Yikes, it has been a long while since my last post so here goes…A few weeks ago my wife, Kate and I got back from the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver BC and I wanted to relay the experience to my loyal readers so without further ado I will commence with the telling…

We went with my brother and our good friend, Kevin who was an Olympian at Torino. Our bus left Bellingham around noon Wednesday. After a bit of a drive and a brief stop at the boarder we arrived in Vancouver and spent the day touring the city. Vancouver was a buzz with people from all nationalities; even more so than usual and it was really cool to be in the mix. Some of the main drags of the city were blocked off to vehicles allowing visiting pedestrians to wonder the streets. As we walked, we stumbled upon two zip lines that were flying individuals over the crowds of people underneath. We found out later that the zip lines were free to ride, but they also came complete with a four hour wait to take the 15 second trip.

We decided to take a late lunch that day and settled on the Café Crepe. We were seated on one side of a booth. A few other parties were seated in the other half of the booth, but decided to move; seemingly because the booth’s table on that side was a bit wobbly (Surely it wasn’t because of the smiling fun-loving Americans seated in the booth, right?). After a bit of waiting a party of three, I wanna say French speaking young men, joined us at the booth. Two of the French party were of a slender build and one of the guys had a more husky physique. The guys that sat next to us solved the wobbly table conundrum with a few folded over paper coasters; classic. A few moments latter, the very busy server came to their side of the table and asked if they had been helped yet and if they wanted a few menus. The Frenchmen looked at each other with a bit of a puzzled look on each of their faces, turned to the server and spoke one of the few English words they knew, “Beer”. After a bit of waiting we received our meals, the Frenchmen received their beers and everyone was happy. We left Café Crepe around 4:30pm and decided to do some more walking/site-seeing.

"Is that it!?" - Disappointed Woman

We headed down to the waterfront to see the cauldron. As we walked we noticed several Olympic volunteers wearing teal blue jackets directing the masses as to what attractions were where. At one point along the side of the road we came to a clearing and there before us was the ice cauldron. A little elderly woman who surely was an American and who had to have been from Georgia or West Virgina exclaimed, disappointedly, and with a southern draw, “Is that it?” Kevin and I happened to be standing the closest to her and we just started laughing.  The cauldron wasn’t an overly grandiose feature and it was surrounded by a chain-link fence so I could see where she was coming from. We took several pictures and continued our trek. The sun was setting and the city began to get dark.

Walking the streets of Vancouver at night was quite the experience.  The distinct smell of snicklefritz was on the air.  We actually saw some guys smoking the stuff not 15 feet away from a police officer.  The officer didn’t give it a second thought.  There were tap dancers, belly dancers, people of all nationalities wearing their nation’s fare with pride.  Everyone was having a good time, except for that guy that got mugged, Yowza!…Ha! just kidding, we witnessed no muggings.  I imagine there were some somewhere, but not where we were…hmm, thinking about it now makes me sad and a part of me wishes I hadn’t joked about it two sentences ago.

We made our way down to the Hudson’s Bay Company; the store that had all the “official” Olympic merchandise.  We waited in line outside for about 15 minutes.  We got a Quatchi doll for our daughter and Kate got a long-sleeve t-shirt.  The place was a mad-house zoo.  We saw Saun White‘s 1280 what’s'it on the TV’s as we were waiting in the checkout line.  Our excitement was a bit subdued.  For some reason we felt like we were surrounded by Canadians; weird.

We headed down to Vancouver Live City, which was just a public spot where people could hang out, listen to live music and watch the Olympic events on big screen televisions.  After a short wait outside we were let into the temporary structure where the live music was playing, selected a spot (all the seats were taken), and took it all in.  I decided to go for some local cuisine and ordered some poutine at the venue.  Poutine is a french-canadian dish consisting of fries smothered in gravy and topped with cheese curds.  It’s the after-dinner snack of all the Olympic champions I’m sure.

Poutine

After standing there for a bit a few Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman stepped inside.  Kate wanted to take their picture but became embarrassed when the two made eye contact with her as she attempted the shot.  After about ten minutes we noticed that people were starting to have their pictures taken with the two officers, so I said to Kate, “Let’s go over there and I’ll take your picture with the two of them.”  We made our way over.  As Kate settled in between the two officers and I began to peer through the viewfinder one of the fun-loving (slightly inebriated perhaps) attendees motioned me to get in the shot (he pushed me and grabbed my camera).  So I joined Kate in-between the two mounties and our new found friend took the winning shot.

As we walked back to the hotel to call it a night we saw two of the Frenchmen we had seen at the Café Crepe run past us.  We all wondered where the third, husky Frenchman was.  In fact one of the members of our illustrious party blurted out, “Hey there are the Frenchmen…I guess they left ‘chubs’ behi…oh, nevermind.”  As the word “behind” began to escape a certain someone’s lips, the husky Frenchman traipsed along behind his comrades.

Day one of our Olympic adventure was under our belts.  The next day we would make the journey up to Whistler and the Sliding Centre.

Wow…