except superstars like Lenny and Jenny, who moved out once swimming wrapped up). Instead, we bought more batteries at the Kodak center, then I went to the general store to ask for change. Instead, I bought two king-size Cadbury Crunchies (a candy with honey-flavored, styrofoam-like filling), and handed one to Pinesol, smirking at the tooth decay factor. Tastier than chlorine for sure. But to him, probably not as sweet.

Anne Marie Cruz covers the Olympics for ESPN The Magazine. She brushes twice a day.

To send Anne Marie a question or comment in Sydney, click here.