Men's Ski Cross

Men's ski cross is done. Women's goes tomorrow. I couldn't face the day up there today. I was tired. I had the sniffles. I came in to work.

Yesterday was a crazy day. I woke up at 2:50 in order to make it to my 3:24 bus on time. It didn't show up. I took a cab downtown and things were crazy. Drunks all over the place. Hookers trying to flag down the cab. Drunks trying to take pictures of all us volunteers. Crazy.

When we finally got up to Cypress, my whole day was out of whack. I ate lunch at 8:30 in the morning. I kept thinking there was something wrong as the light was so low in the sky. It was still a bit dark when the athletes began their inspection. I was in a terrible, horrible foul mood.

Finally, the sun came out and the race was ready to go. Note form:

- I had no idea Dave Barr was a last minute replacement. What a crazy story. I used to race against Dave Barr. He was a tiny little guy that hauled ass. Now he's kind of a chunky little guy that hauls ass

- The speed of the ski cross over the boarder cross is crazy

- I popped my head into the Salomon wax cabin and this is what it looked like. Note the rows of skis down the left side wall as well

- The crowd for the ski cross was the best that I had seen. There seemed to be gaps in all the other crowds, but not this one

- I thought this shot right after the flower ceremony was kind of neat
- I had to pee in the woods at one point
- Watched much of the race from a spot just above the 2nd to last turn. We could see about half the course and lost the racers just as they hit the lip of the 2nd to last jump. It was a heartbreaker to see Del Bosco go out like that. But he's barely Canadian. I shot this from a well-timed trip up the chair
- I saw Rhalves a few times as well

- The Canadian team suits really did look like pyjamas. They are sort of camouflage too

- Willy Raine is one of the coaches. Here he is with two of the ladies, in his pyjamas on training day
- This camera guy was surly-hilarious

Molson Hockey House

Molson Hockey House is a bit of a farce. It's like a giant UBC Beer Garden with older people and expensive beer. Large TV's. Etc.

Honestly though. It's just a big tent with a bunch of people dressed in red. It's a giant Canada propaganda machine

However...I was in attendance in official Molson capacity. On the way home, at the Skytrain Station...we bumped into Stockwell Day. I interviewed him. It was bizarre.

Czechs and Slovaks

Went to the Czechs vs. Slovaks hockey game last night. Of all the "B" hockey games, I thought this would be the best. I was right.

The crowd was crazy. I would say 1/3 Slovaks, 1/3 Czechs, 1/3 random hockey tourists. With the mixed crowd, there was pretty much a cheer for everything. The atmosphere was so positive and loud. So full of flags and body paint and weird costumes. It was amazing.

Almost everybody in the crowd that wasn't Czech seemed to be cheering for the Slovaks. They played a good game. Lots of shots. But couldn't score. Regardless, it was a great experience.

Boardercross is finished

Man:

Finally some time to relax. Boardercross finished yesterday, so I'm back at work for a few days. It's been a crazy time. I've lost track of what day it is. I've slept less than I think I ever have. I've eaten so many bad sandwiches.

I left Cypress on Friday with a terrible taste in my mouth. It had been a great day of training (you will remember my last post saying there is no way training would happen) as the weather had turned around leaving a perfectly frozen course. It was great to be around actual athletes doing their actual sport on a course that nobody actually expected to work. Then we stood in the pouring rain for an hour-and-fifteen-minutes while the bus that was supposed to come didn't. Other buses came and went. Or came and stopped. But they weren't meant for us so we couldn't use them. It was crazy Olympic compartmentalization at it's worst. And it made me sad. Then I got home and heard that the luger had died. Then watched the abomination of an opening ceremony (the anthem! the flame screw-up! the Nancy Greene!). I wanted to just stay in bed for many days. Then I read this article and decided I needed to be less of a baby.

I had Saturday off and arrived back at Cypress for a beautiful day of training on Sunday. The course was really coming together and everybody was excited for race day on Monday.

Monday finally rolled around and I was out of bed by 3:50AM and on my way to the mountain by 4:30AM. There were just so many weird behind the scenes sites:

- 20 athletes huddled around the only live feed monitor at the start...all 20 inches of it.

- Nate Holland watching and rubbing his hip with some sort of weird gizmo. Ultrasound? Heat Gun? I have no idea.

- Shawn White!

- Cops everywhere
- The grandstands are impressive, but I'm not sure where they were going to put people into standing room. Check out the brown in the back as well.

The race itself was a bit of a disappointment. I watched from the 3rd jump as Drew Neilson went by in last place...passed two dudes in the air....then fell on the next berm (I didn't see that part but we heard the crowd noise die and knew something happened). Got to watch the final from the berm where Seth Wescott made up all his speed and watched him surge into the 3rd last jump and emerge out the last berm with the lead. Anyhow, everybody was happy with a silver, but you could feel it wasn't quite enough. Tuesday would prove that people had been holding back.
Tuesday morning was dreadful.. Up again at 3:50AM. On the road again by 4:30AM. Raining. Foggy. Ugly. We did a few slips first thing and you could barely see what you were skiing down. There was a few inches of sludgey slush covering everything. And then we sat. For hours it seemed. It felt like there was no possible way that this race would go off.

Finally, they slowly started running qualifiers. There were huge delays every few racers as the fog rolled in and out. The intervals were too inconsistent to slip the course so we just stood around waiting. And then the heats started. The sun came out and we had lots to do.

We managed to slip down to the midpoint of the course and watch the two semi-final heats. Once they were done, I took the team down the second half of the course, working on a few parts getting them ready for the final. We made it to the finish and were standing pretty much right in front of the big screen, just to the left of the finish when the final started.

Holy shit. It was crazy. That was the first heat I had watched from the finish and the first time I'd heard the crowd noise that close by. It wasn't much of a race but it was pretty cool to be 30 feet from the finish with a Canadian winning a gold.

The celebration over the next hour was pretty cool. Some of the Canadian coaches were skiing down the course thanking volunteers. The three dudes responsible for building the course looked like they had been crying. All the mens team was running around high fiving everybody. It was crazy. I'm glad I was there and I guess that's kind of why I decided to do this volunteering thing in the first place.

Other Olympic experiences?

Tried to go to Sochi house on Saturday but the lines were huge. Went to the Wilco show at LiveCity Yaletown and it was absolutely amazing. Great sound. Tonnes of people. Long show with a great set list. I never, ever expected it and it blew my mind. When the fireworks came on at the end, even the hardened hipsters looked like they had caught the whole feeling of what was going on. If you decide to go, there's huge lines to get in, but they move quickly. Definitely worth it.

Cluster!

Oh my gosh. How to sum up my last two days of Olympics? What a crazy cluster. In point form:

- Cypress is in trouble. I was amazed from afar at how much they'd done, but after sliding down the boardercross/skiercross course today...egads! It's slush. It's not finished. Training starts tomorrow. Trouble.
- There are some neat things though...like wooden jumps. And apparently the pipe is in good shape. The grandstands are crazy. And it's so wet.
- These buses will kill me. I rode a bus today that was fully loaded with people ready to go to Cypress. And we drove 30 seconds and had to unload and get on another bus because the first was just a shuttle. A 30 second shuttle.
- The opening ceremony was crazy. Crazy line-ups. Crazy questionable pieces of Canada. Crazy hard to hear. Crazy. We were at the dress rehearsal down on the floor behind the giant...oops....that would be a spoiler. We almost had Andre the Giant sit in front of us but then he went away and we were happy. Oh, somebody stole Andrea's ticket at the security check! Crazy.

It's all crazy. What is exploding right now?

Oh, you may remember this....

From such photos as this...
It's just sitting there. Rotting. About 25 feet from the main grandstands. Very weird. More explosions.

Cypress + Other Shots

So, last Thursday I went up to Cypress for my final Olympic training. It was interesting to see what was going on. The bleachers and whatnot are pretty mind boggling. There's more snow than I expected, but still a lot of brown spots. This is a shot from the bleachers looking up at the moguls/aerials course. They seem good to go.


Other than that, I went out the other night and took some time lapse photos of the light display in Vanier Park. It's oddly fascinating to watch and photograph.


And. Finally. A photo from Manning Park a few weeks ago.

Olympics - Accreditation and Uniform Pick-up

So. It looks like I'm in the thick of this volunteering thing. I wrote a long post about the decisions that got me to this point and the crap from Vanoc that I've put up with. But it all doesn't really matter. Here I am and here it comes. I will now embrace the humour.

The funniest thing about volunteering is the other volunteers. Imagine every keener that you've ever met that likes to feel important by telling everybody else about everything that they do. Ya, that guys there. Imagine every failed freestyler/snowboarder/nordic racer/alpinist that compensated for their lack of skill by becoming a coach/instructor/official. Yep, him to. (I guess I might fall into that one) Imagine every old person that just thinks the Olympics are neat. Lots of them. And imagine the overweight girl at work that nobody likes and she talks really loudly and you wonder what she does with her spare time. Well, apparently she's volunteering for the Olympics. It's an impressive bunch.

All of the "training sessions" have flowed into one blurb in my mind, but the Accreditation and Uniform Pick-up last night was just to special to pass up.

So, it starts with driving out to the PNE. Then, you line up outside (10 minutes) where you make your way through a door and a girl checks you off a list. Then, you walk around a corner, line up again (8 minutes) where a group of people check your identification and give you a little card with your name on it. Then, you walk around another corner where you line up again (5 minutes) and you visit one of 10 stations (only 5 of them functioning) where a lady who has probably never used a computer before works a complicated digicam/computer set-up to take your picture. Then you walk around another corner where some people are lined up but others aren't (I was one of the lucky ones) and you pick up your completed accreditation card. Then you walk around another corner to see the largest line of the night and you line up again (15 minutes) so that another group of two ladies that has never worked a computer once again checks your name and gives you a piece of paper on which all of your uniform sizes will be filled out. Then, you walk down a hallway to a waiting room, where you take a number, look sadly at your number '36' and see that they are on '11', look at the roomful of defeated people, and then you wait once again (15 minutes) to be called into the uniform room. Then, they finally call your name and you go try everything on and a lady checks everything off on your list and you walk down another really long hall that is actually a maze set out on the far end of a hockey rink and you line up again (7 minutes) in order to hand your piece of paper to another lady who then grabs all of your clothing items off of a shelf and puts them in a bag for you. Then, you walk through another opening and line up again (2 minutes) where another lady who doesn't know much about computers takes everything out of your bag, scans it, puts it back into your bag and then makes you sign a form. Then you're done. Unless you want to buy 15% off Bay gift certificates which may or may not work in the Olympic Store. Thankfully, I did not, so I was done.

It was all just so surreal that it was funny. And the best part of the night...

While standing in the line waiting to get my piece of paper with all my uniform stuff on it, some guy turned to me and started talking to me. He was about 50. Male pattern baldness. Looked kind of like the guy in the Tire Commercials...the really annoying one? Anyhow this is how it goes:

"Have you heard anything about the Opening Ceremony?"
-"Ahhh...No. Not really."
"Yep. They're pretty tight-lipped about it."
-"I would imagine"
"I've been trying to find out about it. Do a little bit of investigation. Haven't found out anything yet. Say...where are you working?"
-"Up at Cypress."
"Oh ya. Doing what?"
-"Slipping....Course maintenance."
"Oh ya. Ever done that before?"
-"Yep. Quite a bit. I used to ski race, so it's just one of those things that you end up doing a lot of. How about you? Where are you at?"
"Canada hockey place. I'm a blurglepuss (some form of mumbled medical professional)."

He then talked for quite a while about that. I asked him questions as it seemed easier than answering his questions. Then his buddy showed up. Then it was time to get our piece of paper.

So, I walked into the room, took my number, put my headphones in and started texting for my ride. He sees me. Comes over.

"What you doin'? Listening to music?"
-"Ummm....no. Not yet. Texting my girlfriend to tell her not to pick me up yet."
"Oh ya. Wanna use my phone?"
-"No....No thankyou. Thanks."
"Ya. I just got this phone. I don't really know how to use it though. I think it has voicemail. Does your phone have voicemail?"
-(at this point I'm talking to him kind of like he's a child. A slow child.)"Yep...most phones do. Say, what kind of phone do you have?"
(He pulls out his iPhone)"One of these guys. Ya...I was down at GM Place and all the other doctors had one. So I went next door to Costco and bought one. Haven't really figured it out yet."
(We spend the next few minutes scrolling through things. He points out text messages that he has received from his daughter. I look in his music folder and he has none. It's all quite amazing.)
-"Ya. You pretty much have a ferrari and you're driving it at 30 km/hr in a school zone. Did you see where the bathroom was?"

I leave and go to the bathroom. When I get back, he says to me in a really low voice "My buddy gave me a bit of an upgrade in my number. Here, you can have mine." So he shows me that he is now number '33' and he gives me his '35'. I thank him and can just not think of anything else to say.

So, if you're watching an Olympic hockey game and feel the old chest pains kicking in, good luck with all that.