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Hanging a shower curtain in Sochi is a task that needs MacGyver-esque skills.

(Steve Politi/The Star-Ledger)

SOCHI, Russia -- You have to take the good with the bad when you're covering the Winter Olympics, because if you expect perfection, your spirits are going to end up tumbling down a ski slope, Wide World of Sports style.

So the fact that my hotel room had towels, hot water and a queen-sized bed (okay, two twins pushed together but when I squint from afar it looks just like a Marriott!) offsets the fact that it doesn't have a working TV, mini fridge, soap or a shower curtain (more on that last one in a minute).

But I was certainly surprised to find out that one thing it MIGHT have, according to The Wall Street Journal, is surveillance cameras in the bathroom.

And to think: The room doesn't even have Spectravision.

The deputy prime minister overseeing Olympic prep, Dmitry Kozak, was responding to media reports on the unfinished Sochi hotel conditions when he dropped that bomb. He was suggesting that we, the evil media, were trying to sabotage the Sochi Games with our coverage, and then offered proof:

"We have surveillance video from the hotels that shows people turn on the shower, direct the nozzle at the wall and then leave the room for the whole day," he said.

Two points on this:

1. Listen, Dmitry: I wasn't leaving the water on all day. It was just a few minutes while I attended to a few other things like brushing my teeth, clipping my toenails and sitting on the toilet while quietly weeping for the comforts of home -- but you know all that already. Stop telling stories.

2. If you really had the manpower to install a video camera, do you think your engineers could have figured out the whole shower curtain thing?

I arrived a few days later than some American journalists, and they all sent the same intel: That none of the rooms had shower curtains. So I went to Target to pick up one of my own, along with some rings.

So imagine my surprise when I arrived to find that the problem wasn't the curtain. It was the rod. It was supplied, but there was no second wall from which to hang it.

Undeterred, I remembered that my wife had sent me with a clothes line and duct tape ("You never know," Mrs. MacGyver had said. So using the two items, I was able to fashion my very own shower curtain.

I do hope you appreciate the lengths that I've gone through to keep the water off the floor, Dmitry. Also, I hope you realize that my decision not to floss last night was not poor dental hygiene. I was just a little tired.