My Olympics Volunteer Experience

The Flame Goes Out

2010-03-01T02:18:00.000-08:00

When I went to 7-11 early this morning I noticed that the local neighbourhood was dressed up even more than it has been. Canadian flags now adorned the light standards on 41st Street in addition to the Olympic banners. The veterinary clinic had a hockey stick flying a Canadian flag above its sign. There were even more maple leaf and Team Canada car flags than I've seen in the past in the neighbourhood. And the Kerrisdale Lumber store had put up a huge Go Canada Go banner on their fence. Canada was getting ready for THE GAME.

Late this morning I took Leena to the airport to fly back to Kelowna. The local radio had reported long lineups at the airport but outside the terminal things seemed normal. They are expecting their busiest day ever on Monday. They have built a temporary terminal just for Monday and the SkyTrain to the airport is operating all night tonight.

Of course I had to get back into my volunteer uniform again after almost a week. I didn't realize until I was walking to the bus how much I had missed it. In was back in the saddle again.

The complicating factor for today was the men's gold medal hockey game starting at 12:15 pm PT. My shift in the Venue Communications Centre (VCC) didn't start until 3 pm but rather than commuting near the end of the big hockey game I headed off downtown as soon as I returned from the airport. I'd miss a little of the beginning of the game but I wanted to be there for the ending.

I watched the first period on the street in Yaletown. The LiveCity Yaletown site was getting full and the lineup was too long for the time I had available so I watched a large screen that had been set up on the street for folks in line. There were about a hundred people doing the same thing. There was a great cheer and lots of car horns when Canada scored first.

During the first intermission I walked over to Concord Place. As I walked through Yaletown, the streets were quieter than I have seen them since the Games began but I could hear the hockey game broadcast on the street coming from shops, bars, and homes.

I watched the second period on the large screens outside Molson Canadian Hockey House. There were lots of rabid hockey fans there.

They were a pretty well-dressed bunch. We watched excitedly as Canada scored again, and anxiously as the U.S. scored.

For the third period I decided to check-in and watch in the break room at the Plaza of Nations building where the VCC is located. (My favorite lady at Workforce Check-in welcomed me by name and wished me well on my last day.)

These types of important, close hockey games drive me crazy. I just can't watch. It was a very anxious time as I watched with a few of my colleagues and an assortment of other volunteers, security staff, and law enforcement officers from across the country.

If you don't live in Canada you won't understand what it would have meant for Canada to have lost the game today. Despite all our other successes as a nation at the Games, the memory would be tarnished because of men's hockey. The post-Games analysis on what went wrong would go on for ever and be a psychiatrists worst nightmare.

When the U.S. scored in the last minute of the third period to tie it up all the oxygen left the room. The national angst started. We tried to keep ourselves occupied during the intermission but it was no use--everyone was having doubts that we could do it after the way the Canadians played during the third period.

Of course when Sidney Crosby scored in overtime, the room and building erupted. There was hugging, high fives, screaming and a giddy look on everyone's face. I can take credit for the win as I had in my backpack the Canadian flag that we took to the short-track speed skating last Friday when it helped Canada win two golds. It was obviously the difference in overtime although Crosby will take credit.

The timing of the win was perfect as it was time to start my shift. We started the shift by watching the medal ceremony. Everyone stood up and sang O Canada when the flag was raised.

We had lots of volunteers in the VCC today for the Closing Ceremonies. The first shift said that things had been steady.

Of course the hockey game was causing problems on venue.There were workers who were late or absent because of the game. The spectators for the Closing Ceremonies arrived late as they stayed home or elsewhere to watch the game. (This despite the fact that VANOC opened the doors early and showed the game on the screens in the Stadium.) Canada Hockey Place was egressing late which caused issues for the ingress into the Stadium. As there were lots of VIPs at the game who would also be attending the closing, they were late moving between the venues.

It was pretty steady for the hours before the Closing Ceremonies and the first hour of the ceremony. We had our usual issues to help with:

Intoxicated spectators (likely coming from the hockey game).
Two pregnant ladies requiring a trip to the hospital at the same time.
Protein spills (I'll let you figure out what that is the code phrase for. Think about what happens when people drink too much.)
Lights not working.
Buses needing to move from point A to point B.
Thousands of athletes to move from the village and get staged for the ceremony.

We watched the Olympic Broadcasting System feed for the Closing Ceremonies which had no commercials and no announcers. I didn't get to see as much of the ceremony as I had hoped as people kept talking on the radios. You would think that they would know that we were trying to watch.

After the sadness of the flame going out we needed to deploy some people into the stadium to help with the movement of people. I was assigned to one of the athletes' sections to help guide them onto the floor and to keep other spectators off of the floor. I saw the last half hour or so of the ceremony in person. I also managed to secure one of the spectator kits and the cool program for the ceremony.

By the end of the evening things got quiet again in the VCC. We cleaned up the room as it would be unused for a while until the Opening Ceremonies for the Paralympic Games.

After the spectators had left the Stadium, they kept some of the Olympic souvenir stands open for volunteers to go back and shop at 50% off. While I was there I poked my head into the bowl. It was like the end of a good party; all that was left was the massive cleanup.

As we left the VCC for the last time I debated walking downtown. I could hear the noise and knew how wild it would be after the end of the Games and the hockey win. I decided I could pass. The past few weeks have been pretty tiring and I wanted to get home and write this post.

So the Games are over and my Olympic Experience has come to an end. I am going to spend the day on Monday cleaning the house and packing. I will then drive back to Kelowna during the daylight hours on Tuesday. I don't think any of that warrants a blog posting so tonight will be my closing ceremonies as well. (I promise no beavers or moose.)

After watching many Olympic Games on TV in my lifetime, I will never be able to watch one again the same way after attending events and working behind the scenes. It has definitely whet my appetite to do it again someday.

Some memories and observations:

The friendliness of everyone in Vancouver. (If you want another opinion, read this review from the Los Angeles Times.)

The incredible display of Canadian nationalism. It is not something we normally do except perhaps on Canada Day. Canadian flags were everywhere: shops, condo balconies, cars, cheeks, clothing.

I fell in love with Vancouver. The style of the city, its people, their spirit, its walkability, the beauty and the weather.

Spontaneous singing of O Canada on the SkyTrain.

The incredible spectacle of the Opening Ceremonies. I still can't believe I was there.

I have been so impressed by VANOC for the training, gifts, teamwork, logistics, responsiveness, sense of humor, talent.

The Smurfs (volunteers): both the wonderfully memorable relationships developed over four weeks with my managers and colleagues and the service with a smile by all the others I encountered and with whom I interacted.

The spirit of the people on the street characterized by the red mittens worn by everyone--from the average hockey guy to well-dressed businesswomen. Everyone wanted to be a part of the Games and show their support.

Once the games began I wanted to be at events. You will have to tell me how the TV coverage was; I saw very little except the late night news.

An umbrella is an indispensable item in Vancouver. The standard issue of clothing in Kelowna is the fleece vest. In Vancouver it is the GoreTex waterproof jacket with a hood.

Perhaps the world has learned a bit more about our vast country. I know we educated our Boston-based manager in the VCC. (Example from tonight: "Neil Young is a Canadian?" he asked.)

I learned that the Olympics is far more than just a set of sporting events and ceremonies. The other attractions--mostly free--have been a marvelous treat.

For me this has been an experience on many levels: worker, spectator, guide, storyteller, husband, Canadian, host. I have sincerely appreciated the feedback in the blog comments and the e-mails I have received. Writing this blog has greatly enhanced my experience as I found myself observing things in a different way, keeping notes during the day on my BlackBerry, and considering different ways to tell a story. It drove me to see and do more than I would likely have done without an engaged audience. I am astounded by the fact that over 900 different people read this blog at least once.

Finally, there are some people I need to thank.

Thank you to my colleagues at XAP for supporting me, filling in for me, and letting me escape for an amazing month.

And thank you to the love of my life for letting me have this dream, plan for it for almost two years, leave home to have fun on my own, and for coming for the last week to share the incredible experience with me. She shares my belief that these are the kinds of experiences that we need to enrich our lives.

I feel a personal sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that I have played a very small part in bringing the Olympics to the World ... to Canada ... to Vancouver ... and to you.

Until next time.

Penultimate Day

2010-02-28T02:45:00.000-08:00

We enjoyed a slow start to the day other than having to get up at a decent time to write the blog entry that I was too tired to write the night before. We hung around the house to say good-bye to Leena's sister and her husband who were flying back to Toronto today. While we were at the house Canada won two surprise gold medals in skating pursuit and snowboard parallel slalom.

With an extra bounce in our step from those exciting results, we were off again to Granville Island.

While wandering around we encountered some giveaways at the House of Switzerland. They were giving out Ricola cough drops, some kind of Swiss biscuit, and Lindor chocolates. It turns out it was Lindor Day as the House of Switzerland.

Our main goal for the day was to see some of Atlantic Canada House. At the front entrance, an honest host of the House explained that the line for the upstairs exhibits really only led to a bunch of tourism information. A second line was for a lounge that had food tasting--but not for two hours. She explained that there was a musical show at 6 pm and the line for it had not yet started. We wandered around the market a bit to kill time until we could line up for the show.

If there is a skill that we have perfected at these Games (out of necessity) it is queuing. We have had to line up for most of the free attractions. Fortunately this one at Atlantic Canada House was only an hour and a half. And, as so often happened at these Games, we met interesting new people in line and had engaging conversations while we were waiting.

We also monitored the gold medal men's curling game through the windows of the lounge across the walkway from our queue. Once again the area erupted in applause and cheers when the Canadian team won the gold. It was our 13th gold medal.

Since shortly after Vancouver was awarded the 2010 Games in 2003, Canada has had an athlete assistance and sport research program in place called "Own the Podium." The goal of the program was to win the most medals at the 2010 Games. It was a lofty goal and even before the Games, some people ridiculed the idea although Sports Illustrated bought into it.

Well it turns out the goal was just slightly misunderstood. Canada's goal was not to own all of the podium; just the centre. Canada will now finish these games with more gold medals than any other country. There are a few of us who think that is a truly amazing accomplishment for our country.

Back at Atlantic Canada House, we thoroughly enjoyed a show called "Come On In." It was a review by four young artists from Atlantic Canada--one from each of the provinces. The performers hailed from Hunter River in Prince Edward Island, Cow Head in Newfoundland, Halifax in Nova Scotia, and Notre-Dame in New Brunswick.

They each performed a number written by themselves or other local artists and wrapped their performance around their stories including their families and their musical heritage.

The performance included a kitchen party where they invited two members of the audience to learn how to play the spoons.

The backdrop for the show was a large projection screen that showed images from the performers' stories and beautiful scenery from the Atlantic provinces.

It was a wonderful show that took the audience into the homes of these people and conveyed the well-known hospitality, talent, and industriousness of the people of Atlantic Canada. We were fortunate to see the show as it was the last of 45 performances for the Olympics.

From Atlantic Canada House we moved on to the House of Switzerland. It was housed in a restaurant on Granville Island called Bridges. It is primarily a restaurant serving Swiss specialties and acts as a home base for the Swiss athletes, officials, and supporters.

They have redecorated Bridges with photos and images from Switzerland, including a red mountain goat mascot sporting a white cross like the Swiss flag.

The goat even appears on the roof among the fish that normally live at Bridges.

The Swiss Broadcasting Corporation is anchoring their Olympics broadcast from a temporary studio on the second floor terrace at Bridges.

After about an hour in line we were shown to a table in the restaurant.

I was wearing my Team 2010 t-shirt. A man stopped at our table and asked me where I bought it. He said he just loved it. I told him it was only available to volunteers.

While we ate, the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation signal was being shown on the televisions around the restaurant. For a while we watched the bronze medal hockey game between Finland and Slovakia. Suddenly an announcer appeared beside the television near our table. He explained that some special guests were on their way. In our haste to celebrate Canada's gold medal win in curling, we had neglected to notice who had won the bronze medal. Of course it was our new friends the Swiss. The bronze medal winning team were on their way by boat down False Creek to the House of Switzerland.

The broadcast followed the announcer out to the dock outside the restaurant where he proceeded to whip the crowd outside and the patrons inside into a cheering frenzy as an Aquabus approached the dock. Alas, the boat was empty.

The next time was luckier and the Swiss curling team emerged from an Aquabus sporting their new bronze medals around their necks. They proceeded to enter the House of Switzerland and paraded through the restaurant right beside our table. We had the opportunity to high five each of the members of the team. In the excitement and close quarters it was hard to greet them, give them a high five, and try to take pictures. The best I got was a headless shot of a bronze medalist and medal.

The team proceeded into the next section of the restaurant where they were interviewed for Swiss TV. By now we felt like we really knew these guys. It was a bizarre, fun, and exciting event.

Later, the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation showed a hilarious segment of bloopers from the Games. I hope the same footage makes it onto North American broadcasts.

After dinner we took the Aquabus from Granville Island back to Yaletown. (Full disclosure: This picture was taken earlier in the day. Despite what Stephen Colbert said, it does get dark at night in Vancouver.)

From the Aquabus we could see the Vectorial Elevation light show reflecting off the low clouds.

We had gone to Yaletown to see the fireworks at LiveCity Yaletown one last time. The free concert had already filled the venue to capacity so we waited on the seawall behind the venue for the fireworks. I don't think I have ever been as close to launching fireworks as we were tonight. They were launched from a barge in front of us in False Creek and from the ground behind the performance stage. Standing where we were, we could feel the power of the explosions. Some of the debris landed in the water just shy of the seawall. Despite the fear factor, it was a great show.

From Yaletown we walked across town to the waterfront. As we walked up Robson Street we could hear the roar of the partying crowd ahead so we took a detour around the noise.

At the waterfront we had one last look at the Olympic Cauldron before it is extinguished tomorrow night during the Closing Ceremonies. It will be a shame to see the end of the flame that was lit in Greece back in October and traveled across Canada for almost four months.

Tomorrow is my birthday. I have spent some exciting birthdays being serenaded while standing on a table in a bar in Mexico, enjoying the desert climate in Phoenix, and being served breakfast on the beach in Maui. I am greatly looking forward to a thrilling day tomorrow. Not just for the same reason as most Canadians--the gold medal hockey game--but for my final day attending and contributing to these memorable Games.

Double Gold -- Live!

2010-02-27T10:55:00.000-08:00

Thursday was such a busy, long and exhilarating day that we took advantage of the rain and no scheduled events on Friday morning to sleep in.

We met Leena's sister from Toronto for lunch at a local mall. After lunch we parked the car near our SkyTrain station and headed out in a different direction on the bus. At a different SkyTrain station on a different line VANOC was running express buses to the venue. Everything ran well for a Friday.

Friday evening we were at the Pacific Coliseum, the old home of the Vancouver Canucks before GM Place (Canada Hockey Place) was constructed. The Pacific Coliseum is the venue for figure skating and short-track speed skating. We were excited that we were going to see three short-track events: the men's 500 m, the women's 1,000 m, and the men's 5,000 m relay.

On the march from the bus to the Coliseum we passed an Event Services volunteer on a lifeguard chair. This set up has been part of crowd control at all venues. It has been my experience that the volunteers in the chair generally have a sense of humour and help entertain the crowd in addition to moving them in the right direction.

The chairs were made at a woodworking shop that was set up by VANOC and Rona (a Canadian home improvement store and a Games sponsor) for a few years before the Games. They took troubled kids in Vancouver and taught them valuable skills while building necessary items for the success of the Games such as these chairs and the podiums on which the medal winners stand. The changes in their lives that this program brought to these kids will be one of the legacies of the Games.

Once inside the Coliseum, we watched the warm-ups. During the 90 minutes before the start time, the athletes for each of the three events for the evening were given separate warm up times.

The old arena looked great decked out in its Vancouver 2010 signage, flags, and decor.

We had good seats in an upper corner section. We have had aisle seats for all our events except when we had standing room "seats" in Whistler. I guess this was one of the benefits of having tickets from the original lottery pool. Leena, in her Team Canada jersey, is in her seat while I am across the arena on the concourse.

Judging by the cheering, the flags, and the clothing the crowd was predominantly Koreans, Chinese, Americans, and Canadians.

These Korean fans seemed to be part of a group. They all arrived together and had a guy running around getting them all food, drinks, then souvenir merchandise while they stayed in their seats. Strangely, they all left before the medal ceremonies even though the Koreans won multiple medals (just not gold.)

There were lots of empty seats for the preliminaries and quarter-final races, but all seats seemed to be filled for the finals. I guess there is a class of "fan" that can't be bothered with anything but the finals.

There was lots for the volunteers to do in grooming the ice after each race and laying out the track markers. This guy poured buckets of water on the corners after every race.

One Smurf was responsible for moving the skaters skate guards from one end of the rink where they entered to the other end where they exited.

There were plenty of media, press and photographers. This was just one of a few sections filled with photographers.

This all-white camera man perched himself in the middle of the ice for all the events other than the 5,000 m relay. He would have been risking his life to stay on the ice for that event.

Things proceeded at a good clip through preliminary races, quarter finals then finals of the men's 500 m and women's 1,000 m.

Of course while all this racing was going on Canada was playing Slovakia across town in men's hockey. Many of us were getting text message updates from friends and relatives but the guys sitting behind us actually had a portable TV that they used to watch for scoring.

My heart has a tough time watching short-track speed-skating on TV when the Canadians are racing. I was not sure how I could take live races particularly with the men's 500 m in which Canadian Charles Hamelin is the current world champion.

The crowd is asked for silence before the start of each race so that the skaters can hear the starting gun.

The men line up for the start of one of the preliminary men's 500 m races. Charles Hamelin, the eventual gold medalist is on the left.

The finish to the men's 500 m was a heart-stopper as two racers crashed on the final curve including the leader at the time. Charles prevailed and won the gold and Canadian Francois-Louis Tremblay finished in third place. It was a crazy finish. I know my heart skipped a beat.

There was a huge ovation at the end of the race then the arena went quiet as the judges decisions on the race were awaited. It was an incredible outcome and it meant we would get another chance to sing O Canada.

After winning, Charles skated to the side to embrace his girlfriend, Marianne St-Gelais, a silver medalist for Canada.

The men's 5,000 m relay is a crazy event with so many people on the ice at one time all moving on their own timing.

Canada had the lead, lost it, then regained it with 20 laps to go. We were all on our feet, waving our flags and cheering for all 45 laps.

Near the end, whenever Charles Hamelin took a turn he poured on the speed and widened the lead. On one heart-stopping turn he wobbled a bit but was able to regain control and carry on. The finish was incredible and a clear win requiring no waiting for a judge.

The Canadian men take their victory lap.

Because Friday night was the last night of Victory Ceremonies at the Stadium, the medals for our events were presented at the venue. How lucky we were to see gold medal performances and then get to experience the medal presentations.

The men receive their medals for the men's 500 m race.

And the flags were raised while we once again had the thrill of singing O Canada.

We then repeated the fun with the men's 5,000 m relay team. After they all received their medals, they posed as a group for a picture.

It was so incredibly exciting and breathtaking to see our country take two gold medals in a single hour of competition. It was a great way to cap our Olympic sporting events.

During the medal ceremonies they announced that Canada had won the hockey game 3 to 2. Whew.

After it was all over, we boarded the express buses back to the SkyTrain and headed downtown in the rain so that Leena could see the cauldron lit up at night and again see the Olympic rings in Burrand Inlet. Of course they were a double shade of gold for Friday night.

It had been an electrifying night.

A Very Memorable Day

2010-02-26T02:27:00.000-08:00

Today we had tickets for two events: the women's bronze medal hockey game between Sweden and Finland and the evening Victory Ceremony at the Stadium.

The hockey game was at 11 am so we decided to have a big breakfast downtown before the game. We hopped on the SkyTrain and ate at a local market. On our walk to the Stadium we wanted to find a Swedish flag to buy to show our support for Team Sweden but, perhaps because of the early hour, there were no vendors on the street.

We have an affinity to women's hockey as our daughter has played hockey since she was six and she continues to play at the college level in Wisconsin. The 11 am start time for today's game was also reminiscent of tournament and regular season games when she was younger.

We arrived at Canada Hockey Place in plenty of time for the game. I was impressed by how they have converted GM Place, the home of the Vancouver Canucks, into Canada Hockey Place for the Olympics. All traces of the Canucks and all of their sponsors had been eradicated from the building in preparation for the Games. Inside the arena everything was Olympics colours and the Games look. The electronic display signs featured the mascots and the Games imagery. The place looked great.

We had amazing seats just three rows from the ice on one end. These tickets were part of a package we had obtained from the original ticket lottery so obviously the actual seats were assigned in some sort of random draw.

If you watched the broadcast of the game and knew where we were seated, you would have spotted us in our Team Canada jerseys.

During the first intermission we were even featured on the Kiss Cam on the center ice video display. They show random couples from around the stands and expect a display of affection. We did our best. Later this evening one of my colleagues from the Venue Communications Centre (VCC) who was at the game told me that she said to her friends with her, "I totally know that guy!"

It was disappointing to see so many empty seats when there were so many people who would have liked to have attended. As the game was officially sold out, I can only speculate that the empty seats belonged to sponsors and the Olympic Family.

The game was great. It was obvious that there is a rivalry between these two European teams. It was a chippy game and at one point a Swedish player punched the Finish goalie. And this was women's hockey.

Team Finland had interesting components of their uniforms. I have never seen vertical stripes on hockey socks before.

There were a few pockets of supporters for both Sweden and Finland in the arena including the Finish Prime Minister. It was great to see the rest of the crowd--mainly Americans and Canadians--choosing sides and cheering on the teams.

These fellows seemed to be partial to Team Sweden. (Their signs say "Canada Loves Swedish Women".)

Near the end of the game they did a tribute to Olympic volunteers with the announcer saying kind words and the video display showing a random sample of the volunteers in Canada Hockey House.

The game was tied at the end of regulation play but the Fins prevailed in overtime to win. The girls were just ecstatic. You'd have thought that they had won the gold medal. It was heartwarming to see their excitement and their various exchanges with the crowd to thank us for our support.

Team Finland skated around the ice acknowledging the fans and showing the sheer joy of their win.

Now that the bronze medal had been decided it was time for us to focus on the gold medal match.

We had a few hours to kill before the Canada/U.S. showdown. We wandered through downtown and exchanged coins at the mint. On the street they will exchange any quarters for quarters issued for the Olympics. There is one each day. Today's was for the Canadian women's gold medal win in hockey in Salt Lake City. It was a omen.

We went to a restaurant in Yaletown and watched the first two periods of the gold medal game. At the end of the second period, with Canada up 2 to 0, we left the restaurant and walked over to LiveCity Yaletown to watch the rest of the match on the big outdoor screens.

I agonize over these close games but in the end Team Canada kept the shutout and retained the gold. Again it was exciting to be watching and celebrating with so many people.

We couldn't wait to watch the medals being awarded as we had to hurry off to the Stadium for the Victory Ceremony. We managed to get through security and into the Stadium concourse just in time to see the medals presentations. Canadians were stopped and watching on the television monitors. There was lots of cheering. When they played the national anthem, all the Canadians in the concourse sang O Canada. It was another incredible patriotic experience--but not the last for the night.

We had good seats for the Victory Ceremony up in the top level of the stadium. While it was still relatively quiet, a woman came by and asked us if we wanted passes to get into the mosh pit in front of the concert stage for the concert part of the evening. We accepted and she gave us wrist bands to wear and told us when and where to report.

They have installed a curtain across the centre of BC Place Stadium to create a more intimate venue for the Victory Ceremonies than the huge stadium in which the Opening Ceremonies were held. The basic stage structure is still in place for use in the Closing Ceremonies.

It was Manitoba night so several musical acts from the Province of Manitoba started off the evening. This was followed by the awarding of medals for a mixed bag of events; some that occurred yesterday and some today. Medals for Vancouver- and Cypress-Mountain-based events were presented live in front of us while we saw video of the concurrent presentations in Whistler for Whistler-based events.

The presentations at our stadium were well done with the appropriate pomp and ceremony. Mounties in their red serge paraded out with the flags. The crowd offered great applause for all the winners. There were even confetti cannons with gold, silver and bronze confetti.

Of course the highlight of the awards was the presentation of the women's bobsleigh up in Whistler. Canada won both the gold and the silver medals. There were great cheers in our Stadium as we watched the presentation and the raising of two Canadian flags. The largely Canadian audience in BC Place Stadium sang a rousing version of O Canada. I found myself getting choked up.

Following the medals ceremonies was the concert. Tonight was Canadian music legend Burton Cummings who hails from Manitoba.

We followed the directions we had been given for the mosh pit and soon found ourselves standing on the same stage that had been used for the Opening Ceremonies and had just minutes before been used for the awarding of medals to the athletes. While some people crowded the stage there was plenty of room and it was a fabulous place to watch the concert: up close with room to move around.

Cummings put on a terrific show. It was music from our generation. I think he sang everything that would be included in a greatest hits compilation. We sang along, we swayed, we danced, we clapped, we yelled, and we had a great time. It was a lot of fun.

He played much longer than the other acts that have performed at the Victory Ceremonies. In fact my VCC colleagues told me that the ceremonies mangers were quite annoyed that he strayed from the arranged playlist and that he came back out for an encore. They didn't even turn on the stage lights for the encore. On the radios they threatened to not turn on the microphones if he returned for a second encore. We didn't mind. We thought it was a blast. My ears are still ringing.

Of course there is a great collection of people from all over the world enjoying the Canadian music at these concerts including this supporter of the team from down under--and his friend.

The day was still not over. My colleagues from the VCC had e-mailed earlier in the week about getting together after the VCC closed this evening for a beer at the casino next door. Leena headed home on the SkyTrain and I walked back to the casino.

We had a good turnout from our team. Of course there were lots of pictures taken and talk about how to stay in contact. People are already talking about the possibility of volunteering again in Sochi in four years.

It sounds like most people--myself included--will be working on Sunday for the Closing Ceremonies.

This was an incredible day that generated amazing memories and included great celebrations. It is a shame there are only a few Olympic days left.

Now We're Talking WINTER Games

2010-02-25T01:00:00.000-08:00

We had to leave the house this morning at 5 am to catch a 5:30 bus up to Whistler. Today was our first sporting event: Women's Giant Slalom.

The road to Whistler is closed to anyone who does not live there or have proof of accommodations so the Olympic Bus Network is the only way to go.

It was a rainy morning in Vancouver. We parked at Langara College (all the universities and colleges are closed for the two weeks of the Games.) The Buses were parked around the corner on Cambie Street (right outside my normal SkyTrain station.)

There were lots of cheery smiling volunteers to show us the way and take our tickets (even at 5 am). Folks were handing out sample bags of organic corn chips and copies of the Vancouver Province and Sun newspapers. The bus filled up and departed early.

I haven't been on Hwy 1 (the Trans Canada Highway) since I arrived in Vancouver. There were welcome messages in multiple languages (as well as "Go Canada Go" for the locals) projected onto large, white industrial buildings along the highway.

We both slept most of the way to Whistler. The bus was very quiet--as it should be so early in the morning.

The Sea to Sky highway between Vancouver and Whistler was upgraded for the Games. It was one of the conditions the IOC set for awarding the Games to Vancouver. It will be one of the great legacies of these Games as it is now a much safer and quicker route to Whistler. Bad turns have been removed, passing lanes have been added, and retaining walls and markings have been improved.

As we drove higher and higher the rain turned into wet snow then light snow. It actually looked like the place where the Winter Olympics should be held. Most of the traffic on the road was Olympic buses going both ways.

After two hours on the bus we arrived at Whistler Creekside, the sight of the downhill events. We walked a short distance beside the creek to the security tent. It was just like Check-in at the Stadium. After security a volunteer scanned our tickets and explained that we would need to use the chairlift as the path was closed due to the weather. We boarded a four-person chairlift and soon reached the bottom of the downhill runs.

The venue was organized as I expected with food and drink concession tents, a souvenir tent, warming tent and lots of press areas. A large grandstand had been built and decorated but our tickets were for general admission--we would stand.

We were there early enough that there was still space at the fence. I thought this would be a good location as it would provide a good view of the action and something to lean on. (In the picture Leena is above the U.S. flag although from the front we were above the hand-made banner.)

We watched volunteers and officials clear the course and the field of play of snow. Volunteers in bibs that identified then as "Slippers" helped groom the run with their skis. The odd athlete and coach tried the hill. In our spot at the fence, the athletes skied by after their practice runs.

It turned out that beside us at the fence was the mother of Canadian skier Marie-Pier Prefontaine from Montreal. Her mother's friend who Marie-Pier lives with when training in Calgary was also with us. Her mother wore an official athlete family and friends jacket similar to the athletes clothing. We helped hold up a banner for Marie-Pier when she raced. We were told we were unofficial members of the family.

In front of us was a pathway for the athletes and slippers to use to return to the top of the hill, pens for different broadcasters to use for their cameras, another path for the athletes in front of the cameras so that they could be interviewed, and the end of the course surrounded by padded walls.

We also had one of the boom cameras from the host broadcaster in front of us. It is the type of camera that gets those sweeping vistas over the heads of the crowd. We know from watching ourselves on the large video screen that we were on the broadcast feed of the event due to our position at the fence. During the breaks in the action the camera operator played with the crowd by bringing the camera in close over our heads like Big Brother spying on us.

One of the course groomers who painted the lines on the course beside the gates painted the abbreviated names of countries on the snow in front of supporting spectators.

Before the race I met two friends, Quatchi and Miga, near the concessions.

A Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer handed out printed Start Lists for the race. Eighty-six racers were scheduled for the first run. The race started on time at 10 a.m. and proceeded at a good clip. We could see the racers as they crested the last hill in front of us after having skied for about 60 seconds. We saw them race through the last few gates to the finish line. The next racer was started at the top before the previous woman had finished.

Unfortunately we saw American racer Lindsey Vonn crash right in front of us on the hill. Her American colleague Julia Mancuso had already started down the hill and had to be stopped by officials as they had not yet helped Lindsey off the course. Julia was forced to return to the top of the hill and start again later in the pack. I'm sure that it would have had an impact on her race.

At the end of the pack were racers from countries all over the world like Iran, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Cypress. With an obvious absence of fans to support them, the spectators were great in the way that they cheered on their efforts and their less-than-competitive performances. The first run ended at about 11:20 a.m. and the second run was scheduled for 1:15 p.m.

Unfortunately as we ate our lunch fog rolled in. It had been somewhat foggy at the top of the hill for the first run but now the officials said it was too bad to re-start. The second run was delayed four times until finally at 3 p.m. it was postponed until Thursday. Rats. We have tickets for events in Vancouver on Thursday so we will be unable to go back to Whistler for the second run and the completion of the Giant Slalom.

It had been a long time to stand but after all these weeks and lines I'm getting used to it.

We walked back down the hill and hopped a BC Transit bus into Whistler Village. After checking out the sights along the Village Stroll we had to find a restaurant as it was almost time for the Canada/Russia men's hockey game.

Most places were already full but we found an outside tavern where we could see and hear the huge video screen across the square. It was great to see Canada easily take care of the Russians 7 to 3. Of course there was lots of cheering and flag waving.

At the end of the game we wandered back down the Village Stroll and got to the next Whistler Live site in time to see the last few teams in the women's bobsleigh race that was taking place just above us on the side of Blackcomb Mountain at the Olympic Sliding Centre. The Canadian sleds took the gold and the silver. The Whistler fans went crazy.

Whistler village looked great for its Olympics hosting responsibilities. While it wasn't quite as packed as downtown Vancouver has been most nights, there were still lots of people in the village. The Olympic rings were a huge photo opp location. The Whistler Olympic Cauldron can be seen inside one of the rings.

Many of the trees around the village have been dressed in lights.

Including this one that is trying to be a Canadian flag.

After a bit of wandering and shopping, at the end of the evening we caught our bus back to Langara College in Vancouver where our car was parked. I have to say that the transportation for the day was efficient and worked flawlessly.

We wore many, many layers of clothing today and, although the temperatures were not too cold, it was a good call as we needed it for the amount of time (all of it) that we spent outdoors--usually in some kind of precipitation.

It was too bad we did not get to see the end of our event, but it was great to finally be at a real Olympic sporting event and great to see Whistler in the snow. I got an appreciation for how many people it takes to put on one event including all the volunteers, officials, broadcasters, security officers, and athletes. It was really special to have these amateur athletes competing right in front of us. And as always at these Games, the opportunities to talk with people from all over was one of the best parts.

Tomorrow we have tickets for the women's bronze medal hockey game with Sweden taking on Finland. We will be cheering for Sweden as Leena's parents spent a portion of their lives in Sweden and her sisters were born there. In the evening we have tickets to the Victory Ceremony at the Stadium. After the Victory Ceremony, my volunteer colleagues from the Venue Communications Centre (VCC) are getting together for a social time and, for some, a chance to say good-bye.

P.S. I did get confirmation yesterday that I will be working one more shift in the VCC on Sunday for the Closing Ceremonies. A way to go out with a bang.

A Change in the Weather

2010-02-23T22:56:00.000-08:00

Today was a day of Olympic tourism before we start three days of Olympic events. Alas, the perfect weather we have been experiencing had to come to an end.

I had talked so positively about my experience seeing and touching the Olympic medals at the Royal Canadian Mint Pavilion that Leena wanted to see them too. I know that the lines had grown longer since I saw the medals two weeks ago so we rose early and headed downtown on the SkyTrain arriving at the Mint at 8:30 am, a half hour before it opened.

The line was already down the block and back again. Shortly after the Mint opened, a staff member went down the line with a bull horn and told us that people where we were in line faced a four to five hour wait. Near the end of the line she said it would be eight hours. Everyone in line, Leena and I included, murmured to each other that there was no way it would take that long. We should have believed her.

It was after 1:30 pm before we finally made it into the room with the medals. Since I was there two weeks ago, they have experienced such huge crowds that they have changed the rules of the game. You are only allowed in the room for ten minutes and there are now just two sets of medals in the centre of the room to touch and hold (an Olympic set and a Paralympic set) with four sets on the sides of the room to photograph and examine under glass. A mint staffer offered to take our picture with an Olympic gold medal.

I learned today that the medals were designed by a graduate of our Alma Mater, the University of Waterloo in Waterloo Ontario. This is how the Mint described the work:

The Vancouver 2010 medals are based on two large master artworks of an orca whale (Olympic, shown left) and raven (Paralympic) by Corrine Hunt, a Canadian designer/artist of Komoyue and Tlingit heritage based in Vancouver, BC. Canadian industrial designer and architect Omer Arbel (UW graduate), also of Vancouver, used his extensive knowledge of materials and fabrication processes to create the innovative undulating design of the medals, which are struck nine times each to achieve the distinctive look as part of the 30-step medal fabrication process. Each medal has a unique, hand-cropped section of the art, making it a one-of-a-kind treasure. A silk scarf printed with the master artwork will be presented to each medallist along with their medal, enabling them to see how their medal connects with those awarded to other athletes at the Games to make the whole design.

Once again the experience with the medals was amazing and well worth the wait.

While we were in line outside the Mint, Alexandre Bilodeau, Canada's first gold medalist from the moguls visited the Mint Pavilion. I missed him going in and he came out the door at bit later in a hurry with his entourage. I ran after him to try to get a picture and got to within 10 feet behind him. When I stopped to get a picture he looked over his shoulder and apologized that he was very late for his next appointment before he disappeared into a building and into a waiting elevator. No picture but Leena is my witness.

It started to rain while we were in the Mint but we continued with our plans for the day and took the SkyTrain and the Olympic tram to Granville Island. We heard about Canada's latest gold medal for women's ski cross while we were in line for the tram. The tram staff had a small television to watch.

We were late for lunch so we stopped in the market for something to eat. While we ate our lunch outside, a crew from Korean TV network YTN asked the fellow at the table next to us if he would record an ad for them. They coached him over and over in a simple line of Korean and gave him a flag to wave. He was a bit of a slow learner but eventually they got their take. In Korean he had been saying "I love you YTN." I wouldn't say it was Canada putting our best international foot forward.

At the Swiss House on Granville Island the Swiss were serving raclette to visitors by broiling the end of an entire round of raclette cheese then scraping the melted part onto rye bread. Mmmmm.

The Atlantic Canada Pavilion on the island was closing in half an hour for a private party (likely to watch the Canadian hockey game) so we passed on the line. Place de la Francophonie was quiet as it was an outdoor pavilion in the rain. We boarded the Aquabus off Granville Island and headed for Yaletown where we watched half the Canada/Germany hockey game before it was time for our dinner reservation.

I made a reservation at a restaurant recommended by one of my volunteer colleagues at the Venue Communications Centre at the Stadium. Her boyfriend is the pastry chef at the restaurant and he attended the Culinary Institute of Canada in Charlottetown where our son is currently enrolled. The dinner was great. We had to have dessert as we knew (of) the pastry chef. At a table near us were more ticket brokers (scalpers) from Miami and Tampa.

As the rain had died down, on the way home we headed down to the Richmond O|Zone to see the mammoth ice art. It was created before the games by artists working in a frozen storage locker. It is displayed in a refrigerated display case.

The colours are brilliant when lit up at night.

As we were leaving the O|Zone, these gentlemen passed us leaving Heineken House. Based on their dress, we think it is pretty obvious that they are Dutch. They are certainly in no danger of getting hit by a car.

REALLY early tomorrow we are off by bus to Whistler to see the women's giant slalom event then spend the balance of the day in Whistler village. Hopefully the forecast will be wrong and the rain will stay away or will fall as snow. It really doesn't matter as the day will be a blast regardless of the weather. We'll return by bus late in the evening. While we are there we'll have to catch the Canada/Russia men's hockey game and the women's bobsleigh events on TV.

Last Volunteer Day (?)

2010-02-22T22:51:00.000-08:00

After a weekend of being a "civilian", I was back in my Smurf outfit again today. It felt good. Of course that meant I was available again for answering visitors questions and getting brought in to conversations with strangers. It happened as soon as I got on the SkyTrain this morning and continued on the street tonight as I left work and on the SkyTrain and bus heading home. For me it has been one of the best and unexpected aspects of volunteering.

Today was my last scheduled shift as a volunteer at the Stadium. I have never had a last day at a job before, but I found myself taking an extra long look at the everyday things behind security that I figured I would not see again after today. The signage, the "look of the Games" banners, the bulletin boards, the people.

At Security and Workforce Check-in this morning they were as friendly as always. There was a smile and "Good morning" from everyone.

At Check-in I told the volunteer that it was my last shift. (Our time recording card that we wear with our accreditation indicated that the last day was a gift day just like days three, six, and nine.) As most volunteers won't have their last shift until later this week, this weekend, or after the Paralympics, he was a bit flustered as to what to do. He asked for assistance. Quickly one of the other volunteers went into the office and returned with a gift. She gave it to him so that he could present it to me. He sincerely thanked me on behalf of VANOC for my volunteer work and presented me with a special Swatch watch in Vancouver 2010 blue. (My manager later told me that it was an Olympic tradition that had started in Salt Lake City.)

There was no Victory Ceremony scheduled for this evening in the Stadium. It had been left as a dark night so that the day could be devoted to a practice for the Closing Ceremonies inside the Stadium. The performers have been rehearsing for the closing in tents on venue, but this was the first time they could rehearse in the Stadium. They will only have one more chance next Saturday.

With a dark Stadium (therefore no spectators to move and take care of) and only two women's hockey games at Canada Hockey Place, it was anticipated that this would be a very quiet day in the Venue Communications Centre (VCC).

Four of us showed up at our new 11 am start time and monitored the channels through lunch. We watched the Canadian men beat the U.S. in curling followed by the team ski jumping. After lunch our manager told us that he had been given permission to run with a skeleton staff as everyone with a radio was going to move to their regular more limited night-time channels. He thought that we could probably handle the afternoon with just one operator so that the others could head home if desired or enjoy a beautiful day outdoors. One of my colleagues has an RFP due on Friday (at Xap we know what that is like) so she asked to be excused. The other two said they didn't care but wouldn't mind being outside. I volunteered to stay as it was my last shift.

It seemed appropriate that I could "fly solo" after nine days of training and experience. I monitored all eight channels by myself. Occasionally multiple people talked at once but it was manageable. My manager backed me up for pee breaks. We also had the operator for Urban Domain monitoring the SkyTrain stations and street-based information volunteers.

There were few challenging calls. An international, accredited VIP who was off-venue wanted a VANOC car to take him to the General Hospital. After several calls and confirming, after our incorrect assumption, that he was not ill but was going to the hospital to visit an athlete, we learned that the proper response was that if he was entitled to a car he would know how to get one. By the time we figured out how to tell him that nicely and we called back, he had decided to take a cab. It is nice when problems solve themselves.

In the afternoon I watched the U.S. women beat Sweden in hockey and Canada beat Sweden in women's curling. I really love the Olympic Broadcasting System feeds with their lack of commercials, lack of commentary and complete coverage of an event.

By the end of my shift my manager had spoken to me about Sunday when the men's gold medal hockey game will be played at Canada Hockey House (where every single Canadian knows that Canada will be playing) followed by the Closing Ceremonies at the Stadium. It will be a very busy day in the VCC. He told me that if I was available I could help. So, after all my extra work inhaling the experience of my last shift, it may not be my last shift after all.

When the evening shift came in everyone wanted to see my watch. We are now talking about all the VCC operators getting together as a group for a drink after the Victory Ceremonies on Thursday. It would be great to see everyone in a social setting--not that our work hasn't been social. They have all been a great, friendly, helpful and fun group to work with.

Today in the paper it was reported that there are 150 people in Vancouver from the Sochi 2014 Games organizing committee. Their president said that he was most impressed by the Canadian friendliness. He told his team to study then emulate the Canadian hospitality. I think we'll be a tough act to follow.

On my way home on the SkyTrain I snapped a picture of the public art that was installed at my station last week: the front ends of three florescent orange bears. Given the amount of orange around town on visitors from The Netherlands, I think they are Dutch bears.

Leena's sister and her husband from Toronto have come to town for Olympic events this week. We met them and our nephew and his wife who live in Coquitlam (a suburb of Vancouver) for a nice dinner at a restaurant across the street from the Vancouver City Hall.

It has been impressive how so many of the restaurants that I have been in across the city have installed extra televisions for patrons to watch the Games. There should be a lot of barely used flat screen TVs on sale across Vancouver after the Games.

Televisions didn't quite fit the ambiance of this restaurant so it was the waitress who told us to look across the street and see the lights flashing in a pattern on the Vancouver City Hall because Canada had won another gold medal in ice dancing. Woo hoo!

Tomorrow is a sightseeing day before Leena and I head to Whistler on Wednesday for our first sporting event.

P.S. My apologies to morning readers. I have not posted on the last two nights as I have been in the habit of doing for a few weeks now. Please remember: I do have a wife now. I see that so much reading is in the morning and I have enjoyed the e-mails from people who say that they read my blog in the morning. I'll try to go back to evening posts. It should be easy as we have a few really early mornings coming up this week. Thanks again for all the comments and feedback. I love the fact that this is a two-way method of communicating.

Go Canada Go!

2010-02-22T09:18:00.000-08:00

To start the day I showed Leena the lovely neighbourhood in which I have been living for February. We walked up to 41st Street and had a coffee and muffin at one of the dozen or so local coffee shops. The weather, once again, was gorgeous.

We then headed downtown on the SkyTrain to catch some sights before the hockey game. We waited about an hour to get into Sochi Place, the Russian pavilion for the 2014 Winter Games. It highlights their plans for the Games, the region of the country in which they will take place, the corporate sponsors who will help with the planning and cost. Their Olympic mascot is featured in the retail store and on some of their vehicles. I don't think she (I think) can compete with our Quatchi, Miga, Sumi, and Mukmuk.

By then it was time to prepare for the Canada/U.S. hockey game. We lined up outside Ontario House as I had heard that they had a large room where events can be watched on TV. One of my volunteer colleagues from the Venue Communications Centre was on that corner providing information to visitors so she took our picture while we waited in line. Like almost everyone else, we were dressed for the game.

While in line we watched the parade of "special" people move from Molson's Canada Hockey House to Canada Hockey Place for the game. Yvon Cournoyer, former star player with the Montreal Canadiens passed us with his entourage.

Fortunately just before game time we were allowed in. (The security guards were monitoring the attendance as the room was at capacity.) Inside was a room about the size of a high school gymnasium with eight large projection HD TVs on the walls. A bar at one end sold drinks and food while waiters also brought food around for sale. The atmosphere was electric with so many people crammed into a large echoing room. It was just an incredible place to watch the game. Cheers, foot stomping, cow bells, screams, arms waving, "Go Canada Go". The roars when Canada scored were deafening. I was texting my daughter the scoring for the first period as she was on a bus in Wisconsin returning from playing her own college game.

Alas, the outcome was not what all of us Canadian fans had counted on. The crowd for the rest of the night was somewhat deflated downtown. However, there are more games to come.

We retreated into the crowds and managed to make our way uptown ahead of most of the people flowing out of Canada Hockey Place. The spectators were already lined up for the third and last hockey game of the day. We managed to get seated right away at a restaurant. For two nights now we have been successful in this part of town where the crowds are a bit thinner.

During the Games many restaurants in Vancouver have taken the unusual step of automatically adding a gratuity onto bills. They reported last week in the press that they had too many instances where visitors from other parts of the world were not leaving a gratuity and they felt that their staffs were being treated unfairly. All the places I have been to that have adopted this policy have explained it clearly. I watched the bartender at the restaurant last night return tip money to a customer.

After dinner (it felt so good to sit down after standing for five hours or more) we walked over to Robson Square to get a seat for the early fireworks show.

This show is a mixture of fireworks, flames, lasers, search lights, music, and zip-lining people. It is offered twice each night. It is quite a spectacle. During the show a snowboarder, a skier, and a hockey player zip over the heads of the crowd on the zipline.

After the show it was back to the house on the SkyTrain to rest our weary feet and prepare for another day.

Nice to Have Company

2010-02-21T09:51:00.000-08:00

I walked up to the coffee shop to read my Saturday paper. One of my neighbours was out cutting his grass ... in February ... in Canada. Goofy, but gorgeous weather.

My wife Leena was flying in from Kelowna to spend the rest of the Games in Vancouver with me. I spent some of the morning tidying up the house after 25 days of bachelor living. I also ran to the mall to pick up some groceries. The Apple Store at the mall was giving away cool Olympic pins in the shape of a red iPod with a maple leaf on the screen. One more for my collection.

It was very obvious at the airport that a huge number of Olympic visitors are here with sponsors and the Olympic Family. I could not believe the number of greeters in their corporate jackets with signs and clipboards working at meeting guests and escorting them to waiting transportation. NBC, Visa, Samsung, Panasonic, Acer, etc. It makes the individual traveler look like a small part of this event.

We dropped our little-used car back at the house and headed downtown on the SkyTrain. In the early afternoon on a Saturday the SkyTrain was busier than rush hour. It continues to carry record loads. We just managed to get our two bodies inside a door and into the crush.

Of course downtown was just the same. Like last weekend it was a beautiful day and a weekend so the crowds were unbelievable. We walked across downtown and I showed Leena where I have been working. We wandered around Robson Square and walked over to the waterfront to see the Olympic Cauldron. The changes VANOC have made to the fencing are a definite improvement. You can now get must closer to the cauldron and the fencing has been removed at eye level to allow folks to get a decent picture.

It was much more fun to have someone to walk with and share the sights with.

We walked past the Hudson's Bay Company store. The Olympic Superstore which takes up half of the main floor of the store is now open 24 hours. According to the paper over 3 million pairs of red mittens have been sold and overall they expect to set an all-time record for Winter Olympics merchandise sales. They are shipping in merchandise from other stores across the country.

We met our university friends from Grimsby, Ontario for dinner at one of the Olympic Family hotels overlooking False Creek. We had a good view of both a television to watch the Canadian men and their disappointing results in skating as well as the Olympic rings out in Burrard Inlet.

I felt like I was in civilian clothing after six days of working and walking around in my Smurf outfit. I was only asked one question all day.

I guess I am not the only volunteer who has been helpful to visitors. This was in Friday's Vancouver Sun:

“My wife runs a B&B in the suburbs … and we have guests from all over the world. At night they return from their outings … and fill us in on their day’s experience. They all say they cannot get over how friendly the people are in the streets. (The blue Smurf volunteers especially.)”

After dinner we walked back to Yaletown to see the fireworks show. It is such a great show it was well worth seeing again.

After the show we rushed back to the SkyTrain but at our station came up just in time to see our bus pull away. The next bus was in 30 minutes and only went about two-thirds of the way to the house. Once on the bus, when we reached the short-turn stop, the driver asked where those of us still on the bus wanted to go. Everyone stated their stops on the normal rest of the route. He proceeded to drive us all home. Such great spirit.

The Crowds and the Sights!

2010-02-20T00:51:00.000-08:00

I had another late shift today so I headed downtown early to wander around and see what was going on.

It was another beautiful day showing off Vancouver at its (winter?) best. This is the view from beside the International Broadcast Centre looking across Burrand Inlet at North Vancouver.

In front of the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Japanese cherry trees are in bloom.

Some guys are lucky enough to have a job cleaning the huge Canadian flag at West Georgia and Howe.

Granville Street is closed for some of its downtown blocks. One of the blocks displays an outdoor art exhibit as part of the Cultural Olympiad.

I'm not sure about this one.

Or this one.

This lantern forest which I have shown before illuminated at night has become a great attraction for kids because the plywood bases make a loud noise when kids jump on them.

Lots of pin traders have set up there wares on the benches between the artwork.

There is no snow in Vancouver so the entrance to the Pacific Centre was turned into a huge igloo to help represent the winter spirit.

However, the igloo looks rather strange beside the flowers available downtown.

Robson Square in the centre of the city is one of the hubs of Olympic activity. The square was designed by Arthur Erickson, one of Canada's foremost architects and was intended to be a west coast version of a public complex like Rockefeller Center. It was opened in 1983. Rather than a tall skyscraper, Erickson laid the building on its side and developed a square at one end with a subterranean skating rink under Robson Street. The rink and square was renovated for the Olympics

The free skating rink has been a huge hit with families and is always busy. It is also the location of a skating show by the Olympic mascots.

Buskers are found at the ends of the rink entertaining the crowds that sit on the stairs.

Twice nightly there is a show with fireworks, fire, lasers and music.

High above Robson Square there is a free zipline from one end of the square to the other. It is generally taking people about five hours in line to reach the front and enjoy their 30 second ride. It is busy all day long. One of my colleagues from the Venue Communications Centre (VCC) did it this week with her sons. She said the wait was definitely worth it.

There are huge crowds all day long at the Olympic cauldron. They have opened up the fence to make it easier to take pictures and opened an elevated viewing platform for group shots.

I guess there is no news happening in Alaska this weekend as I saw the satellite truck from KTUU Channel 2 in Anchorage on the streets of Vancouver.

Coca Cola sponsored an art project to have First Nations artists decorate the classic Coke bottle shape. The "bottles" are displayed all over town at different First Nations exhibits.

The crowds all over town are enormous. Even at noon today the SkyTrain was packed going into town. The SkyTrains and the SeaBus to North Vancouver have all set ridership records. Last Friday Vancouver achieved its goal of reducing the number of cars entering downtown by 30% over a normal Friday. Despite the crowds and the lineups, people are in a great, celebratory mood. The Vancouver police have reported a drop in disturbance and nuisance calls.

The people watching is great. It is generally easy to spot foreign visitors and athletes by their clothing. Everyone agrees that the Italian athletes are the best dressed.

After wandering around downtown from late morning to late afternoon I was tired by the time I checked in for work. At the Stadium Workforce Check-in I received my day nine gift. It was a nice silver-plated VANOC Team 2010 key chain from Birks (the Canadian equivalent of Tiffany's.) They were also having a contest at Check-in to guess the score of this weekend's Canada/U.S. hockey game.

As it was slow again this evening I spent part of my shift outside directing people again. I still find it great fun to interact with people from all over the world.

With just one more shift on Monday before my volunteering ends, I think I will have innocently created the best schedule. When we all first started working in the VCC we all faced a new environment, new jargon, new skills and new people. We also had the huge Opening Ceremonies to present. Now that we have all being doing our jobs for a while, we are good at solving problems and helping others on the radio who are also better at their jobs. It means that the VCC will probably continue to be quieter than it was. I think I am probably retiring at the best time.

The last hour and a half tonight after I returned from outside was very quiet as the Victory Ceremony was over, the crowd had egressed, and the 9 pm Germany/Finland hockey game had started. We watched the Canada/Denmark curling match and explained curling to our manager from Boston as only true Canadians could. We had a good time telling stories with lots of laughs. It made me think that those times around the table in the VCC are like a dinner party with friends--except that everyone is wearing a headset.

So with my wife arriving tomorrow, phase I of my Olympic experience (the solo part) that lasted 25 days is ending and phase two where I get to share the experience and attend some Olympic events begins. Stay tuned!

P.S. I thought you might like to see where I sit down each night and do my blogging. It just happens to be the same place that I read the newspapers and eat my meals when I am at the house. It has become my home base.

Thanks for all the blog comments and e-mail messages.

Working The Night Shift

2010-02-19T01:04:00.000-08:00

After four days of early shifts, I switched to the late shift today. It was a great day to do that.

I slept in this morning but mid-morning received a text message invitation to lunch. Friends from university who now live in Grimsby, Ontario were in town for the Games. I headed downtown to Yaletown and met them at a restaurant with an outdoor patio. We had lunch, caught up (none of us could remember exactly when we had last seen each other--obviously a sign of our aging Math brains), and watched the Games on TV. We were fortunate to be able to see Christine Nesbitt win Canada's third gold medal. We agreed to try to get together again for dinner once my wife arrives on Saturday.

At Workforce Check-in this afternoon I took a look at the map that allows volunteers at BC Place Stadium to add a star to show where they are from. It's a bit hard to see from this photo but there are people from all over the world at the Stadium. I think it reflects the general mix of people that are currently in Vancouver.

Since the morning shift in the Venue Communications Centre had been relatively slow, it was decided to send us outside again in shifts to help direct people and answer questions. I volunteered for the first team to go outside as I knew that there was an important hockey game coming up and I wanted to be back in the VCC in time to watch the Victory Ceremony and see Christine Nesbitt get her gold. Also it was a gorgeous day outside and I knew once the sun set it would get colder. It was a good strategy.

Outside I was positioned between Concord Place (where the Ontario, Quebec, and Saskatchewan pavilions and Canada Hockey House are located) and the entrance to the security gates for the Stadium and Canada Hockey Place (the arena). There was a steady stream of traffic and questions. It was a lot of fun to help people as, generally, people are in such a great mood.

As there was a Canadian hockey game starting within the hour there were lots of scalpers working where I was standing. After the game started and they thinned out I had people coming to me looking for a person to buy a ticket from. Later scalpers were asking $70 for the $22 ticket for tonight's Victory Ceremony as Canada was getting both a gold and a silver medal.

Again it was absolutely amazing to see the people going in to the hockey game dressed in their Team Canada jerseys, hoodies, scarves, and flags.

I helped lots of people from all over the world: Russians, Americans (Texas seemed to win today), Austrians, Italians and, of course, plenty of Canadians. It was not uncommon to hear Vancouverites express their excitement about seeing their city in such an party atmosphere.

Today seemed to be celebrity siting day. While I only saw the CEO of Roots Canada (they supplied the Olympics uniforms for Canada and the U.S. at the Salt Lake City Games) one of my colleagues in the VCC saw Stephen Colbert over at Sochi House (the Russian pavilion) and another was at Starbucks downtown and backed up in line only to step on the toes of Meredith Vieira from NBC's Today show.

We also had a celebrity on our team today as there were Olympic event tickets given away randomly yesterday as volunteers checked in and one of my colleagues was one of the winners.

I got back into the VCC in time to see the last period of the Canada/Switzerland hockey game. There was lots of tension in the room as the Canadians were unable to get anything past the Swiss goalie and the game ended in a tie at the end of three periods. It was only after overtime and a four attempt shoot-out that Canada won when Sidney Crosby finally put the puck in the net. There was a huge cheer in the building and an even larger sigh of relief. One of my colleagues joked that the rule should really be that the shoot-out must continue until Canada wins.

We then switched the TV to the Victory Ceremony. We all applauded as Nesbitt received her medal and we all stood and sang O Canada when it was played as the flag was raised inside the Stadium.

After the Victory Ceremony we watched a bit of skeleton and the end of the men's figure skating. Our Olympic Broadcasting System feeds do not have any commentary so we all tend to provide our own. Someone remarked that she will never be able to watch the Olympics the same again after our humorous and honest amateur commentary. It was suggested that we were all going to have to get back together for the next Olympics. (Someone on our team did tell us today that she has applied to be a volunteer in London for 2012.)

After we closed the VCC I headed down to LiveCity Yaletown to see the fireworks show. At the end of a concert by a group called Marianas Trench, there was a great show with fireworks, lights, and water cannons. On the big screens, and on the spray of the water cannons, video highlights of the Games were displayed to music. It was a grand display that obviously gets updated every day based on new event results.

The mornings have been slow in the VCC so it was decided today to open at 11 am rather than at 8:30 am. I have only one more morning shift next Monday so it really doesn't affect me too much. They are just doing this informally so that we don't lose the right to a meal ticket if our shift is too short.

After working for eight shifts, watching events on TVs around town, and seeing lots of this Olympic city, now I'm ready to attend some events. I can't wait for next week.

A Sunny Day in the VCC

2010-02-17T22:47:00.000-08:00

The weather today in Vancouver was just gorgeous. A little bit colder than it has been lately, but lots of blue sky and sunshine. I walked from the SkyTrain station to the Stadium along the seawall that follows False Creek and it was a beautiful way to start the day. The next four or five days are all forecast to be like this. The Vancouver tourism people will be delighted as it will show off Vancouver at its weather best to the world. The views on the Olympic Broadcast System beauty cams today really were beautiful.

Today in the Venue Communications Centre we had a good morning, not too stressful, but full of odd questions and requests. We had someone new join us today. She grew up in Ontario as I did and she now lives in Vernon, BC up the lake from where we live in Kelowna.. I helped her with the radios this morning by monitoring her station and mine. The only way to learn this job is to do it.

This morning I had the opportunity to put a face to a voice that I have been listening to for the last two weeks. One of the venue managers came into the VCC for a visit. I knew his voice immediately but I only know him by his call sign. It was nice to see a real person.

I have mentioned before how our building across the street from the Stadium is always crawling with police and security people. This is an example of a small number of the security folks involved in a shift change as I left the building one day.

It still fascinates me to see police officers from all across the country on duty in our building and across Vancouver.

The security rules we must live by sometimes makes life difficult. If a truck of anything needs to be brought into the venue and it is not part of a regular delivery, arrangements must be made to get the driver approved and the truck needs to be searched at the Vehicle Security Area. It likely needs to be escorted. It often takes many phone or radio calls to numerous people to coordinate the process.

Sometimes it is the simple tasks that take the longest. There were about eight calls made today just to remove a dead pigeon from one of the spectator access gates.

This is the view of the BC Place Stadium we have out our window in the VCC. We are so lucky to have a window--particularly on a beautiful day like today. There are many other people in the building working in windowless rooms.

Three days ago we watched the huge banner on the left become wrinkled in a strong wind. We debated calling someone in the Site group to report it but we didn't. A day later two fellows and a tall scissor lift spent most of the day rehanging it and tightening it. We all feel much better now.

It was another day with three hockey games at Canada Hockey Place and a Victory Ceremony tonight at the Stadium. As the number of people in and around our venue was huge again today, our manager decided to deploy us outside to help with the crowds in two shifts.

I spent two and a half hours this afternoon at the east end of our precinct answering questions. All one has to do is stand at a pedestrian intersection wearing a blue "Smurf" jacket to be targeted by people as they walk by.

As I have said before, I am getting pretty good at directing people around downtown Vancouver. The questions were broad but predictable:

Where is the SkyTrain?
Where can we get something to eat?
Where are the international country houses?
What are the best houses for partying?
Where is the Ontario pavilion? (Asked standing directly in front of the Ontario pavilion.)
How do I get to the celebration site in Yaletown?
What else is there to see around here?
What's through here? (pointing at the entrance to Canada Hockey Place)

Little kids wanted to trade pins (I have pins on my accreditation lanyard) and older folks wanted to stand and talk. It was a wonderful afternoon to be outside and I was a great feeling to be so helpful--particularly to so many international visitors. The vast majority of people were in great spirits.

Today's shift went by quickly. Once I was done I headed east of our venue along the seawall. This is the view of the flags of the competing nations in front of the Olympic Village.

The Russians have taken over Science World as the home of Sochi House. It is a pavilion dedicated to the next Olympic Winter Games in Sochi in 2014.

They have already started a clock counting down the days, hours, minutes and seconds until the Opening Ceremonies for the 2014 Olympics.

The Russians are very easy to spot around town in their distinctive uniforms with swirling art that seems to be ready to use for Sochi in 2014. This car out in front of Sochi House was sporting the look. Russian team clothing is on sale at the pavilion and the Hudson's Bay Company. A themed polo shirt was $98 and a themed track suit was $300. Russians are obviously much better off financially than I thought or else they are trying to finance their Games through Western clothing sales.

Inside the pavilion was a huge model of the Sochi venues and the area. It would appear that Russia, like China, is going to go all out and build new facilities for everything to do with the Games. The model showed a round Olympic Park with a stadium for the opening and closing, three arenas for hockey and skating, a curling center, and a speed skating oval. The model also showed a new airport as well as a new high speed rail system from the airport into town and from the town to the mountain venues. A large Olympic Village is right on the beach of the Black Sea and looks like it could become a resort after the games. As for all the other new venues and infrastructure, it looked like an awful lot for a small town. It must be nice to live in a country that can afford to spend like that.

After Sochi House I walked over to the other side of the Stadium to the Host First National pavilion (another dome.) You may have seen the Four Host First Nations introduced during the Opening Ceremonies. The Games are being held on their traditional lands. VANOC signed agreements with all of them to allow them to participate and benefit from the Games. Their pavilion includes a dome theatre that shows an interesting film to introduce the Four First Nations and look at their past, present, and future. They also have a restaurant next door in the Queen Elizabeth Theatre that has been getting great reviews in the local press. It was not yet open when I was there today.

I've been pretty busy over the last six days or so without a break. I took myself out for breakfast downtown this morning as a treat. I switch to the evening shift for the next two days so tomorrow's treat is that I get to sleep in. Sigh (with a smile).

The Puck Finally Drops

2010-02-16T23:46:00.000-08:00

First, some unfinished business from yesterday. Coca-Cola finally sent me my portrait with the Olympic torch that I had taken at the Coca-Cola Pavilion. I knew you'd be anxious to see it.

It was an 8 a.m. shift start again today so I was up early and off to the Stadium. As we suspected yesterday, it turned out to be a busier day.

Most professional sports arenas and stadia (doesn't "stadiums" sound better?) hold just one significant event in a day. We were going for the hat trick today and holding three hockey games at Canada Hockey Place next door to the Stadium.

As I have mentioned before, the Stadium and the arena are across the street from each other so for the Olympics we have the entire perimeter of both locked down as our integrated, secure venue. Therefore the events at one affect the other and everything must be coordinated.

At Workforce Check-in it was my sixth day so I earned another gift. I had a choice of either a Quatchi or Miga stuffed mascot. As I already own a Quatchi I chose Miga. Miga is part spirit bear (a special rare white bear that lives in coastal British Columbia) and part orca.

The hockey games, added to our schedule for a Victory Ceremony in the evening starring The Barenaked Ladies, meant that we had tens of thousands more people on the venue today.

The first game was at noon between the U.S. and Switzerland. All went well with the venue side of things and the U.S. won 3-1.

The plan for the day called for just two hours between the potential end of game one and the puck drop for game two. In this time Canada Hockey Place had to be cleared, cleaned, restocked, and filled again. It worked without too many issues. People that arrived for game two were kept in a secure holding pen until they could ingress.

I was leaving as we were doing ingress for Canada Hockey Place for the second game between Canada and Norway. The crowd was almost uniformly clothed in Team Canada colours and clothing.

I wanted to watch Canada's game on a big outdoor screen with other fans as that seemed like the right way to watch an Olympic match. I wandered over to Concord Place which is next to the Stadium and Canada Hockey Place.

This is the Ontario Pavilion. The line was too long for me to go in before the game started. I'll try it some other day.

Next door to Ontario House is Canada Hockey House (not to be confused with Canada Hockey Place.) It is a huge tent that features food, drink, entertainment and huge screens for watching the games. It also has a huge $99 charge for a day pass. I passed.

I had hoped, as game time approached, that they would show the game on their large outdoor screens. Alas, although it is Canada HOCKEY House, it didn't seem to occur to them to show the hockey game.

This is Maison du Quebec (Quebec House). It is a large pavilion with no roof but a place to eat, drink, and be entertained.

To prepare for the game I indulged in an authentic poutine (poo-teen). Poutine is french fries and cheese curds covered in gravy. It originated in Quebec so I figured that the poutine in Maison du Quebec should be good. It was very good; the cheese curds squeaked like they should when I ate them. My daughter would be proud and jealous.

Now to find a place to watch the game. The folks from Ontario were nice enough to show the game on their large outdoor screen. We watched without play-by-play for most of the first period, then they propped open a door and brought a speaker outside. Now everyone loves Ontario.

It was great fun to stand and watch with all the other rabid Canadian fans. Although the first period was scoreless, Canada exploded in the second and third periods and won 8-0.

Not only were there huge cheers from the crowd when Canada scored, but there was also a chorus of car, bus, truck and ship horns that echoed across the downtown.

Near the end of the game there were some Russian athletes or officials standing beside me. They were not cheering.

The tenants of this building that looks down on Canada Hockey Place were showing their support.

After the hockey game I wandered around downtown. The hockey fans all seemed to stay downtown with all the other fans that didn't have tickets. Downtown was a zoo. People yelling, screaming and carrying on. You would have thought that Canada had won more than just a first round game against Finland.

I answered lots of questions from people asking for directions and information. One couple wanted to know where they could buy my jacket. When I told them that it was part of my volunteer uniform they were disappointed but said that it looked good on all of us volunteers.

As I walked along West Georgia, two hockey fans walked against the traffic flow giving everyone a high five. As I approached it was "Hey. Volunteer High Five!"

I also passed two high school aged boys walking down the sidewalk holding hand-made signs that said "Free Hugs." Based on what I saw they seemed to be doing all right with the ladies.

Although it was raining this morning, it cleared by noon and was a wonderful afternoon and evening. We are now supposed to have lovely sunny, dry days through the weekend with cold nights.

This was the sight at the end of False Creek this evening with Sochi House (normally Science World) and the Athletes Village.

The other highlight of my day happened earlier. We had a chance to watch on one of the Olympic Broadcast System's channels the women's snowcross races which had been postponed from earlier in the day due to fog on Cypress Mountain. It is a wild event with lots of action and lots of crashes. In the end Canada won its second gold medal when Maelle Ricker of North Vancouver won the final race. There was cheering and applause in the Venue Communications Centre and in the entire building where I work.

Our deputy manager asked us to make an All-Call to all the radios on the venue. I spoke to everyone on Operations1 and shared the great news. It was fun to be the source of the exciting news.

Normally the Olympic rings that are floating in Burrard Inlet are green. Tonight they were gold to honour Maelle Ricker's performance today.

Adaptable Day with Gold

2010-02-15T23:47:00.000-08:00

It was a day for needing to be adaptable--at work and with the weather--as well as celebrate Canada's first gold medal ever won in Canada.

On my way to work early this morning, I met a fellow from Greece at my local bus stop. He was looking for directions to downtown. I told him he could follow me and we talked on the way. Turns out he is a "ticket boker"--a nice name for a scalper. He used to live in Holland but recently moved to Greece to avoid the social problems in Holland. He is the second scalper--I mean ticket broker--that I have met this week. On Saturday at Tim Horton's (coffee and donut shop) I met a ticket broker who had come up for the Olympics from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. As I detrained, I showed the fellow from Greece what station to go to and politely declined his offer of helping me with tickets.

Of course the big news for last night and today was Alexandre Bilodeau winning Canada's first gold medal last night in men's moguls. I guess I left downtown too early last night (although I never would have lasted) as the celebrations continued well into the night. It was one of those classic "Where were you when ..." questions today at work.

As I walked to the Stadium this morning, the large electronic sign at the side of the road that had previously displayed closed streets ahead now said "CONGRATS ALEXANDRE BILODEAU / ON WINNING GOLD !!! / GO CANADA GO".

This evening I stopped at a bar in Yaletown for dinner just as Alexandre was being presented with his medal. Watching on the bar televisions, the diners all cheered and applauded.

At Workforce Check-in this morning I was greeted by name before my accreditation was scanned. I don't how the volunteer at Check-in does that but it sure makes me feel welcome in the morning.

Things were rather slow this morning. It sounds like the first Victory Ceremony last night at the Stadium went well. There were quite a few of us on the early shift so our manager told us that half could go out for an hour if we wanted while the others covered the call groups. The weather this morning was gorgeous.

I decided to wander over to the main post office. Canada Post, obviously in a case of being prepared, released a previously unannounced special gold medal stamp this morning in honour of Alexandre Bilodeau's win. In needed to get some

On my way there I once again got involved in helping people. As I was walking by the corner of Robson and Beattie, a family was standing looking at the posted map. As I walked by the mother said, "Let's ask this guy." They were a family of four from Calgary. They asked me, "What should we see?"

In high school I spent three summers as a tourist counselor in Toronto. My old skills kicked in this morning. I knew just where to start. "How long do you have? What have you seen? What interests you?" I gave them lots of options and recommendations and showed them where everything was on the map. (I now carry extra pocket maps with me.)

Once I sent them on their way, two other people needed help finding their way. The blue Smurf jacket is a beacon for visitors.

On my way back to the VCC with my stamps, everyone at security and Workforce Check-in asked to see them. If I had bought more of them, I bet I could have sold them.

The rest of the day was relatively quiet at the VCC so we sent some of our folks out to help act as Guides for part of the afternoon. There were lots of people who still needed to pick up their tickets for tonight so there would be lots of people looking for the will call office. This might be our normal mode of operations this week. Fine with me. I'm already working overtime as a Guide.

We also seem to be wearing out our building and infrastructure. Our washrooms had to be shut down for much of the day today causing people to have to trek outside to the portable washrooms. We also lost our printer yesterday and it was replaced today by a much larger model. The IT guy also asked us if we wanted a larger Panasonic HD TV. What a silly question.

We watched the men's snowboard cross races during the day. It is such a wild sport.

After my shift I wandered over to LiveCity Yaletown, one of the downtown celebration sites. This site includes the official sponsor pavilions.

I entered the Coke pavilion because I needed to open some happiness (their current slogan). Their pavilion is in a large tent shaped like a quonset hut with a translucent roof so that it can show images projected from inside at night. They showed a short film on the torch relay which Coke helped sponsor then offered three interactive stations. You could have your picture taken with a torch, race against someone else (on a screen) as a polar bear, and virtually catch recycled Coke bottles. They also offered a free drink (naturally) and gave everyone a glowing Olympic Coke bottle as they exited.

Panasonic had a pavilion demonstrating their new 3D TV technology. Pretty cool. Coming in April to a Best Buy near you.

I watched the Canadian ladies play hockey and the men's 500 M speed skating on the big screen with a few friends. It's the best way to watch exciting events.

On Robson Street there is a display of creative outdoor art. I've seen it during the day but it looks even better at night.

There is a set of illuminated, modern totem poles.

And a forest of lantern trees featuring lanterns made by Canadian children from across the country.

I was going to stay downtown and watch the water, light and fireworks show in Yaletown, but by mid-evening the rain returned. I stayed for a while but then decided to get out of the rain.

I have two days this week with late shifts. Those will be better nights to stay and watch the fireworks shows.

Tomorrow there are three hockey games being played at Canada Hockey Place next door to the Stadium. The middle game is Canada versus Norway. With so many people to move in and out of the arena, including rabid Canadian fans, it might be a more complicated day tomorrow in the VCC.

In the end, with things to see, events to watch, event results to track, and work to be done, it was a busy day. But a very red, white and gold day.

Kung Hei Fat Choi and Happy Valentines Day

2010-02-14T20:52:00.000-08:00

What happens when you mix a gorgeous weekend afternoon, the Chinese New Year, Valentines Day, and a little thing called the Olympics? You get a very busy city.

I had an 8 am start this morning. It put a smile on my face to see how the Workforce folks were thinking about all of us volunteers. At Workforce Check-in this morning not only did I get the standard warm, smiling reception but there were Valentine candies too. At the Plaza of Nations building where we work, the common areas were all decorated with pink, paper hearts.

I received my day three gift one day late. It was a special Team 2010 pin to add to my pin collection.

Tonight is the first Victory Ceremony at BC Place Stadium. Each Victory Ceremony is honouring one of the Canadian provinces. Tonight is British Columbia night. At the Victory Ceremony, the province will give a half hour presentation followed by the presentation of the medals for events yesterday and early today. The evening will conclude with a concert by a performer or group associated with the honoured province.

Just one end of the Stadium with 20,000 seats is being used for the Victory Ceremonies so the Stadium needed to be reconfigured after Friday night's Opening Ceremonies. Of course, all the changes will need to be reversed for the Closing Ceremonies on the 28th.

Generally it was a relatively slow day in the Venue Communications Centre (VCC). That was just fine with me. I still monitored the Ops1 channel but it was quieter today than it was during the dress rehearsals last week. We had our regular run of fire trucks showing up at the gate where no one knew why they had come, toilets turning into fountains, questions about lost and found, medical issues, and people needing to talk to people who we couldn't find. We're all getting better at our jobs including solving problems.

We had lots of time for socializing today including sharing stories from our "other" lives.

One of my colleagues today told us that the company she works for did lots of electrical work during construction at Whistler Olympic Park up at Whistler. She said that after a few incidents, they had to install trapdoors in the floors of their office trailers at the site because bears were breaking down the trailer doors to get in. The staff had to escape through the trapdoors. And you thought that you had challenges at your work?

My colleague Nancy from Ohio has obviously been in Canada too long--or perhaps we have been showing her a great time. She told us that she was late for the start of the Ski Jumping event yesterday because Vice President Jo Biden's entourage held everything up on the road to Whistler. "Damn Americans," she smiled.

We also had time to watch the Games. We have access to all these special channels that are the official feeds to the networks. Not only to we get channels from all the venues but we get "beauty" cameras too. There are beauty cameras showing the Olympic Cauldron, the Vancouver skyline from several angles, Whistler Village, and even one on the SeaBus as it goes back and forth across Burrard Inlet. As we flipped channels today we noticed both NBC and CTV (in Canada) using these feeds of the cauldron and the Vancouver skyline when fading to commercials. Watching the beauty channels is like watching that fireplace burning channel or DVD at Christmas--about 30 seconds is long enough.

When our Deputy Manager arrived for the late shift, she arrived with a huge, heart-shaped box of chocolates for the VCC volunteers. The early shift helped ourselves as we ended our day and left the balance for the late shift.

I spent a while wandering around downtown after work. As I was still in my uniform, the experience is quite different than walking around in civilian clothes. My wife can attest to the fact that people come up to me and ask for directions as two women did it while I was talking to Leena on the phone. Many people give me a second glance and then a big smile. Just like on the SkyTrain, people don't hesitate to talk to me on the street. As I walked by a fire hall, some of the firefighters where standing near the sidewalk and they made a point of talking to me. It is such a wonderful experience.

You really get a sense of the worldwide visitors as you watch and listen as you walk around downtown. I guess it is one advantage of having a solo experience.

Because of the wonderful weather, the Olympics and Chinese New Year, the city was jammed. (About 30% of Vancouver's population is Chinese.) Unfortunately I missed the Chinese New Year parade for the Year of the Tiger while I was working. This was the crowd on a street in Yaletown near the SkyTrain station I enter to go home on the Canada Line.

Because of my friends from Ottawa visiting last night and leaving early this morning I only had about two hours of sleep last night. Combined with the long lineups to get into everything I decided to call it an early night tonight. (As I passed the Mint pavilion, I heard them say that it was a three hour wait. There was a five hour wait to go on the free zip line trek six stories up across Robson Square.)

Since I've worked two more days that means tonight is Olympic laundry night again. I'll watch the highlights from today as Canada won its first ever gold medal in Canada.

It's not the first Valentine's Day that my wife and I have been separated over our more than 28 years together. I really miss her and can't wait for her to get here next Saturday so that we can share these experiences together.

Now I Know What It's Like to Hold a Gold Medal

2010-02-13T22:29:00.000-08:00

I must have caught the Olympic bug. Today was the only day for the next five days that I could sleep in. Instead, I was up early to head out to the SkyTrain and take it in the opposite direction for a change to go down to the Richmond Olympic Oval (ROO). I really wanted to get into the ROO to see the inside as it has been described as the jewel of the Vancouver venues. Today was one of the few days that would work for my schedule.

I have been tracking the tickets for today's speed skating event online for a couple of weeks but tickets stayed in the $500 to $600 range (for a $185 or $95 ticket.) It came down as low as $450 earlier this week so I wondered if there might be cheap tickets left at the last minute as people who wanted to sell were dumping their tickets. Alas, today's event disappeared from the Internet selling site on Thursday and never returned. VANOC said last night that there might be a small number of tickets available for today once they knew the final TV camera positions. So I thought I'd head out to see what was available.

I got to the box office at the ROO about 15 minutes before it opened. I was about the 30th person in line. The fellow next to me was from The Netherlands and had only decided to come to Vancouver a week ago. He was desperately trying to get tickets for tomorrow or today. We had a good chat about Canada and the Olympics. Alas, about 15 minutes after the box office opened, a ticketing staff member came out to tell us that today's event was sold out. Rats. I said goodbye to my new Dutch friend and walked back along the Fraser River sea wall to the SkyTrain.

I guess I have now been in Vancouver too long as I keep bumping in to people I know--and I don't know that many people here. Yesterday I met Yanni, my colleague from Greece, when I was lining up to get into the Stadium. In fact he recognized me first. Today as I was walking back to the SkyTrain, I ran into my colleague Anne from Peterborough who was going to the event I wanted to see.

Richmond has erected an Inukshuk monument along the path to the ROO to honor the speed skaters.

There were lots of speed skating fans all dressed up in their national colors on their way to the Oval. The Dutch, in their orange outfits--jackets, pants, hats, mittens--were the brightest.

Also along the path I passed the University of British Columbia Boathouse which has been taken over and turned into Canada's speed skating headquarters.

There were Dutch people along the path handing out Day-Glo orange mittens to everyone. There was also a company at the SkyTrain station handing out earmuffs that wrap around the back of your head. No tickets on this excursion; just swag.

While I was in Richmond I thought I would head down to the Richmond O|Zone to see the Ice Gate ice sculpture I had read about. It is so nice to have free public transportation.

While the route I take to the Stadium on the SkyTrain is all underground, at the other end of the Canada Line in Richmond it earns it's name as it runs on an elevated guideway. (I had to fit that word in for fellow Xappers so I took the picture.)

At the O|Zone, like at all the other outdoor plazas and celebration sites, there was a large video screen so everyone could keep track of the action at the Olympic events.

Unfortunately, although the sculpture looks awesome, there was too much glare during the day from the glass in front of the sculpture to get a decent picture. It is lit up at night so I'll return some evening to get better shots. I'll bet the colours look incredible at night.

So back on the SkyTrain to downtown.

I can't get over how everywhere I go from riding the train to standing in line to being served in restaurants and stores, everyone wants to talk. In fact today I was a minor celebrity when, in response to the usual question from strangers "What events do you have tickets for?" I answered, "Last night I was at the Opening Ceremonies." In one line a woman immediately turned around and told the other strangers behind her. Everyone wanted to know what it was like to have been there and all said that, from their TV viewing, thought it was wonderful. (They announced today that it was the most watched TV show in Canadian history. 39% of Canadians watched the whole show; 69% watched some part.)

I got off downtown at Waterfront Station and walked down Waterfront Road.

There are pin traders everywhere now. This fellow wanted to charge me a buck just to take his picture.

What I wanted to see in this part of town was the outdoor Olympic Cauldron that was lit last night by Wayne Gretzky after the ceremony inside BC Place Stadium was over. It is on the waterfront beside the Vancouver Convention Centre. It was announced this morning that it will be a permanent part of Jack Poole Plaza (named after a man who was instrumental in bringing these Games to Vancouver but who died last fall on the day that the Olympic flame was lit in Greece.)

Unfortunately it is presently behind unsightly chain link fencing. Hopefully this is because it was hidden from view until late last night to be a surprise and will be rectified soon. Despite that there were plenty of people out to get a peek and a picture today.

The flame was located beside the new addition to the Vancouver Convention Centre which is being used as the International Broadcast Centre. This huge new building actually has grass growing on its roof.

Next I wanted to see the pavilion being run by the Royal Canadian Mint. In addition to making all of our regular and Olympic coins, they made all the medals for the Games. The advertising had said that you would be able to see the medals at their pavillion. What I was surprised to learn when I got inside was that we would be able to actually hold the medals.

The pavilion was in a lovely old bank building that is presently used by Simon Fraser University as a downtown location.

In preparation for touching the medals, everyone was given a special white glove to wear, The guard at the door to the room also told us that, to respect the athletes who will win the medals, to please not take pictures with our faces too close to the medals and to keep them low--below our hearts. I must admit I didn't get all that but at the risk of being shot I obeyed.

Not only did I get to hold a gold medal (very heavy at 1.5 pounds) but the man watching the medals while I was there was the engineer from the Mint who developed the way to have the unique medals etched on the front with the First Nations design and engraved on the back--not an easy job when the surface is not flat. We had a great conversation.

I liked the design and the concept when I first saw pictures but they are truly stunning when you see them in person. Each of the 600 or so Olympic medals is different with the designs taken from a larger First Nations pattern. The medals roll in a way to represent the landscape of British Columbia.

Also at the Mint's pavilion was a $1 million coin. The 100 kg, 99999 pure gold bullion coin with a $1 million face value was originally conceived in 2007 as a unique way to promote the Mint's new line of 99999 pure 1 oz Gold Maple Leaf bullion coins. After several interested buyers came forward, the Mint decided to make a very limited quantity available for sale. To date, five of these gold bullion coins, have been purchased by investors from Canada and abroad. I passed.

I strolled back across downtown in the rain, grabbed a hot dog on Granville Street and headed towards Yaletown. I have seen these before but I keep forgetting to take a picture. Even the Canada Post mailboxes in Vancouver are colourfully decorated for visitors.

I passed the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) Vancouver building and a segment of Hockey Night in Canada was being shot outside the building in front of cheering fans.

I hopped on the SkyTrain and headed for home. On the way back a Russian athlete or official was sitting in the front of the SkyTrain taking pictures of the driverless train and the tunnels. He got so focused he missed his stop at the Olympic Village.

I need to get some cleaning done at the house as I have guests coming tonight. Friends from Ottawa have been in Hawaii and needed to spend the night on their return trip in Vancouver. My house is close to the airport and I have plenty of room so I am picking them up. We'll have just a few hours to visit before they head out in the morning.

Back to work at the Stadium for me tomorrow. Despite the rain, it was another grand Olympic day.

Opening Ceremonies

2010-02-13T01:02:00.000-08:00

An incredible night and an awesome spectacle. It was unbelievably fun to be part of it.

I left early as VANOC had told spectators to come early and be in our seats by 5 pm (start time was 6 pm PT) for audience rehearsal. The SkyTrain at 2 pm was as busy as I have seen the SkyTrain since I have been in Vancouver. Based on the directions in which people walked, they all weren't coming to the stadium with me. They seemed to be just heading downtown dressed in their Olympic and Canada gear.

A security line opened up just as I got there so I was their first customer. Once again, all the volunteers and security staff were cheery and chatty.

Unfortunately my seat was on the far side of the Stadium from the side where I enter from the SkyTrain. I walked all the way around and found my section and seat.

All the seats had a specially made plastic bad slung over the back with a box and a book inside. The book was a lovely, glossy, ad-free souvenir programme of the Opening Ceremonies. The box, in the form of an octagon-shaped First Nations drum contained our spectator participation kit. Inside was a light blue poncho, a drum stick (the kind to beat a drum with, not the kind you eat), a small flashlight, a small battery-operated candle, and a rolled up Canadian flag.

The video screens in the Stadium displayed messages on how to install the batteries in the devices and telling us that each section would have a coach to help us learn our parts. It was also made clear that the boxes were assigned to your seat and should not be moved or traded. In fact each box was labeled with the exact section, row and seat.

At 5 pm the pre-show started. They broke up our training into two parts with musical numbers in between. I guess they figured this was too much to learn in one session for some people.

They taught how how and when to use the flashlight and candle, how to use the bottom of our box for each section to participate in the countdown, and asked us to put on the ponchos as the spectators were to be used for the displaying of images. The seats were already light blue, so when we all put on our ponchos we disappeared except for our heads. It made for a great neutral, winter-coloured background.

It was great to be up in the nose-bleed section with regular folks who had paid to be there rather than down on the floor with folks who expected to be there. Everyone around me was excited and happy--almost giddy. When the countdown clock reached five minutes to go, there was an incredible electricity in the air.

Finally we did our 10 second countdown (pretty well if you ask me) and the show began. The programme they gave us had background information on the way the show was assembled and on each of the sections of the ceremony. Hopefully the television announcers supplied the same information.

I was a bit disappointed that O Canada was performed in such a showy arrangement that made it impossible to sing along. Everyone gave up. However, it was a nice rendition by Nikki Yanofsky and everyone loved the Mounties in their Red Serge carrying the Canadian flag.

It seemed that giving everyone a drum stick and a drum sent them all back to childhood. Everyone used their drums all night instead of clapping. I had to admit it was a lot of fun.

Hopefully, if you watched the ceremony, you heard my excellent drumming and saw my talented flashlight work.

I thought that the projected visuals were well done. It made for a very colourful spectacle.

The parade of athletes was wonderful with couples and small groups of spectators around me demonstrating their support for particular countries like the U.S., Norway, Israel, and Brazil.

Of course everyone just went nuts when the Canadian team came out last. It was a joyous, patriotic, pandemonium. My throat is still a bit sore tonight.

Overall, I thought the show was a wonderful mix of incredible visual staging effects and some legends of the Canadian music business. k d land signing Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah while we all swayed with our candles was quite a spectacle from my seat.

I also loved the fiddlers and the dancers in the fall scene and the whales swimming across the floor. The kids near me loved the whales too.

The mountain with the skiers and snowboarders was a great reference to British Columbia and cleverly done.

In the end I think everyone in town had guessed that the last torch bearer after 12,000 others would be Wayne Gretzky. Who else?

Other than the small technical glitch in the end with the cauldron, everything seemed to run well from a live spectator perspective. I hope it showed as well to the other 3.5 billion people watching as it did for the the 60,000 of us inside BC Place Stadium.

Even with the rain and the thousands of people, things moved along fairly well emptying the Stadium and taking the SkyTrain home. Everyone was leaving carrying their drums (there was a handy handle on the side.) The Salvation Army was serving hot chocolate and water in the line for the SkyTrain. I had thought about going downtown afterwards but the rain convinced me otherwise. I'll have to go see the outdoor cauldron on the waterfront this weekend.

As I sit here at the end of a very long day (I had to give a webinar at 6 am this morning), I am so thankful that I was there to see it. The colours; the images; the performances; the excitement of the athletes; the shear joy and electricity in the crowd. It is a night that I will remember forever.

Now on with the Games.

Off to the Opening Ceremonies

2010-02-12T12:47:00.000-08:00

I'm off to the Opening Ceremonies. I have my ticket, my smallest bag (to qualify me for the fast line at Mags and Bags--magnetometer and bag search), my white shirt (we were told to wear a white top), my camera, an extra camera battery, my insulin, my Canada flag, my Canada scarf, my umbrella, my trading Olympic pins, and enough enthusiasm and Canadian pride to fill the Stadium.

I'll be sitting to the left of the entrance the athletes will use; in the upper, upper northeast corner of the stadium. Be sure to watch for me on TV.

Having watched so many on television, never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that I would attend an Olympics Opening Ceremony. I hope you all enjoy the show.

The Olympic Torch Arrives in Vancouver

2010-02-11T23:16:00.000-08:00

I just don't know how much more excited this city can get. Today was a community day for me with an opportunity to twice see the Olympic torch relay.

The torch was scheduled to pass within three blocks of the house in the late afternoon after it visited City Hall, the Children's' Hospital and the RCMP Memorial. I walked out to the corner about 30 minutes before it was to go by and I couldn't believe the number of people that were there. I had seen a bit of the relay online today and it appeared that it was getting large crowds everywhere it went across Vancouver.

In our neighbourhood the crowd was decked out in red and Canada Olympic team clothing with lots of Canadian flags. There were also a tremendous number of Canadian flags on cars passing by on the street.

After the entourage vehicles went by the torch eventually rounded the corner. People clapped, cheered and waved their flags. In an instant it was over and we were all walking back to our homes.

I don't think I have mentioned how VANOC has purchased all the outdoor advertising in the greater Vancouver area for the Games period and resold it to official suppliers and sponsors. That includes the billboard on the side of our neighbourhood convenience store.

As well as all the Translink buses.

The front of the buses are sporting a different message.

On my way home I stopped to take a picture of the tree in my neighbour's yard because I thought it was a good graphic representation of the weather than we have been having. (While a conference on global warming in Washington, D.C. had to be postponed because of the snow that has fallen there this week. The CBC said this morning that the U.S. federal government was issuing a severe irony alert.)

I wolfed down dinner then took the bus and SkyTrain downtown to the LiveCity Yaletown site. This is one of the two downtown, free celebration sites sponsored by the City of Vancouver. The Yaletown site was the final stop for the torch relay tonight.

It was very busy downtown. In what will probably be the norm for events during the Games, I had to line up for about half an hour to get into the LiveCity site. Everyone had to go through a security screening with magnetometers and bag checks.

LiveCity Yaletown is the site of pavilions for some of the corporate sponsors like Acer, Panasonic, and Coca Cola. All the entertainment each night is to be family-friendly and there will be a water and light show each night.

I made it through security in time for the torch relay. The final runner of the night, a local community activist, stopped right in front of me while he was making his run. He then continued onto the stage and lit the same cauldron that I saw lit weeks ago when the torch was in Kelowna.

The torch relay staff looked happy to be done after 105 days on the road across Canada.

After singing O Canada, the show ended with a spectacular show of fireworks, water canons and search lights set to music. Lots of applause.

On my first experience with mass crowd movement to public transportation, everything worked exceptionally well. Lines were stretched around and through the SkyTrain station to keep people from getting bunched up. They only let as many people down onto the platform as could fit onto the train. On the street there were blue coated volunteers barking out directional instructions with megaphones from atop lifeguard chairs. It was all well done and trains ran on schedule. We'll see if they can do as well tomorrow night for the Opening Ceremonies.

So after six years and seven months of planning and preparation, the Games begin tomorrow. I feel like I did when I was a little boy, waiting for Christmas morning. Just one more sleep.

Vancouver 2010 Logo

2010-02-11T14:09:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to write this entry for a while. For those of you outside of Canada that may not have had as much exposure to the logo for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games I wanted to provide some background. (NBC, of course, has their own logo which probably gives them more flexibility as the rules for using the official VANOC one are pretty strict. The picture below is from a t-shirt that I own as I am not supposed to use official VANOC images.)

Here in the words of Elena Rivera MacGregor, the head of the firm that designed the logo that won the competition, is the description of "Ilanaaq":

"As Canadians we are known around the world for our friendliness. It's a characteristic that may be related to the centuries-old tradition of dealing with a harsh, often unforgiving climate and landscape. We have always needed the help of others in order to live in this country, and, while there is definitely a core of rugged individualism, it's tempered by a sense of friendliness and communal spirit that represents the very best of Canadian values.

We are proud of our sense of community, which can be seen in the humanity and spirit of people such as Terry Fox and in the overwhelming response when a child goes missing or when Haitians need help.

The Inukshuk (pronounced ih-nook-suuk) mirrors this Canadian spirit of friendship and community. There are many kinds of Inuksuit (plural for Inukshuk), and they mean different things depending on how and where they are built. Traditionally, they were used by the Inuit in the north as directional markers. An Inukshuk in the shape of a person signifies safety, hope, and friendship. These stone sculptures were also important for navigation, as a point of reference, as a marker for hunting grounds or to denote a food cache. They are visible in snowy conditions, can endure extreme weather and, ultimately, can help people survive.

The skill of building an Inukshuk was passed down from one generation to the next, with each Inukshuk having a specific purpose and meaning. Initially they were used mainly for navigation, e.g., to point the way to a good fishing spot or the closest village where a traveller might find shelter, but they later evolved to have symbolic spiritual uses, marking places of decision-making, worship, and celebration.

Inuksuit have been transformed into a symbol of hope and friendship that transcends borders to reach people all over the world. Inuksuit have become a universal symbol of friendship, and this is why we named our entry "Ilanaaq" (pronounced ee-la-nak) -- friend in Inuktitut -- and it became the basis for the 2010 Winter Olympics logo.

The Inukshuk conveys our basic human warmth and friendliness as Canadians and provides a fantastic symbol for the Friendship Games, not only for the visitors who will be arriving, but also to remind us of the values that make Canada a truly great place to live."

Dress Rehearsal #2

2010-02-11T00:18:00.000-08:00

Boy do I have a great job. It was back to drizzly and cooler weather today but I get to work indoors with a great group of people doing a challenging and fun job.

Tonight we had the second dress rehearsal at the Stadium. All volunteers were given a free ticket and could buy extra tickets for $50. I worked the late shift so I could enjoy all the fun. (Once again I am writing this on my BlackBerry at the SkyTrain station waiting for my bus home.)

I feel a sense of pride when I wear my uniform in public. (Of course at work the building is teeming with people all dressed the same.) People seem to gravitate towards those of us in blue Olympic uniforms. On the way to work this morning I enjoyed a conversation with a Vancouverite whose son plays hockey in Penticton near Kelowna where I live. We had a good conversation about the Games. He has speed skating tickets at the Richmond Oval. I am jealous.

On my way to the SkyTrain tonight I was stopped and asked for directions--and I could do it! Now I know I belong when I can help others with directions and public transportation information in Vancouver.

When I checked in at the Stadium this afternoon the same lady from Monday was there and recognized me--at least she knew where I worked. I stayed about five minutes talking with the Workforce check in people as they are so friendly, bubbly and funny. They were out of day three treats today (next time) but they guaranteed me that they were not gold medal hockey tickets. Darn.

Everyone I meet on venue from the check in people to the food services people to the police officers who are everywhere to the security guards as we leave at night are all so happy and friendly. It is like we have all drunk the Kool Aid.

During today's shift things were pretty hectic. With more people in the stadium we had more cleaning issues (paper towels empty; toilet paper empty; nachos spilled; trash cans overflowing) and more medical issues. At one time we had three medical calls going on at the same time. Medical calls also required ambulances to be deployed and moved around. Lots of fun on the radios.

Of course more people attending the event also meant more people moving issues during ingress and egress. (Notice how I can use my new vocabulary.)

My call group was very busy but I managed to handle most of it. I even earned a gold star from not just my boss but my boss's boss. Of course after that the others just made fun of me.

We even had some new people on board today who had to learn the hard way and just dive in. I met one of them at check in. He was here with a large group from Canadian Pacific. He was nice enough to give me a Canadian Pacific Olympic pin for my collection.

On the television we watched the Olympic News Channel. Who knew there was such a thing. We also now have a selection of special channels that broadcast scenic camera views from around Vancouver and Whistler. They are called the beauty cams.

It was a long shift. By the last few hours we were applauding the resolution of a bloody nose and laughing about a report of a washroom wall leaking water. By the end of the night we were all doing the wave around the table.

Friday will likely be the busiest of days at the Venue Communications Centre (VCC) with the Opening Ceremonies. Fortunately I don't have to work because I have a ticket. I'll be the one calling the VCC with a nose bleed from my seat in the nose bleed section.

I left tonight on a high with my gold star shining on the back of my hand. On my walk to the SkyTrain I can see the moving lights of the Vectorial Elevations display shining on the clouds. Sigh, this is such fun.

Incredible Drawings

2010-02-09T22:23:00.000-08:00

Today was a day off so I headed downtown to see something I had been waiting for.

Like all Olympic host cities, Vancouver is hosting a Cultural Olympiad in addition to the Olympic Games. There are hundreds of live performances, exhibits, and digital artwork presentations scheduled. Some events have already begun but the calendar for the Games weeks is really full. There was one particular exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery that I wanted to see.

Years ago when Vancouver was awarded the Games, the Vancouver Art Gallery decided they wanted to stage a show to complement the Games. Rather than focusing on sports and athletics, they decided to focus on the human body. They wrote to HRH Queen Elizabeth II and asked if they could borrow some of her collection to exhibit. The Queen has always been fond of Canada (or so we Canadians are told) so she agreed.

The exhibit is "Leonardo Da Vinci: The Mechanics of Man." It is a series of manuscript pages hand-drawn and hand-written by Leonardo in 1510-1511. This exhibit in Vancouver is the first time that all the pages have been shown at one time.

As an artist and a scientist, Leonardo was apparently planning to author a definitive book on human anatomy. In preparation, he performed detailed dissections of human bodies and created exquisite drawings and notes on the human structure.

Most of the pages in the exhibit were about the size of a regular 8.5 x 11 inch piece of paper with notes and drawings on both sides. They were written on an animal-based paper rather than a tree-based paper which has helped with their preservation.

The pages are an incredible combination of large and small detailed drawings with notes written all over the page. Leonardo wrote all his notes in mirror image. Apparently as a left hander, he found this easier. Some of these pictures are so detailed and accurate that they are still used today for studying anatomy. One page includes the first accurate drawing of the spine, showing the neck, back and tail components drawn with the accurate spinal curve.

In the drawings he pioneered the used of exploded pictures to show how things fit together and rotation series to show the same object rotated on an axis with a drawing from all sides. Some of the pages were reproduced on the walls with translations of the text. It explained in detail how the muscles and tendons worked and was written as instructions on how to write the book.

It was amazing to be able to stand within six inches of these pages and see the incredible detail--knowing that they were hand-drawn 500 years ago by such a brilliant man. It reminded me of the examples of his brilliance I saw in Florence last year. Even on a Tuesday afternoon the exhibit was quite busy.

On the front of the Art Gallery is an enormous hand painted mural by Michael Lin using patterns based on traditional Taiwanese textiles.

After the Art Gallery I wandered around downtown to see the sites.

The countdown clock in front of the Art Gallery which has been running for years is almost done.

In front of the Art Gallery this reporter from Belarus was interviewing some Canadians.

This young athlete from New Zealand was walking down the sidewalk in front of me. His jacket, backpack and shoes looked like he had just unwrapped them today. It is easy to spot athletes in their uniforms.

At the Hudson's Bay store, in addition to the Olympic Superstore of Vancouver 2010 souvenirs, there is a shop upstairs that sells "team wear" from other participating countries. Russia had a large shop that was also filled with clothing for the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi.

The local CTV station (the host broadcaster) was busy finishing their outdoor studio to move their newscast out onto Robson Street.

Olympic directional signs have been installed at street corners.

And if the signs don't work, just ask one of the helpful volunteers wearing the yellow sleeve indicating that they are ready to provide information.

I had lunch at the Yaletown Brewpub. They were ready to start tallying Canada's medal haul.

There are flags everywhere. Vancouver's largest flag store (not this one) had their busiest month ever in January. They made and sold over 100,000 flags.

Despite all the roads that are closed downtown around venues and pavilions, and the fact that the Olympic Lanes are now in effect (VANOC vehicles and buses only) traffic has been moving relatively well so far.

On my way home on the bus a woman that works for the City of Vancouver told a few of us that she was carrying the Olympic torch on Friday when it will be in downtown Vancouver. She is not passing it off to Arnold Schwarzenegger (yes, he is also carrying the torch on Friday morning--don't ask me why) but she is passing it off to Rolly Fox the father of Terry Fox. (Terry Fox was a teenager from British Columbia who started a cross-Canada run to raise money for cancer research running with one prosthetic leg. He was forced to stop half-way across the country when his cancer returned. He died less than a year later. He is considered one of Canada's greatest heroes and is celebrated internationally every September as people participate in the Terry Fox Run, the world's largest one-day fundraiser for cancer research.) She was very excited about participating in the run and getting to meet Mr. Fox.

The torch relay goes through my neighbourhood on Thursday. I hope to be able to see it again. The crowds to see the torch in and around Vancouver have been large.

Well with just two Olympic volunteer shirts and after two Olympic volunteer days, tonight is Olympic laundry night. I'm sure I'll get a gold.

Dress Rehearsal #1

2010-02-09T00:25:00.000-08:00

My shift at the Stadium Venue Communications Centre (VCC) didn't start until 3:30 pm today so I had the kind of Monday morning I never get: I slept in: I cooked bacon and eggs; I walked to Starbucks, the bank, and the bakery; I called my parents; and I had lunch (with a bit of e-mail tossed in).

I hopped on the bus and SkyTrain to the Stadium. The Workforce check in lady was just as bubbly as yesterday. Can they keep this up for the entire Games?

Scheduled for tonight was the first dress rehearsal of the Opening Ceremonies with about 20,000 relatives of the performers attending for free. It not only gave the performers a chance to practice in the Stadium in sequence for Friday but it gave the rest of us who work in the BOH (back of house) a chance to practice moving people in and out and taking care of them.

Although the gates did not open until 4 p.m. there were already spectators lined up to get in when I arrived at the Workforce check in at 3 p.m.

When I walked into the VCC room I could not believe what I saw. The room in which just four of us with two managers worked yesterday now had 16 people and two managers in it. It was a tad warmer and louder than yesterday.

One of our managers had started referring to us as Smurfs--for obvious reasons when you see us together as a large group.

I watched for a half hour while the first shift ended their day and had a debriefing. It sounded like the morning had been pretty busy and now with the gates about to open things were hopping.

We were lucky to have a dedicated medical dispatcher with us to take care of all the medical issues. Because she normally works as staff at BC Place Stadium, she was a great asset to call on.

We also had dedicated folks with us from Event Services (EVS)--the people that are hosts and take care of the spectators needs in the Stadium. The EVS supervisor was from Greece and had previously worked at the Athens and Torino Olympic Games.

Some of the more "interesting" issues we dealt with and events that happened in my seven hour shift:

I learned a new term. The tunnels in the Stadium between sections out of which spectators pour into the concourse at the end of an event (or during an event) are call vomitories. I kid you not. Let that image sit in your mind for a minute or two. As used in a sentence overheard today: "Please close the curtains on all the vomitories on level 2."
We dealt with food and beverage issues. A cooler full of Vitamin water was left unlocked to that spectators could just help themselves. We were asked to find out if this is the way it was supposed to be.
One of the performers left a prop on a stairwell briefly and it was taken by security. Could we get it back for her?
I learned that an IPP is an International Person of Priority. In other words, do what they want.
Event Services monitored the flow of people arriving at the Stadium and how quickly they were flowing through security. They deployed people to redirect the crowds to alternate entrances when the need arose. Just like using valves to control the flow of water through pipes.
On the TV we watched the Olympic Torch move through the Vancouver suburb of Surrey.
We were asked to please have more hand towels sent to a particular women's washroom.
A senior citizen was lost. We followed proper protocol for such an incident and it ended happily ever after with a family reunion. The VCC room applauded the news.
We had intoxicated spectators. A hostess at dinner told us that her section was quite a handful.
More vocabulary expansion: spectators don't arrive and depart, they ingress and egress.
There was a raccoon reported within the secure zone. This led to a discussion on the ferociousness of urban raccoons.
There was a dress rehearsal of the fireworks outside our window. Oooo. Ahhhh.
The folks from Urban Domain tracked the lineups and wait times at all the SkyTrain stations around the Stadium. Things moved relatively well. Again people were redirected from one station to another.
After the nightly managers' meeting our VCC manager told us that the team, which has a number of folks who worked in 2002 in Salt Lake City, felt much farther ahead with four days to go than the crew had been in Salt Lake City.

Now on Wednesday we have Dress Rehearsal #2 with a full house--about three times as many spectators. Did we learn a lot today? We sure did.

Again we had a great, fun team. We still had time to talk and bond and share stories about our lives. Everyone is pretty pumped about what we are doing and the great show that is about to start.

I think I am very fortunate to be working where I am.

(Colophon: Most of this was typed on my BlackBerry as I stood on the street at the SkyTrain station waiting for my bus. Isn't technology grand?)

Australia 1, IOC 0

2010-02-08T09:10:00.000-08:00

The International Olympic Committee has backed down and will allow Australia to continue to hang their boxing kangaroo banner from their building at the Olympic Village.

Given that there was absolutely no public or athlete support for the IOC position it was a wise move on their part. Why start something now when, if past games are any indication, there are bound to be more important issues to deal with during the games.

The Village is at peace again.

Work Day One -- Five Days to Opening

2010-02-07T22:45:00.000-08:00

So today was a great first day at work. At the end of the day after we had closed down the VCC (Venue Communications Centre) my deputy manager even told me what a great job I had done and that my broadcasts had been clear and well done. I think I'm going to like her.

As it was Sunday, I had to take the first #49 bus this morning to get to the Stadium and get checked in by my 8:15 a.m. start--or so I thought. There was no traffic. I was plenty early.

At security I had trouble at the magnatometer as they did not ask me to remove my jacket like at the airport. Of course with a hundred different pockets in this practical Olympic volunteer jacket the hundreds of zippers set off the alarm and I had to be wanded. Tomorrow I'm sending my jacket through the x-ray with my knapsack.

At checkin I was welcomed by a smiling woman who told me that I was the first workforce member that she had checked in as this was her first day too. She gave me a shift card to record when I work, my meal ticket, and the daily Stadium newsletter The Stadium Star. Cute. (The poor person who has to find enough news at the Stadium to fill a newsletter every day.)

Every day Workforce checkin will mark my attendance card. Certain milestones days like day three are marked as days when they will have thank you gifts for the volunteers. We are hoping they will be gold medal hockey tickets.

Coke had a mountain of Dasani bottles at checkin. We were told to help ourselves.

I made my way to the VCC and met the manager and three of my colleagues. Our manager is from Boston (he did the same job in Salt Lake City in 2002), our deputy manager is from Vancouver, and my colleagues for today were from North Vancouver, Peterborough Ontario, and Columbus Ohio.

The woman from Columbus is a junior Olympic groupie as she volunteered at the last Winter Olympics in Torino Italy. She brought pictures to share of the 2006 volunteer uniforms and the athletes' village where she worked. (In 2002 they gave the volunteers shoes!)

Everyone was interesting to talk to. The VCC is a great environment for talking and bonding as we manage our talk groups around a large board table.

Today was a relatively slow day. Most of the morning was quiet as there was an evacuation drill at the Stadium. I wish there had been more time to practice my radio talk and protocol before tomorrow which we have been warned will be busy as it is the first of the two dress rehearsals for the Opening Ceremonies.

As the Security Command Centre is located in our building there were always dozens and dozens of police officers around. They have gathered police from all across Canada to help the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) and the Vancouver Police. In the lunch room today, not only was I surrounded by police officers from Ottawa, Trenton, Chatham, Toronto (all in Ontario) and Montreal but I have never been in a room with so many guns in my life. No one is gonna fool around with our building.

Lunch was good with a choice of soups and fresh sandwiches. They had lasagna on the menu for dinner. Brand new upright coolers full of every Coca-Cola product you can imagine were part of the service.

In the middle of the afternoon we received a call that there had been a spill over in the Stadium and the SCW folks (Snow, Cleaning & Waste--oh the acronyms!) were looking for volunteers to help. Our deputy manager asked if anyone wanted to go over and help. Since the VCC was relatively quiet (except for the Super Bowl playing on our brand new plasma HD TV from Panasonic -- thank you Panasonic, an official supplier to the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games) four of us put on our jackets and proceeded across the street to the Stadium.

After signing in we took the elevator to the fourth level. On the way up we were with were two guys wearing Bell Canada jackets speaking Russian with a very thick Russian accent. Not quite what we would expect from Bell Canada. We asked them where they were from and--surprise--they said "Russia." So now we had to learn their whole story. It turns out they are from the telecommunications company in Russia that will supply telecom services in Sochi for the 2014 Winter Olympics. They are here to work with the Bell Canada team to learn how to help put on an Olympics. Cool.

So we spent a couple of hours inside the bowl of the Stadium helping with clean-up. It was very exciting. Unfortunately my confidentiality agreement prohibits me from telling you what I saw or what we cleaned up in the Stadium until after Friday. However, what I can tell you is, they have done lots of work in the Stadium, it looks fantastic and the Opening Ceremonies are going to be a blast. Being able to have the ceremonies indoors for the first time gives them lots of opportunities to use technologies that could not be used outdoors. Of course, while the Olympic torch will be run into the Stadium on Friday and used to light something inside, the Olympic flame must also burn outside so that all the city can see it. How are they going to do that? Stay tuned.

After work I walked with one of my colleagues down Pacific Avenue through Yaletown to the Burrard Street Bridge. She was crossing the bridge to Kipsilano where she is staying but I wanted to see the Vectorial Elevation lights in person. (This is the light show I programmed the other night.) There was a low cloud cover this evening so the light show was fantastic. It is like the fountains in front of the Belagio Hotel in Las Vegas; you want to just stand there and watch. Of course when you know the technology that someone somewhere in the world used the Internet to program the lights to move that way it is even more amazing.

As we walked through Yaletown I was amazed to see that people had the Olympic rings in lights on the balconies of their condos. Oh the spirit!

The last thing I saw downtown this evening as I was about to descend into the SkyTrain station was a woman standing on the sidewalk a block away from the huge Canadian flag that is wrapped on the old Hotel Georgia (see a previous post) proudly holding up her full sized Norwegian flag so that her partner could take her picture with the huge Canadian flag in the background. The world has arrived.

P.S. Thanks to everyone who has left comments on my blog and sent e-mails with comments and best wishes. It is wonderful to hear from everyone and makes it more of a joy to share my experiences. Keep the cards and letters coming.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It's Off To Work I Go

2010-02-06T20:54:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is my first shift down at the Stadium. I need to be on the first bus that leaves my neighbourhood in the morning. Now that my pants are back from being hemmed by the tailor, I am all set. Wish me luck.

Inside look.

Outside look.

Around back. (The Olympic rings aren't illuminated like the Apple logo on a MacBook. It is reflective material that caught the flash from the camera. I knew you would ask.)

Some of the World Has Arrived

2010-02-06T20:42:00.000-08:00

Another beautiful and mild day in Vancouver. All of our snow is falling in Washington D.C.

This morning I went to the University of British Columbia to see the Museum of Anthropology and its First Nations artwork. More about that on another day.

This afternoon I took the SkyTrain downtown to see what has changed this week and to get a glimpse of the Athletes Village.

The Athletes Village was built on an old, undeveloped area of land on False Creek across from the Stadium. It is a series of medium height highrises with low rise support buildings. After the Games, they will be sold as condominiums with a decent percentage reserved for low-income tenants. They are in a very desirable part of town along the water and served by a new SkyTrain station. This was as close as I could get because of the security fences, The flags of the participating nations are flying out front.

This is one of the original buildings from the site which was retained and renovated into the Salt House which is the athletes living room. It contains places to relax, play games, and hang out.

The Village will accommodate 3,000 athletes and officials from 80 countries in 1,100 units. The food people are planning to serve over 10,000 meals each day.

The buildings were all built to LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) gold and even the rare platinum level as part of VANOC's mission to hold a green Olympics.

This is the view the athletes will have from the Village across False Creek to the city with the coastal mountains in the background.

As part of the hospitality for the athletes, students in British Columbia high schools wrote notes to the athletes. Every four days each athlete will receive a new note of welcome and encouragement from a BC student.

It seems pretty obvious that this is the building in which the Canadian athletes are staying.

The Swiss have taken over floors in this building (at least the balconies.)

And this building has been the subject of a great deal of controversy most of this week. When the Aussies moved in on Monday they put up this large boxing kangaroo as a motivating symbol for their team. The International Olympic Committee has told them to take it down as it is not the country's flag and is apparently a copyrighted banner. So far the Australian delegation has refused and the Australian Deputy Prime Minister said in the press that there was no way it was coming down. There were tons of people taking pictures of it today.

I then walked across the bridge to downtown. At BC Place Stadium, the security gates and waiting areas looked ready to welcome spectators on Friday for the Opening Ceremonies. The tent on the right is where I will check in for work each day.

After the Games, BC Place Stadium is being closed for more than a year for the installation of a new retractable roof to replace the current inflated roof.

This is the Plaza of Nations Building in which the Venue Communications Centre for the Stadium will be located and where I will be working starting tomorrow.

At the end of False Creek between the Stadium and the Athletes Village in Science World. It is normally an interactive science museum, but for this month it has been taken over by the Russians and has been renamed Sochi House in honour of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi Russia.

Beside BC Place Stadium is General Motors Place, the home of the Vancouver Canucks hockey team. The Canucks were sent away last week on a road trip that lasts until March so that GM Place could be used for Olympic hockey. Even though General Motors is an official Olympic sponsor, Olympic venues cannot bear corporate monikers so it has been temporarily renamed Canada Hockey Place. Its location right beside the Stadium causes interesting complications for crowd movement and security. We have been warned in the Communications Centre that it will make our lives interesting.

There were huge crowds of people downtown. I saw athletes from the Czech Republic, China, and Russia shopping in downtown stores. Although there are less than seven days until the opening, there were still plenty of saws buzzing and workers hard at work at pavilions across the downtown area.

These new directional signs were put up this week to help people find their way through the closed streets to the venues.

And more and more Olympic colour keeps appearing.

Welcome signs in languages of the participating countries have been put up on lamp posts all over downtown.

This is the new expansion of the Vancouver Convention Centre which for the Olympics is the International Broadcast Centre. It is located on Burrard Inlet and looks across at North Vancouver. It should make for a spectacular backdrop for television broadcasts. (Once again I had to take the picture through a break in the security fence.)

Across from the International Broadcast Centre is a brand new Fairmont hotel that is opening this week to a sell out. It is a fascinating building as it has a poem wrapped around the balconies on many of the floors.

For Lori Wood, a picture of the new W at the Woodwards redevelopment on the East side.

On my way back to the SkyTrain I encountered this building on Hastings Street. I don't know what it is normally, but it has now been relabeled as "The Olympic Club." It is flying the Olympic flag over the door. It appears that those folks know to live the good life. I don't think that this is one of the free, welcoming pavilions for the rest of us.

While it was a busy day downtown today, I'm sure that it will continue to get busier each day this week as more of the athletes arrive and more visitors arrive. There are lots of visitors here already as I was asked three times to take peoples' pictures in front of Olympic locations.

There was an excitement in the air downtown with lots of people uncharacteristically wearing their Canadian gear and lots of flags hung on condominium balconies. It all adds to the new colour of the city.

Security

2010-02-05T20:25:00.000-08:00

My visit to the Richmond Olympic Oval was my first up close view of external venue security. When I was last at BC Place Stadium where I will be working, the venue was not yet secure and all the measures were not yet in place. By the time I start work on Sunday the stadium will have been swept and secured so I will experience the security system on my first shift.

The entire Richmond Olympic Oval is surrounded by a double fencing system. The first fence is a line of portable Jersey walls topped with a tall chain link fence. Fortunately VANOC has covered all of these fences with Vancouver 2010 wrappers. About fifteen feet inside the first fence is a second chain link fence. In the "no mans land" between the fences are camera polls every few hundred feet. The set up reminds me a bit of the eastern side of the Berlin wall.

There are now 1,000 temporary cameras around Vancouver watching the venues and streets.

Before spectators and volunteers can enter a venue they must walk through a magnetometer just like at the airport and large bags must be x-rayed or searched. Those of us with tickets to the opening ceremonies have been told that the gates and security will open four hours before the event to ensure that there is time to screen everyone. Spectators have been told not to bring drinks including water to events and the Spectators' Guide contains a long list of banned items.

A good business to be in around here is renting white tents. Since venue facilities are not designed to handle this security equipment and the space required, all the security screening is taking place in white tents (with Vancouver 2010 designs on the peak ends). There seem to be small cities of these tents around town.

On my walk around the Richmond Olympic Oval, I saw another sign of the $900 million security effort. All of the manholes on the roads surrounding the venue had been bolted shut.

Vancouver's location provides some interesting challenges. With water on one or more sides of the athletes village, the International Broadcast Center and the Press Centre, buoys and log booms have been put in place to keep boats from getting anywhere near these facilities. Police boats are also on constant patrol.

I'm sure by next Friday and the opening ceremonies, all of Vancouver will be familiar with the security measures. Hopefully the security won't get in the way of all of us enjoying our events and having a memorable time.

The Richmond Olympic Oval

2010-02-05T19:50:00.000-08:00

Many of the venues for events like hockey, figure skating, alpine skiing and snowboarding are using facilities that already existed in Vancouver and Whistler. However, VANOC needed to construct new facilities for sledding, ski jumping and speed skating.

Speed skating will be taking place in the Vancouver suburb of Richmond at the new Richmond Olympic Oval (the ROO.) Everyone has been raving about the building and since I have been unable (so far) to secure reasonably-priced tickets to a speed-skating event I thought I would go have a look the other day.

The ROO is built in a lovely location on the banks of the Fraser River just south of the Vancouver International Airport. It is a huge facility that today houses the large speed skating oval but will be converted into a regional recreation facility after the Games. It will still be able to be used as a competitive speed skating facility for future events.

The sign outside said that the building was large enough to contain four 747 jets parked wing tip to wing tip.

It has received several international design awards particularly for the innovative use of wood for the roof. The beams and wood on the ceiling were made from trees killed by the mountain pine beetle infestation that has be plaguing the forests of British Columbia for several years.

The story from the athletes is that the ice is slow due to the lack of elevation and the closeness to the sea. It means is that skaters get less glide when they skate--an advantage for those with shorter legs able to get in more short strides. We'll see what happens in the competition.

Unfortunately due to the security perimeter I was unable to get too close to the building. I had to push my camera through breaks in the fence to get pictures. As a lasting legacy of the Games it will be a beautiful building when the fencing comes down.

Interactive Art

2010-02-04T20:43:00.000-08:00

As part of the Cultural Olympiad--the arts festival that accompanies the Olympic Games--tonight was the opening for a display called Vectorial Elevation. This is how it is described on the web site:

Vectorial Elevation is an interactive artwork that allows participants to transform the sky over Vancouver, Canada. Using a three-dimensional interface, this web site lets you design huge light sculptures by directing 20 robotic searchlights located around English Bay. A web page is made for each participant with photos of their design from four cameras located around the city.

I just had to try it. So this evening I went to the web site and used a visual interface to move the lights and see what it would look like from various vantage points around Vancouver. It wasn't quite as easy as good old Spirograph.

After I submitted my design I was put in the queue. I called my wife and we both watched live on the web site as my arrangement of the lights was displayed over English bay for my 12 seconds of fame.

As a souvenir of my artistic talent, I was e-mailed a web page that shows my work in both photographs and graphic renderings. My incredible work is found at www.vectorialvancouver.net/archive.php?id=153 and you can make your own contribution to the work of art at www.vectorialvancouver.net.

After one of my shifts on the weekend I'm going to walk over to English Bay and see it in person. Do you suppose they could rewind to my 12 seconds?

SUN!

2010-02-04T20:24:00.000-08:00

Today was the first sunny day in the week and a half that I have been in Vancouver. I was going to try to catch up on e-mail but I decided it was just too nice to be inside. I went Granville Island.

To get there I took public transit. Of the large cities in North America, Vancouver has the lowest rate of automobile commuting. Since my Olympic accreditation lets me ride the transit system for free, I decided to join the rest of the city in a car-less trip.

I caught the bus in my neighbourhood (I just flashed my Olympic accreditation to the driver) that makes a short trip to the new Canada Line Skytrain. The Skytrain in Vancouver is a driverless rail system of relatively short trains--about half the length of subway trains you might be used to in New York, Washington D.C., or Toronto. (Yes, the woman in the front of the train reading the newspaper is not driving.) Much of the system outside of downtown Vancouver runs on elevated track down existing road and rail rights-of-way. The Canada Line is a new line and was built for the Olympics. It runs from the airport to downtown connecting there with the other Skytrain lines and the Seabus. Like in Atlanta and Washington D.C. it is so smart to have a rail system serve the airport.

At the Olympic Village station I transfered to my third form of public transportation--a light rail system. To prove that there is a unique way to sell everything, Bombardier, with the cooperation of the City of Vancouver, has installed a temporary light rail system connecting the Canada Line Skytrain and the Olympic Village to Granville Island. (Bombardier is the Canadian company that makes the Canadair jets as well as light rail and subway rolling stock for systems like New York City.) They brought the trains all the way from Brussels, Belgium to run them as a free trial for the Olympics. They hope that Vancouverites (and the city) will fall in love with them and want to keep them and expand the system. They are nice trains and make it easy for people to get to Granville Island which will be a busy place during the Games.

Granville Island is sort of an island in False Creek on the western side of downtown. It is a delightful collection of older industrial buildings with character that have been converted into retail shops, theatres, restaurants, food shops, and an indoor market. Starting today the free parking on the island ended for the duration of the games so I suspect the light rail system will be busy. You can also access the island from downtown by taking a small water taxi. It is a lovely setting surrounded by water, boats and the city. The Granville Street bridge sails way over your head.

The market was rather quiet on a Thursday morning. I stocked up on food for the next few days.

The restaurant on the island called Bridges (I kid you not--look on the awnings) has been taken over by Switzerland and the Swiss Broadcasting Company for the Games and will be operating as Swiss House. Think chocolate and cheese. Apparently their plans are to sail Swiss medal winners down False Creek from receiving their medals at the Stadium to Swiss House for a celebration.

It was a great day to be outside and do something that all visitors to Vancouver should experience.

Public Participation in the Look of the Games

2010-02-04T13:35:00.000-08:00

On the side of the Molson Brewery building in Vancouver they have installed a huge 4,000 square foot photo mosaic poster that is made up of over 13,000 Team Canada fans who last year uploaded photos of themselves cheering on Team Canada.

Closeup of the some of the photos making up the mosaic image.

The Look of the Games

2010-02-03T22:49:00.000-08:00

On my travels around Vancouver, I have been amazed at how the city has been "dressed" by the look of the Games. The visual designs for Vancouver 2010 were created by the VANOC Brand and Creative Services team which was led by a fellow from Spain who moved to Vancouver in 2005 after falling in love with the city while he was on his honeymoon. Unfortunately after leading the team to create amazing ideas and designs for the Games, he died suddenly last August. His team has done a tremendous job implementing his vision.

VANOC describes the look this way:
Inspired by the dynamic energy of Vancouver, Whistler and Canada, Vancouver 2010 imagery creates a space where nature and culture transform and grow — like the power, speed and spirit of the athletes. Design representations of water and vegetation are incorporated frequently and serve as a symbol of nature’s nourishing and rejuvenating powers. Emotive, dynamic athlete imagery captures the heroism and beauty of sport. The Vancouver 2010 imagery is progressive and youthful, conveying Canada’s personality and adventurous spirit.

Where have I seen it? Everywhere is seems.

There are 6,000 banners hanging from street lamps across the city--even in my neighbourhood.

GM donated thousands of vehicles for VANOC use which are seen everywhere these days and are decorated with the visual imagery.

An Air Canada hangar near the entrance to the Vancouver International Airport has a huge snowboarder on it.

At the Richmond Olympic Oval (for speedskating), the imagery is used on both the security fencing in the foreground and on the windows of the building. The broadcasting folks asked to have the huge windows blacked out for optimal television coverage so the Olympics imagery did the trick.

Every barrier to move people in the right direction has been decorated.

And buildings downtown are wrapped like this one with a freestyle skier ...

and this one with the mascots.

While not the official Games visual design, the Hudson's Bay Company store--home of the Olympics Superstore--has been wrapped with Canadian athletes and welcome messages.

And this hotel under renovation has been wrapped with the world's largest Canadian flag.

The venues, of course, will also feature the visual design. More about those when I see some of them during the Games.

You can pretty much look in any direction in downtown Vancouver and not forget what is about to start on the 12th.

On Location

2010-02-03T13:19:00.000-08:00

As if I needed any more confirmation that I am actually in Vancouver (or is it L.A.?) there are two production companies filming on location in my little neighbourhood today. This one was at a United Church about three blocks from my house. It was CBS Television Studios filming for an episode of Life Unexpected which currently airs on The CW. While I was walking by on my way to get milk, the woman on the sidewalk by the church called out the classic "Rolling. Quiet on the set." Life stopped Unexpectedly.

Dressing the Part

2010-02-02T16:43:00.000-08:00

Today was my uniform and accreditation day. When the VANOC web site for volunteers invited me to book a day and time for this months ago I thought the first hour of the day could be smart as there would be few lines. Good move on my part.

Once again, as has been my consistent pattern when having to travel around Vancouver and be somewhere at an appointed hour, I was seriously early. So once again, I went to the neighbourhood Starbucks for my morning coffee and to do e-mail.

Even the Starbucks stores in Vancouver are in the Olympics spirit. The stores are decorated with international "Welcome" signs and I overheard two baristas today say that during the Games they would be wearing special Olympics shirts. Now if only the coffee was free for volunteers.

Today I had to travel to the VANOC Uniform and Accreditation Centre. In my instructions I was told to drive if I could as there would be lots of stuff to take home. The centre was located in a hockey rink (how Canadian!) at the Pacific National Exhibition grounds in the same building where I had my first Olympic volunteer training back in the fall of 2008. Of course the ice was out and the building was set up to efficiently process thousands of people. It was apparent that my arriving early was smart as there were ropes set up for long queues at the various stations through the building but there was no waiting this morning.

As with most of my VANOC experiences so far, it was all well run by lots of cheery, smiling people (today again, primarily middle-aged women.) VANOC must have learned from Disney how to move and process people efficiently. There were coloured lines on the floor. "Follow the red line for accreditation and the yellow line for uniform." It was kind of like the current TV ads for Fidelity Investments.

The first station was for check-in. Using my passport I was located in "the computer" and my identity was verified. The RCMP had performed by security check back in the fall of 2008. I was given a numbered form and sent off to the cameras. Much like today's passport photos, no smiling was allowed. After having my grim photo taken I was off to the printing and laminating station where my accreditation card was printed, laminated and attached to my lanyard. These cards are huge. It is like wearing a billboard around your neck. Unfortunately it needs to be highly visible and convey a great deal of information about the venues and areas to which you are allowed to have access. I will get over it because my accreditation now allows me to ride the buses and SkyTrain in Vancouver for FREE. Now it was off to wardrobe.

At the next station I was told to take a number like at the butcher but I only had to wait for 30 seconds. My number was called and I was escorted into the "shopping" area and was introduced to my personal shopper Mimi. Sizing me up and down, Mimi ushered me into one of the dozens of changing rooms in the area and proceeded to hand me a stack of clothes to try on. I guess by now Mimi has seen all body types and sizes and is getting good at her job as her selections for me were pretty good. If I needed to try something else, I just asked and Mimi got it for me. She also knew the ins and outs of the uniform and made helpful suggestions. These were just samples that I was trying on. At the end, when Mimi was satisfied with my size choices she filled out a form with my sizes for each item and I was off to the "warehouse" area.

In the warehouse, I handed my form to a very friendly lady and she proceeded to fill my custom order. Behind her were racks and shelves full of pants, shorts, vests and jackets. First she opened a large, reusable Vancouver 2010 tote bag to hold my stuff. (My instructions for today had told me not to bother bringing a bag.) As she was the motherly type and I guess after having lived for a week on my own I obviously look like I need some mothering, she proceeded to make lots of useful suggestions on washing and caring for my uniform--much based on her own experience with her uniform. "It's so easy to just throw the shirt in the wash when you get home." The last item added to my bag was my Welcome Kit.

Following the line once more I was directed to the next station where a woman was standing at what appeared to be a checkout computer. She proceeded to unpack my just-packed bag and scan the bar codes on everything. Had VANOC changed their mind about giving volunteers a free uniform? Obviously the checkout lady had heard the question about a thousand times before since she answered my question before I could ask it. "It is just for inventory control." My bag packed again I was off back on the line.

As I was approaching the exit, a nice young man (for a change) greeted me with "Bonjour" as I passed. I responded with "Bonjour" which caused him to reply, "Parlez-vous français?" It turns out he was there to give out "Bonjour" buttons to be worn on the uniform of bilingual (speak both English and French) volunteers. I explained to him that while I had lived in Ottawa for many years my French was from back in high school. It turns out he went to school in Ottawa so that led us into a volunteer to volunteer discussion on Ottawa and French-immersion education. Everyone is so friendly here!

My last stop was at the Official Merchandise counter where I purchased an official Vancouver 2010 knapsack. They have warned us at training that we should not bring personal things to work as there is no place to store them. A backpack, as it has a zipper, has been recommended. HOWEVER, like everything you wear and use while volunteering, it cannot display the label of any company that is not an official Olympic sponsor. Rather than trying to cover up all the Eddie Bauer labels on my backpack it seemed easier to buy another. I will be applying black electrical tape to the "Reebok" on my black shoes.

Now that I was processed I drove back home and had a chance to open my bag. The Welcome Kit included and very nice hot/cold travel mug (branded by a sponsor--"You must only use this one on venue"), a welcome and thank you message from John Furlong the CEO of VANOC, a Team 2010 Pocket Guide full of helpful information and pages and pockets to record and save things, a bottle of Cold F/X (a cold prevention medicine), an Olympic hockey pin, a coupon from General Motors for $1,000 off a car (are they still in business?), a gift card from Petro-Canada for $0.05/litre off gas for the month, a coupon from the Hudson's Bay department store (suppliers of the uniforms) for 15% off one day of my choice during the Olympics, a pack of Wrigley's Spearmint, and a pack of Olympic postcards from the International Olympic Committee. I feel suitably welcomed.

The uniform consists of a pair of dark navy pants (loose fitting with spandex in the mix), two long-sleeved t-shirts in Vancouver 2010 teal (one patterned; one plain), a teal fleece vest, a teal jacket (a subtle pattern with lots of pockets and convenient ventilation zippers) and a teal Vancouver 2010 toque (hat).

My last uniform stop of the day was the local tailor to get the pants hemmed. I had been warned by other volunteers that, although there were waist sizes to choose from, all the pant lengths were long. I'll include a self-portrait of Don the Olympic Volunteer once I get my pants back.

Now I feel equipped and ready. It will be rather thrilling to put it all on and walk out the door for the first time in a few days.

New Skills

2010-02-01T20:37:00.000-08:00

I concluded today that one of the downsides of working for the same string of companies for almost 28 years is that I have no experience with rapid changes in what I do. I have watched lots of things change over the years at work, but dramatic, environmental, and technological changes tended to occur over time. Even when my company has been bought out, things changed slowly.

So today I found myself in a completely foreign setting where I had to rapidly learn and practice new skills. Boy is my brain tired tonight.

It reminded me of June 2008 when I was part of team of folks who spent a day in New Orleans helping fix up a house that had been damaged by Katrina. I spent the day glazing windows (one window to be exact; but it had 12 panes!) Although I have done some hobby trades work in my life, glazing windows was new to me. After a three minute lesson we were off glazing. I felt satisfied at the end of the day that we had done some good work and that I had picked up a new skill that might be transferable some day.

Well it won't be transferable to my Olympics work.

In our four hour job-specific training session today we learned how to work as members of a Venue Communications Centre. As the "brains of the venue" we learned how to read the huge tables that told us everyone's function, call sign and the duties assigned to each functional area at the venue. We learned how to log everything that happens on the communications channels.

OK, I can process information and use tables for accessing information. It felt all too comfortable after too many years of occupational data work for our products at work.

But when it came to "radio speak", this was all new to me. There is a protocol for talking that must be followed. Of course it is not like the conversational style that has served me well for the last 50 years. It is not like the radio protocol that we have seen in old war movies. We played out sample scenarios, but I have a lot of practicing to do. Now I have some anxiety about work day one. I just hope that people are nice to those of us that are new to this. Fortunately I was not the only one struggling at my training session.

On top of that, we had to spend a great deal of time learning what to do in medical and safety situations. Don't say "bomb" over the radio, say "item of interest". Medical emergencies are likely to arise in a stadium with 50,000 people. Hopefully the other situations won't. At least they better not happen on my channel.

I think at the end of the day we all had a bit of anxiety. The trainers reassured us that it all comes naturally after the first shift. I'm afraid I may return from the Games saying "over" at the end of each sentence. Now you will know why.

In the end the training was well organized and well-executed. They even had Hershey's Kisses! It was typical of the good things I have experienced from VANOC. One of my trainers was the woman from VANOC who has been my main contact since I was offered a position last July. It was great to meet her in person. I also met a woman from Peterborough, Ontario (back east in Canada between where I grew up and where we lived before we moved to Kelowna) who has come all this way to volunteer at the Games. While today we were all from different venues, she is part of my team at the Stadium.

I left with the start of a completely new skill. It will take some practice over the next few days. I think glazing was easier.

Just in Time?

2010-01-31T21:12:00.000-08:00

Two observations from spending a few days wandering around Vancouver.

There is a lot to be done over the next twelve days. It is amazing how many places are still not ready. Fortunately the sporting venues have all been done for a long time. Vancouver is using many existing facilities for Olympic venues (like the Stadium where I am working) and the additional ones like the speed skating oval and the sledding run have been finished for a long time.

However, there are dozens of pavilions, houses and celebration sites being set up across the city to entertain and engage the spectators, athletes and citizens of Vancouver between sporting events. They range from pavilions for each of the Canadian provinces; to sponsor pavilions by companies like Coca Cola, Bell Canada and Heineken; to country houses for the U.S. (private), Switzerland, Russia and The Netherlands; to outdoor plazas with huge video screens and places to eat and drink. While one or two are already in operation most are scheduled to open the day after the Opening Ceremonies. I have walked by many of the ones in downtown Vancouver and based on their state of readiness it will be a busy two weeks for lots of trades and set up workers.

The picture shows Alberta House on Saturday. It was not quite ready for the entertainment, information and refreshment services that it will be providing starting on the 13th. A sprint to the finish.

My other observation for the weekend is the number of VANOC staff and volunteers that I have seen while walking around. On the early bus going to my training yesterday, out of four passengers, two were Olympic volunteers and one was an Olympic staff member. The blue volunteer uniforms were undoubtedly designed to make them stand out in a crowd. It works based on how visible the volunteers have been to me on the streets of Vancouver.

I'm off to my job-specific training tomorrow. I finished my two pre-requisite online courses tonight so now I just need to re-read the job-specific manual one more time.

Environment Canada (the weather people) reported today that it was the warmest January in history for Vancouver. Visitors will have to travel to Whistler to see any of that cold, white stuff.

Venue-Specific Training

2010-01-30T20:25:00.000-08:00

This morning was my first of two training sessions. This one was specifically on working at BC Place Stadium (my "venue" in Olympic-speak.) Monday's training is job-specific on how to work in the Venue Communications Centre ("the brains of the venue" as we were told today--I'll try not to let it go to my head.)

In typical Don Phillips fashion I left the house too early to catch the SkyTrain so I was in the neighbourhood of the Stadium an hour early. Fortunately Starbucks came to my rescue.

The Stadium is not secure yet (happens later this week) so entering the area was easy until I found the right building. The woman at the bottom of the stairs said I could not go up without my credentials (which I don't pick up until Tuesday.) I told her that the e-mail instructions from my supervisor clearly stated that I did not need my credentials for today's training. She didn't care. It was only after 10 minutes of discussion and three other people with the same story showing up that she just threw her hands in the air, sighed, told us it would be her first and last day, and told us to go on up.

At reception we checked in, handed in our signed confidentiality agreements, and picked up maps of the Stadium and lists of important locations and phone numbers.

There were about 200 people for the training; about 90% middle aged or older women. I guess their kids are older so they have time to volunteer?

Using PowerPoint (naturally) then went through some stats and important information about BC Place Stadium. There are 9,700 people accredited to work at the Stadium including 1,300 volunteers. There will be over 3 BILLION people watching our opening ceremonies. There are five BIG days: the two rehearsals for the opening, the actual opening ceremonies, the closing ceremonies, and in March the opening ceremonies for the Paralympic Games. There were 72 tractor-trailers scheduled to be unloaded just today. Whew.

Like the military, everything seemed to have an acronym for which the presenters kept apologizing. As part of the communications team, I need to learn many of them.

They stressed that we need to arrive on time, go to the proper secured entrance, take public transit, leave food and personal belongings at home, stay rested, and have fun. They said to pretend like you were going through airport security--although they stressed that there will be no U.S.-style removing of shoes.

We then divided into our teams and I met my managers for the Venue Communications Centre (VCC, of course.) The manager is from Boston and had the same job at the Games in Salt Lake City. Our deputy manager has been working with VANOC ( the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games) for a while in a different position. They made great first impressions.

They gave us a bit more background on the VCC and took us on a brief tour of the Stadium. The roof is held up by air so the doors are either revolving or involve an air lock. Inside the Stadium looks great and has been spiffed up for the Games. We were not allowed to look onto the field. TOP SECRET.

They took us back to the building we started in (the low white building in the photo directly in front of the Stadium) to show us where the VCC will be located. It is a lovely board room with a wall of windows looking out at the Stadium. They told us how lucky we were as these facilities are often in less than desirable locations. At the Pacific Coliseum (some hockey and short-track speed skating) it is in the bowels of the building. At the curling venue, it is in a building next door in an empty pool!

There will be 24 hour snacks and beverages as well as breaks and meals provided. TVs will be all over to allow us to follow the Games broadcast.

It was a good day. My team seemed to be pretty excited about our task as the "brains of the venue." Now I have two more online courses to take before our job-specific training on Monday.

On the weather front, another mild and drizzly day. People who live in Vancouver must be wet all the time. They told us in the training today that VANOC has people responsible for "puddle management." I can believe it.

Warming Up

2010-01-29T10:52:00.000-08:00

This is the house I am staying in while I am in Vancouver. Friends of my parents who are off visiting their children in Australia until March were kind enough to let me set up camp. It is conveniently located a short bus ride to the new Skytrain Canada Line that can take me to BC Place Stadium where I will be working, and downtown where all the fun will be.

When I arrived at the house on Tuesday evening it was chilly inside as the heat had been turned down while the house was unoccupied. I reset the thermostat to the regular program but it didn't seem to get any warmer. The homeowner's son said he would come by on Thursday to have a look. My Internet Googling on the furnace model said that it had an automatic pilot ignition system but the furnace felt cold so I knew something wasn't working right.

Since arriving on Tuesday I have been dressed in many, many layers. I have been sleeping in a cocoon and running the hot water over my hands for warmth. I have been living on soup, coffee, and tea. Red wine in the afternoons and evenings helped. At times it seemed warmer outside than in the house.

Finally this morning the furnace guy came. Within ten minutes he replaced the ignition control valve. Now we have heat! It is time to shed some layers.

I'm off this afternoon to test my commute to the stadium as my first training session at the stadium is in the morning. There are lots of road closures downtown so I want to do a practice run when I am not working to a deadline. It is a lovely mild day (9 C, 48 F) with a bit of sun. It is to rain this weekend.

Vancouver is the largest, warmest, and lowest (sea level) city to ever stage the Winter Olympic Games. If you have never been to Vancouver (or even if you have) this is a stunning, time-lapsed video with amazing views of Vancouver. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xMz2SnSWS4

Off to Vancouver

2010-01-27T22:12:00.000-08:00

The day had arrived.

I had built up a lot of anxiety about driving to Vancouver. One must cross two high mountain roads between Kelowna and Vancouver. We normally don't do the drive between November and April as the roads can be treacherous and the conditions unpredictable.

Fortunately I had a regular week on my calendar with no travel--just lots of meetings and busy work. I told myself that I would watch the weather forecasts and go on the day that looked best. The house in Vancouver is empty so I could go anytime; I just needed to be there for training on Saturday morning.

On Monday night the forecasts for Tuesday predicted sunshine for the whole route. It was too good to pass up. Although I was working at home waiting for a courier (my Amex card had been compromised over the weekend and they were sending me a new card) I decided to "bug out" around noon. (I learned the military term "bug out" from M*A*S*H. I don't get to use it too often.)

I crammed the car with a month's worth of "stuff", said good-bye to Chip the dog, drove by Leena's work for one last kiss and hug, then hit the road. Fortunately I was going in the opposite direction from the Olympic Torch Relay. (It has more of British Columbia to see before it gets to Vancouver.)

The weather and roads could not have been better. The snow-covered trees at the summits were gorgeous. I arrived in Vancouver about 6:30 after stopping for an hour for a conference call on the way.

This is going to be a great home base. Just a ten minute walk to Starbucks and a bakery and right on a frequent bus route that connects to the SkyTrain (Vancouver's driverless transit system) that will take me to BC Place Stadium where I will be working.

Vancouver is looking ready. Even the small, local neighbourhood retail strip has Olympic banners on the lamp posts. The front of the city buses display messages like "Welcome the World" and "Go For the Gold" alternating with the route sign. Perhaps I'll try to go downtown tomorrow evening to practice my commute.

Of course I knew I was in Vancouver this morning because on my way to get my coffee I noticed that the sidewalk next to the house is covered in moss from the lovely damp climate and I saw spring crocuses coming up.

Olympic Torch Arrives in Kelowna

2010-01-27T21:49:00.000-08:00

After travelling in a huge loop across the Canadian North and then all the way west from Newfoundland, the Olympic Torch Relay finally made it to Kelowna on Monday. It started the day down in Osoyoos then spent the day winding its way up the Okanagan Valley. By 7 pm it was crossing the bridge over Okanagan Lake into Kelowna.

Leena and went downtown and stood by the side of the road to wait. We met a retired couple from Toronto who are moving to Kelowna this year after summering in Kelowna for a few years. They were dressed in their Olympics volunteer uniforms for the event. They are both posted as drivers up in Whistler. They will be driving members of the Olympic family around Whistler in SUVs provided by GM.

After waiting for an hour, the Torch Relay entourage started to pass by. RCMP vehicles, specially built Coca-Cola vehicles (free Coke, and other giveaways), Royal Bank vehicles with music and dancers, then finally the torch runner. Just as the torch got near, everyone stormed the runner so it was impossible to get a photo. Rats.

We walked over to City Park where the relay was ending for the evening. A large portable stage and video screen had been set up as well as exhibits by Royal Bank, Coca-Cola and The Bay. They have been taking all this across the country for almost 90 days. The City of Kelowna was giving everyone glow-stick torches. The Olympic torch was used to light a large caldron, speeches were made (the Premier was there) and it was topped off by a loud and rousing version of O Canada. Such spirit!

On Tuesday morning the Relay was starting again and the path was taking it within a block of our office between 7:30 and 8 am. As I got out of my car to secure my spot by the side of the road, the couple in the car next to me got out, said hello, and told me that it was their son who was running the leg right in front of us. They were well equipped with their Canadian flags to wave. They seemed so proud of their son.

People came out of the offices, businesses and homes in the neighbourhood. Lots of Canadian flags and lots of coffee.

Before the entourage arrived, an Olympic Torch Relay mini-bus came by and stopped right in front of me to disgorge one of the Relay runners. His name was Eli. He was dressed in the Relay uniform and had his torch with him. (Twelve thousand torches were made and donated by Bombardier, the maker of the Canadair regional jet, subways, light rail, and snowmobiles.) Everyone swarmed Eli, wanted to shake his hand and get their picture taken. I was no exception.

Soon the flame was visible down the street in the dullness of the morning. The son of the couple I had met jogged by, met Eli, touched his lit torch to Eli's torch passing on the flame, and high-fived Eli who jogged on. There was great excitement from the crowd.

An Torch Relay assistant went over to the finished runner and did something to his torch to turn off the flame. Soon the mini-bus arrived to pick him up and take him off for his debriefing. (I have heard that there is a guest book on the bus signed by all the runners.)

This was the first time I was personally connected to the Olympics since my very first volunteer training session back in November of 2008. Now it really feels like it's getting close. Such an exciting 12 hours.

Packing for Vancouver

2010-01-24T22:35:00.000-08:00

Next Saturday I need to be in Vancouver for my first day of training. We don't normally drive from Kelowna to Vancouver during the winter months. The roads on the Connector (Hwy 97C) and the Coquihalla (Hwy 5) can be treacherous and unpredictable.

To help relieve my anxiety about the drive, I am giving myself this week to find the best looking day based on the forecast to make the drive. Fortunately the house I am staying in is already empty so I can arrive any day. I don't want to wait until Friday when I have no choice.

At this time it looks like Wednesday may be the best day. I'll drive during the day then work the rest of the week from the house in Vancouver.

I spent the weekend packing: clothes, food, work tools and documents, Olympic documents, my Wii, and lots of sundries. I hope it all fits in the car. It is now hard to imagine that I ever thought I could fly to Vancouver.

As if I am not excited enough already, it will seem more real tomorrow as the Olympic torch will arrive in Kelowna. We're going to go downtown wearing our red Vancouver 2010 mittens and watch it arrive.

Training Scheduled

2010-01-17T17:19:00.000-08:00

26 days to go to the opening ceremonies and 18 days to go until my volunteer job begins.

My training sessions have finally all been settled. I have venue training at BC Place stadium on Saturday the 30th, followed by Communications Centre team training on Monday, February 1. On February 2, I pick up my credentials and my uniform.

My first day of work is the 4th so that will give me a couple of days to get settled and get to know the buses and Skytrain.

My online research has found almost thirty different event sites, pavilions and national houses that are spread across Vancouver. There will be lots of exploring to do on the days when I am not working.

The last manual I received from VANOC (the Vancouver Organizing Committee) had rules for volunteers blogging. Things like not using Vancouver 2010 branding (now removed) and not disclosing information related to security or information that is being kept secret for later unveiling. I'll try to be a good boy.

All the volunteers were invited to attend a dress rehearsal of the opening ceremonies on Wednesday the 10th. Unfortunately I will be working at that time. I guess it will be a good rehearsal of our duties for opening day.

I haven't been this excited about an upcoming adventure since our trip to Europe last year.

Olympic Volunteer Study

2009-12-29T21:41:00.000-08:00

I am part of a study being conducted by the Gerontology Department at Simon Fraser University to look at the volunteer experience of middle aged and older persons. The results of this study will be one of the legacies of the Vancouver 2010 Games and will be passed on to future Olympic Organizing Committees.

Uniform 2

2009-11-29T18:30:00.000-08:00

Here are three pictures of the Workforce uniform. The centre picture shows the pattern on the t-shirts. It is the same kind of nature-inspired design as on many other Olympic items.

The uniform consists of two long-sleeve t-shirts, a vest, an outer jacket, dark navy pants, a toque (a hat for you Americans) and a matching hot and cold beverage container. The uniform is designed to be worn in layers depending on the temperature. We received an eight page document that describes how to wear it, when to wear it, what not to wear with it and how to clean it.

A matching backpack is available for purchase. Like the shoes, if you use your own backpack, no visible branding is allowed.

My Schedule

2009-11-27T21:15:00.000-08:00

My Olympic work schedule has changed twice already, but it sounds like it may stay static for a while now. Additional changes were made this week but there was an appeal from our supervisor to stop asking for changes so that people could arrange for time off work and get settled.

So for now, I will be working at BC Place Stadium for 12 days from February 4 to 22. My shifts range from early morning through dinner time to late afternoon to midnight.

Now I'll have to work on figuring out how to use the bus and Skytrain to get there from the house where I am staying. Vancouver public transit is all new to me.

Food!

2009-11-25T11:43:00.000-08:00

I learned today that they are going to feed us volunteers. The meal service will depend on our location and shifts. This detail had not been clear in the past. It will be nice not have to take more than snacks along each day.

Hopefully the food will be more than would normally be available to fans attending an event at BC Place stadium. (I have hopes since there was a dietary requirements survey offered for people with specific dietary needs.)

Lucky to be selected

2009-11-25T07:52:00.000-08:00

I heard on CBC Radio news this morning that VANOC needed 25,000 volunteers and received three times that many applications from over 140 countries. I guess I am lucky to have been chosen to be a volunteer. Must have been my good looks.

Uniform Step 1

2009-11-22T14:07:00.000-08:00

I took advantage of being near a Reeboks Outlet Store this week in Nashville to buy some shoes that meet the requirements for our Olympic volunteer uniforms. We were told that we needed black shoes and all my black shoes are too dressy to match the uniform. We were also told that the shoes (and anything we wear) must not display branding other than the Olympics logos. I may need to apply some black electrical tape to my new shoes.

Lots to Learn

2009-11-22T13:51:00.000-08:00

This week I received my job specific training booklet: sixty pages on the fundamentals of the Venue Communications Centre. We were advised to read the manual and learn the material before our classroom training.

For me, the classroom training will take place in early February just before I start work. VANOC (Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games) has been kind enough to allow us out-of-town volunteers to be trained at the end rather than having to travel to Vancouver for training in December and January.

There are also three online e-learning courses that I need to complete that describe how to use the communications equipment I will be using and how to be a good member of the Venue Management team.

The Beginning

2009-11-22T13:34:00.000-08:00

My Olympic volunteer experience started back in early 2008 when I applied to be one of the 23,000 volunteers that were needed for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games.

In my life I have met and talked to people who volunteered in Montreal in 1976, in Calgary in 1988 and in Salt Lake City in 2002. They all said the same thing: it had been the experience of a lifetime. I knew that I had to find a way to volunteer for Vancouver in 2010.

As soon as the web site opened for volunteer applications, I applied. After a phone interview in the summer of 2008, I was invited to Creating Team 2010: the first training session for volunteers in the fall of 2008 in Vancouver.

This session involved a security check, an in-person interview, and a group session of training on the Olympics, customer service, and workplace safety. We learned to point to something with an up-turned open palm (no finger pointing as this is offensive to some cultures), to use international terms such as "toilet" rather than restroom, and to avoid Canadian-isms such as "Looney" for the Canadian one dollar coin. The session was very well run and we walked away with a Games Training binder and special Olympic pin just for volunteers.

In the summer of 2009 I was offered a job in the Venue Management Team. They are responsible for all activities at all the Olympic venues. I was assigned to the Venue Communications Centre at BC Place Stadium the venue for the opening and closing ceremonies as well as the nightly Victory Ceremony for Vancouver-based competitions. It should be an exciting place to work.