Case of the missing sunglasses

We are in Telluride currently for a few days enjoying some spring skiing. The slopes got 22 inches of fresh powder two days ago so the skiing is wonderful. We were here late January when Steve while walking around town tripped on some ice and his sunglasses fell out out of his coat pocket. They were prescription sunglasses of course. Steve retraced his steps and couldn't find locate them. Tellluride is a quaint town of about 2200 permanent residents so Steve called the marshal's office and asked if they had a lost and found. They didn't; but recommended he call the local radio station - KOTO. KOTO is a radio station based in Telluride run by volunteers and plays a variety of interesting music depending on the tastes of the volunteer DJ. Steve called KOTO and was informed that they would mention his lost sunglasses on the radio. Lo and behold the next day we got a telephone call from Laura who works in an office here in town and who had picked up Steve's sunglasses. This is one of the many reasons I love being in Telluride.

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.