The Upsons

Friday Feb 26: today is a sad day indeed. It’s my last bus ride to Whistler, for my final shift. Where did the last 15 days go? How can it feel like I’ve been here forever, yet at the same time wonder how the time flew by?

I decided this morning to make one final attempt to get into the Olympic Store at The Bay. Every time I’ve been there it’s at least an hour long lineup, even at 11 pm at night. There was a rumour going around that they were going to open 24 hrs for the final weekend, but that’s not the case. This morning was no different, huge line and I had to catch myfinal bus so time for a desperation move -- use my creds to get past security, and it worked! Why didn’t I try that a week ago?

Since I was downtown I was going to ride a different bus than my normal one up to Whistler. This involved taking the SeaBus, I had forgotten how strange it is to take a boat as public transportation. For those that don’t know Vancouver, this is one of the quickest and easiest ways from the main station downtown to North Van, and is essentially a bus line on water. You use transfers to ride it, but it’s a bit of a unique boarding experience to say the least.

I’m sure if you took this to work everyday (many do) then it would get pretty routine, but for me it’s still a great fun trip across Burrard Inlet to see all the ships and enjoy the novelty of it.

One exciting thing about your final shift is the lovely parting gifts. All along the way you get great little rewards for hitting certain goals. I call this the “Muk Muk Milestone card”, and so far I’ve received pins, stuffed Quatchi, keychain, hat, backpack, and coveted red mittens! Who says volunteering doesn’t pay

But they definitely saved the best for last, I got an Olympic Swatch and Silver medal/coin from Birks, which is a great bonus because I truly would have done this just for the privilege of being here.

Trivia fact: did you know SWAG is an acronym for “Sealed With A Gift?”. You’re welcome for that nugget of wisdom.

With my super swag stashed away we started turning our thoughts to the Canada/Slovakia game to determine who would play for Gold to play the US after their dominating win over Finland. But first up was Women’s Curling.

Now I’m no Curling expert, having only been to a few bonspiels but I did gain some appreciation for the game after actually watching an entire match. Who knew there was that much strategy, and it’s not just an excuse to go out and drink? Although I do question if it is really a “sport”, more of a recreation really. I loved when Colbert asked the US men’s curling team if any of them could touch their toes and after admitting they couldn’t Colbert asked them “you know you’re olympic atheletes, right?” Classic. Although I’m sure Colbert would also love to interview Canadian curler Cheryl Bernard who has inspired great new terms like Van-cougar (NBC), Sarah Palin on ice (Yahoo! Sports) and Couglur -- part Curler, part Cougar (kudos to Jen via ESPN on that one). However attractive people may think she is, the cat was declawed on this day after choking not once, but TWICE!  I can’t explain why she tried to over-complicate things on the shots (my opinion), but don’t they know how much of my time they wasted sucking me in and shattering my dreams of curling Gold?  At least I’m more knowledgeable in the strategies of curling now, and hopeful that our men’s hockey team will not be crushed under the pressure.

As for the Canada/Slovakia semi-final, not a lot to say about the game other than phew…I still have a country, bring on USA!!! An entire nation can breathe a sigh of relief but I can’t survive that stress of the last few minutes of that game. How can the actual players survive the pressure? I also found it interesting the number of NHL players on team Slovakia -- Stumpel, Palffy, on the top line and looking like they could contribute in the NHL (if they wanted to). So we have our dream Gold medal re-match…of Sunday’s humbling 5-3 defeat, and of the 2002 Winter Olympics.

Obviously the entire country is hoping for same result as in 2002, but I discvered a very interesting stat. The home country has only won Gold in Hockey only twice before, in 1960 (USA); 1980 (USA), and now a third time, 2010 Canadian Women!!! A forth home-ice Gold would undoubtedly cap this off as the greatest games ever, and easily the most incredible sporting achievement in our nation’s history. No pressure boys!

So to round out the day, double Golds in speed skating events, totaling another 4 medal day -- unbelievable!

Last order of business at the Whistler Media Centre -- hand in my upgraded credentials.

I found it very difficult to head out from the village, who knows when I’ll have a chance to be back here again. However, I look forward to that day when I do come back and have these incredible memories of Whistler. I was so fortunate to be able to be immersed in the games from this perspective, from this venue.

Although it is my last shift, it is not technically my last day in Whistler. Tonight we celebrate this part of the amazing journey, but it’s far from over. Tomorrow I tame the peaks of Whistler/Blckcomb, and Sunday, the game of our lives!

Tags: Men's Hockey, Whistler, Women's Curling
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Today begins the final leg of my Whistler volunteer experience with 3 shifts in a row.  I’ll start today’s adventure off with one of Whistler’s best kept secrets, Austria House.  It’s off the beaten path a bit, but what makes it so great is not this metal mouse (what is up with that?) but their free beer.  Yes, that’s right.  Anytime they win a medal (which has been almost every day) they have free beer for anyone.  No pictures of that of course, I’m not supposed to do that while in uniform

Once I arrived at work for my shift I was surprised to learn of the feature for that day’s “Sneak Peak”, which is the newsletter for all the volunteers that gets printed and handed out everyday.  If you look at the bottom of the page you’ll see none other than yours truly, hard at work on a critical technical issue.

Another amusing item in our work space is a growing To Do list where we’ve come up with as many different ways as possible to explain what we do.  Hey, it’s a good thing when nothing is breaking down!  However, I do realize that I haven’t actually explained what it is I’m doing…one of these days I’ll elaborate on that mystery.

As we geared up for the HUGE game against Russia we heard the stat that the Canadian team won Gold Men’s Hockey in Salt Lake City 8 years ago today, which proved to be a good omen.  And speaking of good omens, just before the game started John Furlong (the CEO of VANOC) came by to thank us volunteers for our contributions to the games.  He seemed like an incredibly warm and genuine individual, I was quite impressed with him.

Then onto the game.  We were all hunkered down in our bunker glued to every second of action, and before we knew it is was 3-0 and we were yelling like a bunch of maniacs.  In fact, yelling so loudly we got “shoosh-ed” by the international press who could hear us out in their common area of the Media Centre.  What do they expect, they must be Russians!!!  I actually felt a bit sorry for Nabokov, but Bryzgalov didn’t do much better.  Periodically throughout the game I had to explain to some of the IT guys from India why everyone kept “booing” Luongo   All in all, what an amazing night -- it looks like that extra game against Germany is what they needed to get the line of Crobsy-Stall-Iginla firing and dangerous.  I think that 1st period might be the best 20 minutes of hockey I’ve ever seen, and I imagine the Russians must be feeling like we did in 2006 at Turino when we crashed & burned in 7th place, and looked forward to Vancouver 2010 for redemption.  You know Ovechkin is already counting down the days to Sochi 2014.  Bring on the winner of Sweden/Slovakia!

Then we booked it over to the Medals Plaza as quickly as we could, just in time to catch this classic track from Aussie rockers Jet.  I was especially amused by the official “Mosh Pit” sign you can make out in the bottom of the video.  Only at the Olympics.

And we close out the evening with one other highlight from the show…dudes in beaver costumes.  That takes some real dedication.

Another incredible day where Canada pulled down 4 more medals to add to the growing totals.  Keep up the amazing work!

Tags: Austria House, Hockey, Jet, John Furlong, Medals Plaza, Whistler
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Despite the entire country still being in a post-USA defeat hangover, it’s another flawless day in the mountains. It’s 6 degrees but expected to revert back to cloudy, cool and rainy tomorrow so I’ll savour this.

First thing I spotted when I arrived in Whistler today is the landing of this helicopter. I didn’t have any video camera at the ready, and I also don’t know what this is used for but it was pretty cool to watch it land. Maybe they were flying in some VIPs, maybe Devo?

One of the first calls we had today was down to the medical centre where they also do sample collection for anti-doping testing. No, we weren’t collecting specimens but I did notice something equally curious. You may have heard things from previous Olympics speculating about the free-trade-like promiscuous “international relations” of athletes. Well I’m here to tell you there must be something to that rumour because the medical staff said they have replenished this rather substantial supply more than once.

No word on if these are officially branded IOC sponsor product, or what role the Glamour magazine plays in all this.

Before heading over to do a “site visit” to Medals Plaza for the evening’s festivities we grabbed dinner. Right from my first day I noticed an admirable effort to fulfill the mandate of this being the most sustainable, greenest games of all time. This is BC after all, but aside from the usual recycling initiatives I wanted to highlight the compostable disposables specifically.

Of course, I thought of our pal Aron the moment I saw this. No idea who the supplier is, but it should have been Good Times brand!

There’s a great page on their website about all the great initiatives underway, and it’s not just VANOC tooting their own horn either, check out this article.

VANOC really are setting an example for future games by doing some good things for the region and province. Which makes it all the more perplexing why there were so many protests…we’ll just chalk it up to being another quirky trait of BC

OK, that’s our public service announcement out of the way, onto the evening’s entertainment. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you…Devo! They actually handed out these awesome hats to some of the audience to ensure that mandatory Devo fashion accessory was well represented. Although likely not intentional, it sure coordinated nicely with our smurf jackets. If they’d have had white it really would have completed the smurf look (or original Devo red for Papa Smurf)

However, as you’ll hear them say in the intro to “Whip It”, red is dead -- blue is new baby!

As entertaining as Devo was, I’ll never be able to hear them perform without thinking of Weird Al Yankovic’s timeless 1985 classic “Dare To Be Stupid”:

Although not technically a “cover” there’s no denying the lineage and DNA of this great song is pure Devo.

Then on our way back after the show we were treated to a performance (can you call blowing a horn a performance?) in front of the Swiss House from the Ricola guy. And I do mean the actual Ricola guy, they were handing out samples. Ah, stereotypes.

To close out the night I was excited to capture this awesome pic of all the mascots together with their biggest fan. I was working on an entire post just on them since I’ve learned some of the “Olympic mascot protocols” but it would probably not of interest to anyone but me. If you feel otherwise, let me know and I’ll share their secrets!

Tags: Devo, Mascots, Olympics, Sustainability, Whistler
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