Visitors to Olympic Park walk around the base of the Olympic flame at the 2014 Winter Olympics. Credit: Associated Press

Sochi, Russia – I am not sleeping in a tent with two stray dogs. I have not been strip-searched, or even wanded. My hotel room has a shower curtain and a flushing toilet and I am eating quite well, thank you. My computer has not been hacked.

my roomate's step-sister makes $81 / hour on the computer. she has been fired from work for five months but last month her pay check was $17892 just working on the computer for a few hours. go to this web-site …

Just kidding, Mr. Putin.

Contrary to what you've heard and read, the XXII Winter Olympics are not the Gulag Games. I am vaguely aware that NBC, CNN and Fox have done a marvelous job scaring the pants off all of you with fear-mongering stories about eminent terrorist threats, iPhones being hacked within minutes of being turned on, accommodation snafus and exploding tubes of toothpaste.

What a bunch of hooey.

And then there is the new Olympic sport: journalists whining on Twitter. There are three disciplines – halfsnipe, moanguls and Caustic Combined – and the witty Americans are aiming for a podium sweep.

As of Wednesday morning, the Twitter account @SochiProblems had 343,000 followers, about 100,000 more than @Sochi2014, the official Twitter account of the Sochi Games. To be sure, some of the 140-character essays on missing door handles, plumbing problems and half-finished hotel lobbies are humorous but they paint only a tiny portion of the picture.

Look, everybody wants hot water in their shower, but minor inconveniences for some does not mean the Sochi Games are a throwback to Soviet-era ineptitude. If you thought you'd be checking into the Four Seasons, you've come to the wrong place.

The Russians, quite understandably, are not happy with this portrayal of their competence, or lack of it, and they have a word for the Twitter onslaught: zloradstvo, or "malicious glee."

In their defense, staging the Olympics is a massive undertaking. There are so many moving parts – tens of thousands of athletes, media and officials; hundreds of thousands of spectators; an incredibly complicated transportation system; a mind-numbing security net; a tangled web of roads and infrastructure – that little things are bound to go wrong.

Unfortunately, the landslide of petty complaints takes the focus off issues that do matter, such as Russia's law against gays and lesbians, the government's mistreatment of migrant workers (some of whom reportedly have not been paid for their work on the Olympic venues) and the International Olympic Committee's curious decision to take the Games to a truly dangerous corner of the globe in the first place.

Few would argue with the notion that the Russian Federation is still a mess in many ways, but politics aside the Sochi Olympics, at least from my perspective, have been a spectacular success. These are my ninth Olympics and they are easily the best-run Games I've experienced.

Only once have I had to wait more than five minutes for a bus. The walk from my hotel to the bus stop is two minutes and the ride from the bus stop to the Main Media Center is 10. All the venues in the Coastal Cluster (hockey, curling, short-track, figure skating and speedskating) are within a 20-minute walk of the MMC.

I have not experienced a single security hassle and have never waited more than 45 seconds in a mag-and-bag line. If only U.S. airports were this easy.

And while I am certainly mindful that a terrorist attack could occur, it's unfortunate that the incessant drumbeat of media warnings in the weeks leading up to the Games caused some athletes – including speedskater Tucker Fredricks of Janesville and hockey player Ryan Suter of Madison – to tell their families to stay home.

They're missing a great show.

"(Security) has not even been on my radar," said speedskater Sugar Todd of Wauwatosa. "There is nothing that has given me any kind of second thought about whether my own safety was at risk. Everyone is probably doing their job very well and it's allowing me to focus on what I came here to do."

Todd's take on her Olympic experience?

"Absolutely off the charts."

I would agree. Say what you will about Russian President Vladimir Putin, but for all his heavy-handedness and ego-stroking stunts he has demanded and gotten a well-run Olympics for his – or someone's – $51 billion.

My first day in Sochi, a colleague texted me: "How bad is it?"

Here's my answer: The Caucasus Mountains are beautiful. The venues are spectacular. The volunteers are friendly and speak at least a little English. Getting around is easy. There's a sports bar next to my hotel. And I'd highly recommend the strawberry-banana smoothie in the cafeteria.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to take a little walk before I cover the men's 1,000-meter speedskating race at the Adler Arena. It's another sunny day in Sochi, where the temperature has been in the mid 50s to low 60s every day.

Sorry, Milwaukee. Didn't mean to rub it in.