What a Day!

I had two appointments today relating to my Olympic assignments, one to get my accreditation and uniform, and one for some orientation. Of course, they were in different parts of the city and several hours apart.

At some terribly early hour this morning (I think it was about 6:15), we left the house and caught the West Coast Express train into Vancouver. Nelson takes it daily for work and Debbie had a seminar downtown. Debbie and I walked to the Sheraton Centre at which point I was on my own. I knew that I had several hours to kill so I decided to do some tourist stuff. My first destination was the tourist information centre, marked clearly on my map with a big I. Alas, the info centre was not so easy to find. I did manage to find a small wooden building that was all locked up and alongside it was an information sign on its side on a trailer. I think the map was printed before the info centre was actually ready. I set off to find the other info centre and this time had greater success.

After picking up a walking map of Vancouver, I figured that I could easily walk along the seawall to the edge of Stanley park and back in an hour. However, my plans changed when I happened across a bike rental stall on the seawall. Now I can actually bike right into Stanley Park and see some of the sights!


I spent an hour touring around Stanley Park, returned my bike, and then wandered over to Gastown. This is a charming section of Vancouver with cobbled streets, Victorian buildings, and the Gastown Steam Clock.

I made my way up to East Hastings Street to catch the bus to the PNE grounds where I would pick up my accreditation and uniform. I remembered Debbie saying that she does not like a certain section of Hastings because it is somewhat unsavoury. Sure enough, at Main Street, there were dozens of apparently homeless men just hanging out with their shopping carts. The sheer number of them was somewhat unsettling but, since I was on the bus, I was not worried.

Uniform pickup and accreditation went very smoothly and, one hour later, I carried out a large bag with two turquoise shirts, one turquoise fleece vest, one pair of navy pants, one turquoise toque, a turquoise coat, a travel mug, a bottle of ColdFX pills (they are a sponsor), an Olympic ColdFX pin, a gas discount card, and an accreditation pass that gets me access to pretty much everything (because of my role in International Client Services).

With a few more hours to kill before my orientation session, I had arranged to meet my friend Sonja at the McDonald's near the Olympic Village. I asked the bus driver on Hastings how to get there and he told me to get off his bus at Main, cross the street and wait for another bus to run along Main (you really want me to get off at Main and wait around?). Before actually getting off of the bus, I had a look around and decided that the other corner of Main and Hastings did not look so bad so I would probably survive this.

I stood at the corner waiting for my bus, keeping my eyes on the people around me. There were several who appeared to be just fine, simply waiting for a bus. Along came a much older man who looked a little dodgy.

"You can't win them all dear", he said to me. "Would you like me to buy you a beer?"

At this point, I spoke up and said "No thanks".

"Are you sure, are you thirsty? I can buy you a beer. I have plenty of money. I have a nice little pension."

"No thank you."

"Are you hungry? I have some food right here."

Why did I not think to speak only in french until after the fact. Chances are that he would not have understood me and he would have left me alone! Looking for salvation, I walked over to the bus stop sign to see if there was anything there that I could appear to be reading. The young lady standing next to the sign looked at me and I told her that she looked safer than him and she agreed. Once I was on the bus, I decided to sit in one of the single seats so that I could ward off any further questioning!

I made it to the McDonald's for dinner but unfortunately, Sonja was tied up for much longer than she had thought with her training and we were not able to spend much time together. We both headed for the train station and went in opposite directions. I got off at the stop for my orientation and then decided to walk instead of wait for the bus. The bus was only supposed to be a four minute ride anyway. However, I may have chosen poorly this time since the walk involved going both up and down a very steep hill with no sidewalks and a considerable amount of traffic. I made it to the orientation session dripping wet from heat and five minutes late (although the tardiness was largely due to the fact that we could not find the correct door by which to enter the building.

I still do not know who I will be matched with and there is a possibility that they could send me up to Whistler to be based up there for the two weeks of the games, if they can find accomodations. It seems that they are very short of staff to do my particular role up there but most people aren't that keen on being away from their families for two weeks (yup, some of us run away for 5 weeks!).

At the end of the evening, Nelson and Debbie picked me up from the train station and we all headed home to pack up our ski gear for our day at Whistler tomorrow. I think the wake-up call is set for 5am (what am I doing?!).