The Sports Illustrated Olympic Daily is published in Salt Lake City and available in event venues and on newsstands for 16 straight days during the 2002 Winter Games. Here are some sights and scenes from today’s edition.

These Olympics have turned one writer into a touchy-feely security groupie

A touch of wander-lust? The author undergoes another good screening. Lynn Johnson

By Austin Murphy

The wife and kids don't know it yet, but there are going to be a few changes around the Murphy household when Dad gets home from the Olympics. I'll hit Home Depot for the two-by-fours we'll need to erect a faux "magnetometer," through which I'll pass after coming in the front door and, of course, emptying my pockets into the containers provided. (I'm thinking Tupperware or maybe buckets from the sandbox.)

My seven-year-old daughter, Willa, will pass my briefcase through our "X-ray" machine (cardboard box from storage room). If I put the briefcase on the construction-paper "conveyor" before being instructed to do so, she can issue a curt rebuke -- not exactly a reach for her. If I'm carrying a beverage, an espresso drink, for instance, she can request that I take a sip of it as proof that it's not actually a grande, triple-shot, extra-foamy carbolic-acid latte.

Devin, who is five, can be in charge of taking my loose change -- hardly a reach for him, either -- and simulating, every so often, the whooping of the alarm. That will be my wife's cue to grab the spatula and subject me to a thorough and vigorous wanding.

It won't be Laura's fault that her wanding and frisking techniques will seem hopelessly amateur after my two-plus weeks in Utah. While entering various athletic venues and the Main Media Center, I've been prodded and inspected by the best of the best, camo-fatigued Army men and women who can order you to "unbutton the top button of your pants and turn down your waistband" one moment, then ask you if you have any extra pins the next.

Life at the Olympics is like life in wartime. There are 15,000 uniformed personnel at these Games, including thousands of state and local police. There are FBI, FEMA, and Secret Service, though none of them strike fear into my heart so much as that other security warrior: the newly minted volunteer, armed with clipboard, two-way radio and an unshakable conviction that it is his or her destiny to single-handedly save these Games from catastrophe.

Rather than chafe at the delays, I welcome them. As Mark A. Camillo of the Secret Service has said, "We're all on the same team."

Officer Camillo puts his finger on the bond I feel with the uniformed folk -- the teammates, I should say -- who frisk me. There was, for instance, the burly staff sergeant at the MMC who bade me to open my coat, then ran his palms up and down my chest and abdomen. As he did so, I reflexively drew in my stomach.

It was over quickly, and both of us moved on with our lives. After retrieving my valuables from the plastic container, I turned back and saw that he was already wanding another journalist. A younger man.

I saw my staff sergeant a few days later. Our eyes met, but he pretended not to recognize me, so I moved to another line. Two can play this game.