Au Revoir Vancouver!

The odyssey has come to an end! I left Vancouver via Amtrak at 6:40 am today and am now sitting in the Seattle airport awaiting my flight to Minneapolis. That departure is an hour away. It was a fabulous trip, and I wrapped up my final day north of the border by doing a lot of shopping!





Here's the Olympic Cauldron in a portion of downtown Vancouver...







I'll be home in about 4 hours!

Rick

No I didn't fall off the mountain...

But it feels like it! Wow, what a couple of days...I apologize for not being able to post since Wednesday night. The timing wasn't right, as there is just too much to see and do and time is running short. So Thursday, I had most of the day off with only a Men's Hockey game between Russia and Slovakia schedule for 9:00 pm Pacific time. One of the things I accomplished was to make it to the base of the outdoor Olympic Cauldron. They lit the Olympic Flame during Opening Ceremonies a week ago, but Wayne Gretzky also lit the outdoor one so I wanted to see it up close and personal. It's quite the sight. There had been some controversy here in Vancouver regarding a fence they put up around the torch which kept people so far away and unable to access it. They moved the fence so you can get pretty close to it now. I also stood in a LONG line to get into the Olympic Superstore. It is THE place to shop for Olympic Merchandise. The line to get in was 5 blocks long (I'm not exaggerating) but they let 200 people in at a time so it really only took about 25 minutes to get into the store. I picked up a few things, but mostly it was a scouting adventure because I don't have any actual events to attend on Saturday, so I'm going to use a good portion of tomorrow to round up souvenirs! So after bumming around downtown and watching street performers and the like, I made my way over to Canada Hockey Place. Canada was playing Switzerland at 4:30pm (the game prior to mine) and they ended up going to overtime and won in a shootout. You could hear the explosive roar of the crowd from the arena and all over the city when they scored the game winner! They take their hockey VERY seriously here in Canada. So by virtue of Canada winning, that put everyone in a good mood and we made our way into the arena for our game. This game also went into an overtime shootout with Slovakia pulling off a minor 2-1 upset. It was very exciting. Russia is considered one of the favorites to win the Gold Medal in Men's Hockey, so to see them get beat was electric. So it was a late night getting home from the hockey game. I do have to make an admission at this point though. One of things I told myself prior to this trip was to be adventurous and try different dishes to eat. So I stopped at 1:00 am at a Chinese Restaurant that was still open and serving dinner. I was hungry because I just didn't like the idea of $7.00 hotdogs at the stadium! So I looked at the takeout menu, and there were two dishes that were featured prominately. One was squab, which I think is pigeon. And the other was ostrich. I just couldn't bring myself to try either one so I settled for Shrimp and rice. I didn't get settled in for the night until 2:00 am and I had to be up very early because today was the day I headed north into the mountains for the Men's Super Giant Slalom. That required an 8:15 am bus departure, and when they say 8:15 am, they mean you have to be there and get checked into your bus reservation at least an hour earlier. So it's a 15 minute bus ride to the light rail station. Then another 15 minutes on light rail to something called the Sea Bus. It's a ferry boat that shuttles people across the bay. That's another 15 minutes. So as I figured it, I had to set my alarm for 5:00 am to get going today. We got loaded on the coach buses for a 2 hour ride north into the mountains. Obviously it was uphill the whole way and CURVY! Sheer granite cliffs towered above us on one side of the ride while open water was on the other. VERY picturesque. And all the streams and waterfalls running down the mountainsides! Like a postcard. So we finally arrived at Whistler Creekside, the venue for today's event. Of course, there was the requisite security screening. DId I mentionit was an uphill walk at a relatively steep incline for about3/4 mile to get to the security area? Let's just say, plenty of other walkers passed me by on the way up the mountain. Then after making it through the screening process, I experienced a first for me. A chairlift ride up the mountainside. Oh yes, I was holding on tight!. That brought us to the grandstand area. It was another bright and sunny day, and I think I was th eonly perosn there without sunglasses! Rookie mistake. It was bright up at that elevation. But we were seated right at the base of the race course and there was a big video screen so we could watch the racers on the top part of the course and then saw them with our own eyes as they came over a jump for the final :30 of the run. The gold medal winning time was 1:30 and the USA took Silver and Bronze today. A Norwegian won gold. There were 60+ skiiers competing and they sent them down the course every minute. About halfway through, a Swedish skiier had just come into view when he lost control and took a terrible fall. They had to suspend the race for about a half an hour and they ended up bringing him down the rest of the course on a stretcher and airlifted him out. I haven't heard how he turned out. It sure put a hush over the crowd though. So that put the race well behind schedule so once they resumed they began speeding up how often they sent the racers down the mountain, so there were often 2 skiiers on the racecourse at the same time. It made it a little more difficult to follow. THe racers that came down early in the day ended up with big advantage, because it got so warm for the later racers, that the snow softened and slowed down, the the 3 medal winners were all among the first 10 or so guys of the day. The course was still frozen and hard when they came down so it was much faster. The racers at the end really had no fair chance to win. I looked for someone with the International Olympic Committee to protest to about this, but it fell on deaf ears. There were a couple of Australians racing and one from Great Britain. It's always interesting to hear knowledgable fans discuss the sport. I was sitting among a large contingent of Swiss ski fans. The Swiss are VERY big into downhill skiing. They had a very disappointing day as none of their guys did well at all so they were grumbling quite a bit. Finally the event was over and it was time to head back to the buses to head back to Vancouver. Only this time, there was no ski lift to bring me down like it had brought me up! I have never walked down that steep an incline for that long ever in my life. My legs were burning! I bet it took at least 45 minutes to walk down the mountain. In hindsight, today was my least favorite day of the trip, just because of what it took to get to and from the event itself, and to be honest, it wasn't that exciting an event, but it definitely was an experience. I wish I would have lined up a different event in Vancouver rather than go up to Whistler. Then it was the 2 hours winding, curvy ride home, and the reverse Sea Bus, Light Rail and Bus trip home. I'm shot. It's leftover Shrimp and Rice and then to bed! I do have pictures from the previous two days, but for some reason I wasn't able to access the internet on my laptop through this new connection so I'm using my hosts computer to post this and I don't want to load down this computer with photos and videos.
The trip is winding down. One more full day in Vancouver (a GORGEOUS city), and then it's back home.

Good night for now,

Rick in Vancouver at the 2010 Winter Olympics.