We woke up on Thursday morning with the intent that we would get to the Whistler Sliding Center and the Women's Bobsled Finals, Sounds easy does't it. When you sit at home at watch the games in the comfort of your TV room, you have no idea what thousands of Olympic fans have done to get to an event. Today was an example. First of all, you can not drive to the venues, especially Whistler. Whistler is accessed via the Sea to Sky highway and it could not handle all of that traffic. So, unless you are in an officially Olympic sanctioned vehicled, you can not get there. So we needed to get to an area, (which happened to be 20 minutes outside the city) in order to get a bus to go to the venue. In order to do this we had to ride the Cananda Line Subway to a bus, to another bus and then get there. Then we had the beautiful, scenic, two-hour bus ride to Whistler.
Once there, we took in some shopping in the quaint ski village of north Whistler. The Whistler Medals Plaza is located here, so you may have seen this area on TV. We decided to go to the event at the sliding center, and we had to get on a Gondola to go up the mountain. You realize that the bobsled comes down the hill. After getting off the gondola, we had to walk through snow to the security line. They are more thorough here than going through an airport security. So, this takes time. Once we are "in" we get to walk to the bobsled track. We get to the final curve and the finish area and watch a couple of "forefunner". These are sleds sent down the course before the real contestants to test the track. We walk "up" to see a couple of more turns and get the bright idea that we want to walk to the start area. This, you realize is at the top of the run, so it means climbing up. In the words of Chris, "this was an invigorating walk". What an understatement! It is a trek that requires us to stop and take a few "breathers" along the way in order to catch a couple of sleds do a turn or two. Once at the top, we realize that we are going to stay and watch the start of the last heat, number 4. This puts the Canadian teams in the 3rd to last and last position and the Americans second from last. The Canadian and American fans along the route were very enthusiastic. Teh end result was Canada with Gold and Silver and the Americans in Bronze. Canada was happy.
Now, we had to get back home. This included getting down the mountain, waiting to ride in the rain down the Gondola, and getting to the bus on time to not miss the last ride at 9:00. Then it was the 2 hour bus ride back and, we decided, to take a $30 cab ride to the apartment. This got us home by midnight. What a day!! We saw the event, but it was a lot of work. Maybe now you will understand what the average fan goes through to be at the games live. You really can't appreciate all of that atmosphere without being here, just understand that it is not easy.
Rick