A SIDEWAYS GLANCE AT ATLANTA : THEY'RE STILL WAITING FOR THE BUS.

Another day . . . still more problems with Atlanta's beleaguered transportation system.

Hundreds of spectators waited up to four hours Tuesday for a bus to the Olympics from a suburban parking lot, and some of them missed events for which they had paid hundreds of dollars.

``I was going to see gymnastics,'' said Julie Boyden of Michigan, who paid $214 for her four tickets. ``We waited six years to come and see them, and now it's pretty much over.''

The women's optional gymnastics competition at the Georgia Dome began at 9:30 a.m., and the first bus didn't show up at the Clayton State College lot south of Atlanta until 10 a.m. Some of the spectators had been waiting since 6 a.m.

``We had a 9:30-in-the-morning judo session that we obviously have missed,'' said Jeremey Phillips of Iowa. ``We're hoping to make the 3 o'clock, but we have a little more confidence that we'll make the 8 p.m. baseball game tonight. We'll see.''

Olympic transportation officials, busy all week issuing explanations, offered another. ``Two garages serve that area, and both garages thought the other one had it,'' said Ron Whittington, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, which provides bus service to the Olympic lots.

Meanwhile, the city's subway system continues to be plagued by problems, not the least of which is overcrowding.

The Orange County Register recounted this tale:

A woman wearing a Georgia Tech T-shirt shoved her way into a packed northbound MARTA train. A member of the Canadian gymnastics coaching staff - identified as such by the team shirt he was wearing - tried to follow her aboard but only got one foot through the door when she pushed him out.

``There's no more room!'' she screamed as the doors closed. The coach replied with a universal sign of disapproval.

Whittington said of Tuesday's bus delays, ``We apologize for the inconvenience we caused our passengers. We hope some of them that waited gave it a little bit of time, realized something was wrong, and went on to another lot.''

Slings and arrows for field hockey 

Ouch.

It's not bad enough that the American men's field hockey squad was pounded by a combined score of 9-2 in its first two games.

Not humiliating enough that the team - with six players from Ventura County - has made a 0-21-4 blot on Olympic history since the sport was added in 1908.

Now the Associated Press wants to add to the embarrassment, dubbing the stick-swinging men in shorts the Drub Team - the antithesis to the American Dream Team basketball squad.

``If it would be a huge upset for the NBA-led U.S. Olympic men's basketball team to lose a game, it might be as big a surprise if the U.S. men's field hockey team won one,'' writes the AP's Bill Barnard.

But while Barnard's appraisal may be harsh, it's no more so than that of head coach Jon Clark.

Clark said his squad has let down friends, families and supporters.

``They've spent thousands of dollars supporting the team,'' Clark said. ``We're so disappointed because we didn't give them the play they deserved to see.''

Clark said the team has been distracted by Olympic crowds of up to 5,000 fans. Players in the United States ``usually are playing in front of three men and a dog, and the dog is there because one of the men is blind,'' he said.

It's not fun and Games 

for China

Could living conditions in Atlanta be rattling China's athletes, who have fallen far short of expectations in swimming, gymnastics and women's basketball?

Three separate days, fire alarms sounded off mysteriously in the Chinese dormitory at Georgia Tech's Olympic Village. Most unnerving was the 3 a.m. alarm the first morning of swimming competition. Swimmers and others were rousted from their beds, stood outside for a half-hour, then tried to get back to sleep.

And then there's the food. The Chinese have asked officials to go a little easier on the hamburgers and accent the village cafeteria menu with Asian dishes. ``The quantity and quality are good enough, but unfortunately the taste is not for Oriental people,'' Wei said.

``We're giving them sticky rice every meal, and kimchi 24 hours a day,'' said food-services manager Lew Sprague.

``Kimchi is for Koreans,'' Wei retorted.

VOICES

Atlanta is taking a pounding in the world press for the wide variety of problems accompanying the Games. A sampling of excerpts from around the globe:

Atlanta suffers from ``apoplexy of the transportation system, the saturation of the subway, (and) the irregularity of surface transportation, all of which provoke exasperation on the part of the athletes, the public and the press.''

- French newspaper LeMonde

Because of high temperatures and humidity levels, the Games ``are now staggering to the point of breakdown.''

- London Daily Express

``Everything in Atlanta was aimed at Atlanta . . . at expressing and glorifying itself.''

- Russian newspaper Izvestia, on the Opening Ceremonies

Getting to the venues is a ``horror trip.''

- German sports news agency SID

``The computerized processing of results has proved to be of incredible mediocrity for a system put in place by IBM.'' There are ``empty data bases, endless transmission delays, erroneous results.''

- LeMonde

``Olympic Chaos.''

- London Daily Mail

SOURCE: Daily News Staff and Wire Services

E-mail from Atlanta His plans for breathing go up in smoke

I don't smoke. Went to the cafeteria. Pretty crowded. Had to sit near the smoking section.

Gag! Gag!

Foreign journalists puffing away. What's the universal term for ``cancer stick''? Try to use hand signals to indicate the stunting of growth. Put my hand to my throat and writhe around in mock agony. Then put my hand to my throat and writhe around in real agony.

One man near me is just about finished. He's from Italy. He's sitting with a woman. She just finished her cigarette. They both laugh. Maybe they'll move! Fresh air! My lungs sigh.

No! He's reaching for another one! She's reaching for another one, too. He lights his, then hers. They puff away.

Arrrgggh! Can't . . . breath . . . Help!

Thought occurs to me. Take pen, write the word ``No'' in front of ``Smoking.'' No, nobody's that dumb.

Look around. No tables available in non-smoking. Can't tip the maitre d', because this is a cafeteria, not Spago. Can't complain about second-hand smoke in restaurant, because this is Atlanta, not L.A.

Thought occurs to me: Take up smoking. Can't bear the thought.

Start coughing madly. Maybe they'll get the hint and go home. Nobody looks.

Man wearing gray vest with the word ``Photo'' on back sits down nearby. He lights a pipe! Suddenly I try to eat fast before somebody sits at my table and starts a tobacco bonfire on my tray.

Send oxygen.

Cyberscribe.

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos

Photo: (1) ``I think beach volleyball, if you take awaythe sun and the sand, is incredibly boring.''

- Bryan Ivie, U.S. indoor volleyball player out of USC, on the Olympic debut of the sport played by Nancy Reno

(2) O.J. Simpson, signing autograph's in Atlanta, takes break from his hunt for his ex-wife's killers.

(3) no caption (Woman on subway)