Like many other Canadians, specifically Vancouverites, I woke up on Monday morning with a sense of loss and a bit of an emotional hangover. The euphoric buzz of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games, over less than 24 hours, quickly wore off. It left me with a question that I’m sure many of us are asking, “Now what?”
Photo by kennymatic on Flickr
In 17 short days Vancouver hosted the biggest extended party it has ever seen and, possibly, ever will see. I’m even going so far as to say that a Stanley Cup win by our beloved Canucks would not even come close to the carnival (as fugitivephilo says in a thoughtful blog post about consumerism & patriotism) that we saw. Wow!
A better fictional account of the most dramatic Canadian Olympic games could not have been written.
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Carol, always pursuing the next great pin, and me on a quest for an official Vancouver 2010 mug a former teacher braved the crowds and traffic and headed downtown in to the Olympics related madness. It took over an hour to get to the parking spot Carol had for us in the building where she works. As soon as we walked out of the building onto Granville Street, this is what we saw:
There were buskers busking, clowns clowning and men in pink underpants putting on shows all along the usually traffic laden Granville Street in downtown Vancouver. There was a different type of traffic today. No cars. Just a mass of humanity aimlessly milling about watching the mass of humanity aimlessly milling about.
Here’s another shot:
I’ll do a post tomorrow about Carol’s pin mission and my quest for the mug. For more you can read Carol’s post about our day out and about.
I’m pooped, but what a load of fun.
Yesterday a team of us from DOXA Documentary Film Festival headed down to Creekside Park to see day one of taping for the Colbert Show in Vancouver. We were hoping we would be able to get a camera package for our upcoming EXPOSED! Celebrity Camera Auction fundraiser to Stephen Colbert. We passed our package off to an AD and hopefully Mr. Colbert will get the package and agree to participate.
I took Carol’s camera and got a ton of great shots from my vantage point back stage and running around through the crowd snapping away.
We weren’t the only ones to show up. There are estimates that over 5000 people were in attendance and the patriots were out in force.
The place went nuts when Stephen Colbert arrived and he did not disappoint. I was especially impressed with his improv. He is more charismatic in person than I thought he would be.
Oh look, Colbert must have seen me in the crowd as he waved right at me. He was actually counting down from five, but hey, a guy can dream can’t he?
Here’s a slide show of the best shots I snagged of Stephen Colbert, his guest Michael Bublé and eTalk Canada’s Ben Mulroney, as well as a few other lucky shots from a great day.
Many thanks to Carol Browne for letting her camera out of her sight for the day and to Miss604 for posting a couple of my photos .
Showing appreciation is nice. “And that’s the word”.
Today makes only 30 days left until the start of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics. Being in a position to blog as a Vancouverite during the upcoming games is kind of cool. Especially interesting is that these are going to be the most covered games of all time with every second of every event available either on TV or streaming online.
I wasn’t exactly sure I wanted to participate at all after seven years of listening political blather about infinite subjects relating to this fast approaching event. All the negativity has left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. However, the closer we get, the more I feel myself being drawn into it. After all, there are thousands of athletes who have worked basically their whole lives to come here to compete. I am looking forward to seeing that.
Without a doubt our day to day lives are going to be impacted. Things that we take for granted like commuting to work, going out for lunch, even shopping and picking up groceries are probably going to change. The sheer number of people coming to the city from all over the globe is going to put a massive strain on our infrastructure. Getting around Vancouver under normal conditions (like most cities) tends to have its moments of frustration for commuters. But this is going to be a gong show.
We’re being told to walk, bike or take transit into work during the games as there are going to be road closures around venues as well as lane closures specifically for Olympic vehicles, all starting on the 15th of January 2010, this Friday. Walking and biking are pretty much out for us as we live far enough in the burbs that transit is the only viable option, unless of course we want to get up and go three hours before we have to be at work. No thanks.
Transit? Yuck. It can have that third world I am a sardine in a can feel on a good day. I am looking at all of this as an adventure. I’m sure we will figure some kind of routine. It is only temporary after all. Maybe travelsmart2010.ca can help to put my mind at ease about the transit situation.
Finances are such that we won’t be attending the Men’s Gold Medal Hockey game (tickets are $2500+ per seat) or any other sporting event. We will most likely head downtown for a bit of fun on a Saturday or Sunday to watch celebrations and maybe meet some people. Carol will be more likely to get photos during the week as she will be sporadically heading to the downtown core to work.
I’ll be blogging during the lead up to and throughout the games as well as, I am sure a bit about the aftermath. There a strict guidelines for bloggers to follow according to VANOC and the IOC, but thankfully places like True North Media House have put a ton of work into providing detailed resources for people like myself who are interested in covering the games.
