The end of our Olympic Experience

So this is it - we are going home tomorrow. Steve and I have had a great time here is Vancouver, British Colombia enjoying the people, the events and the landmarks. Vancouver is a beautiful metropolitan city. Granville Island in Vancouver has a public market that has everything including fresh produce and meats, already prepared food, and food items from around the world. The surrounding area outside of Vancouver is wild and wonderful. I certainly have a new appreciation for some sports such as curling, cross country skiing and hockey. We did a whole package deal through CoSports and we understand that they are also going to handle packages for the 2012 London summer games.

Day Eight Olympics

Today we saw two events at the Whistler Olympic Park which is between Vancouver and Whistler. The first event was qualifications for the men's long hill. The top ten jumped for practice and the rest of the athletes jumped so that they could continue on in the next round. The second event was ladies' cross country pursuit. This is a neat event to watch. The women athletes start out doing two laps (7.5 kilometers) of classic style cross country skiing and then switch skis (see them lined up on the course) and do another two laps of free or skate style skiing. A Norwegian women won in just under 40 minutes. Sweden was second and Poland was third. The second and third place was determined in a photo finish.

HOCKEY!

Last night we went to the Russian versus Slovakia men's hockey game. We had the premier seats in the first row behind the Russian players. In my seat I could see the players come out of the locker room. I'm sorry I didn't know more about the players but they look really rough up close. The game itself was great. At the end of regulation play Russia and Slovakia was tied one all. There was no score in the 5 minute overtime so they went to a shoot out. It was tied two all after three shots so the shoot out became a sudden death. Slovakia won on the seventh shot.

Day Seven Olympics - Curling

This is for my brother-in-law Rich who wants to see curling. We went to our first curling match today. I now know much more about curling than I did. My first mistake was thinking that I was going to see two teams play against each other. In a curling tournament such as this there are four sheets of ice so there are four games of two teams each. Each games consists of 10 "ends" where the goal is to get the most stones closest to the center of the rings. All this is going on at the same time. It gets pretty exciting! The games boiled down to the Swiss over Great Britain, Norway over Germany, Canada beating Sweden and unfortunately the US lost to Denmark. This game ended in a tie so there was an extra "end" played and we had the "hammer" (the last shot). We should have won. To Rich - I am not taking my shirt off and adding body paint to get on TV!

Men's 1000 meter speed skating

Speed skating two days in a row. So you thought I saw all the orange I could yesterday? Wrong! Today I saw a man in an orange suit, someone who used an orange pylon as a hat and finally an orange hard hat with an ice skate attached to the top. The Dutch take orange to a whole new level! But the event was mostly USA. Shani Davis of the US won the gold, Korea took the silver and USA took the bronze. I hear the coverage in the US leaves a lot to be desired. Here in Canada there are two different stations carrying Olympic events. Olympic coverage runs 24 hours. We sat in the bar at the hotel tonight and every other TV was either tuned to one of the hockey games or the Ladies downhill.

Day Six Olympics

Steve and I are in Vancouver with a tour company called CoSports which handled the tickets, hotel and transportation. So today we get on our bus to go to the men's 1000 meters speed skating event and we are surprised by the fact that Bonnie Blair (5 time Olympian in speed skating) is on the bus with us and is going to talk about speed skating on the way to the venue. What a gracious lady. She answered questions, signed tickets and posed for pictures. She is the woman in the green turtleneck.

Day Five Olympics

Today Steve and I went to the 500 meter women's speed skating event. Speed skating is a fun event. At least one third of the fans to a world speed skating event are Dutch and they dress so that everyone knows that they are Dutch. I saw orange everything including orange jackets, t-shirts, cowboy hats, hair, scarfs, hats, gloves, even bathrobes and slippers. Check out one of the pictures. In the other picture the couple is from Germany. Alot of fun is had by all. The gold medal was won by a Korean girl, Germany took silver and China took the bronze. There was a lot of fast skating.

Free Program Pairs Figure Skating

Of course figure skating is beautiful but the best part about watching it live is not having to listen to Dick Buttons' or Scott Hamilton's whispered commentary. The performances are so wonderful with just the music. This picture is of the Chinese couple who won the free program but placed second in the medal standing.

Day Four Olympics

Today was a busy day. In the morning we traveled to Cypress Mountain to see the men's snowboard cross event. This is as exciting as it gets. Four snowboarders traveling down the course at one time. The first two winners in each heat advance to the next round until they are down to just four riders. If you fall you are out of the competition. It was an exciting race. An American named Wescott won the gold medal. Canada took the silver and France took the bronze. Because this venue lacked any snow except what they drove in by truck; it required climbing 240 stairs to get to the stands. Talk about a workout.

Day Three Olympics

We started out today taking a bus from downtown Vancouver to Whistler for the luge competition. The day looked sunny when we arrived but an hour later when we were ready to take the gondola up the mountain to the Sliding Center it was pouring rain. Then shortly after the competition started the rain stopped and the sun came out again. So far we have not had any delays getting through security at any of the venues. They call that "mag and bag" here! Even getting down the mountain on the gondola was going really quickly. As our car came into the station at the bottom it seemed to jump the cable and was dragging on the ground and the car behind crashed into our car! No one was seriously hurt and they had the gondola running again in just a few minutes.

Luge

Today we saw the men's final for the luge. These guys are crazy. Do you know how hard it is to take a picture of someone traveling almost 140 km per hour. You take the picture before you see anything and hope for the best. This is the American slider. We feel really bad for the Georgian who died. You would never know that they built the wall at the finish line and added the extra padding unless you knew what to look for. Germany took the god medal.

Canada Versus Slovakia

We watched the Canadian women play the Slovakian in ice hockey tonight. We felt sorry for Slovakia. They lost 18 to zip. And as you can tell the crowd in the stands heavily favored the Canadian team. This was Slovakia women's team first Olympic games.

Olympics Day 2

Steve and I had some free time today before our event so we walk around downtown Vancouver. We saw several eagles painted in motifs probably by different artists. This one is located close to the Hudson Bay Department store. Many of the buildings have beautiful banners hanging on them. The Canadians are great hosts. They walk around downtown dressed in sweatshirts, hockey jerseys, scarfs or hats with the Canadian maple leaf or name printed on them. So proud to be Canadian. We we asked a Canadian to take our picture and she made us to say "Go Canada Go"!

Opening Ceremonies

The Opening Ceremonies were fabulous. It's midnight and we just got back into the room. There is a pre-show which lasts for about an hour prior to the beginning of the opening. The purpose of the pre-show is to train the audience when to turn on their flashlights and beat their drums. Hopefully we did our part correctly and the audience looked perfect. I know everyone watched. It was definitely an extravaganza.

Day One Vancouver

Steve and I are enjoying downtown Vancouver with our friends John and Jody from Ft. Worth, Texas. This is Day One in Vancouver and what a fabulous welcome we got. Canadians are so friendly and Vancouver is a beautiful city. We are staying at the Fairmont Hotel which just happens to be the same hotel that Vice President Bidden is staying at along with the Russian committee organizing the 2014 winter games in Sochi. We're having a great time meeting people from all over.

Latest Jewelry Piece

I love taking copper classes from my friend Colleen McGraw. Sometimes they involve a lot of hammering which is a great stress release. I'm always going to go home and make more of the same project but it just never seemed to happen until her last copper bracelet class. What sent me over the edge with this project is that I figured (with Colleen's help) out a way to incorporate my glass into the copper project. Sooo four hardware stores later, two days work, three times raiding Steve's tool box, and one order to Rio Grande I have a completed copper and glass pendant. this first one I'm selling for $300.00 but I'm sure the I'll be able to get the price down considerably on the next one. Thank you Colleen for all your help and inspiration.