Tonight Burton Cummings played the Victory Ceremony. He rocked the house down. It was such an amazing show. When I think I first saw him 34 years ago – it’s unbelievable. He made the comment that he has never felt “more Canadian” than he has in the last two weeks. I agree with that. I have always been a proud, flag waving Canadian – but the pride has really welled and touched my heart in the last few weeks. Every time I hear the national anthem, I have to stop a minute and remind myself of all the great things about Canada. We have so much to be proud of, so much to be thankful for, so much to look forward to, and so much to try and straighten out. It’s one big cultural mosaic, and we should be proud. As it was pointed out tonight, we are one of the few countries in the world that enjoys all the freedoms that we do.
Yesterday I was up at Whistler. We got up at 3:30 a.m. and got ourselves to the bus for the 5:05 departure. It was all relatively pleasant and painless. I had been dreading it because of all the negatives I had heard, but our departure couldn’t have been more seamless and pleasant (they even gave us free bags of chips as we boarded the bus). I tried to sleep on the ride, but I couldn’t. I was too excited about going to see an Olympic event. We were headed for the women’s giant slalom. When we arrived at Creekside it was snowing like mad. Winter! We made our way over to Sunnyside for a quick breakfast before we headed up the mountain. It was a big disappointment. Nothing about it was good. The hashbrowns were not the usual delicious mix of onions and veggies and thinly cut fries. Perhaps they were tired of all the Olympics visitors that kept them hopping, but the dark brown, overcooked potatoes that were passed off as hashbrowns were terrible. My poached eggs were like rubber, and the toast was pretty soft and not toasted. I like my toast light, but this was as though it had been warmed under a broiler. Even the coffee was a letdown. The bill came, and it felt high for breakfast – higher prices, a surcharge and tax all made me realize that eating out was getting too expensive. This is a place I have eaten at many times, so I was sad that it was so bad.
We headed up the mountain. We had to climb a fairly steep climb to get to the security checkpoint. The snow was falling and everyone was cheerful, so it wasn’t that bad. We cleared quickly, and then climbed down a whole bunch of stairs, and down the side of the hill to get down to the Creekside chairlift. We loaded and got to the top where the downhill area was set up. There were lots of Swedes, Fins, Norwegians and Germans up there. It seemed like Europe had hit Whistler. Lots of people had “fan club” jackets of the athlete they were supporting, and there were lots of banner and flags of the favourites. It was interesting that I saw lots of Mancuso flags, but nothing for Lindsay Vonn. I did see a few signs for Britt Janyk – but it was the Europeans who overwhelmed the site. It was fun, everyone was happy (except the couple that wanted to pound out the guy who kept waving a big flag and blocking their view of the video screen), and with the snow falling it was almost magical. It was a little concerning because the weather wasn’t great, lots of snow had fallen and there was a fog bank hanging over the middle of the course.
We walked around the crowd and noted all the people dressed up for their respective countries. We were kept entertained by this and the information that would come up on the big screen.
When the race got under way, it was exciting to see the women come blasting over the hill and into full view. We were anticipating seeing “the great” Lindsay Vonn, but she was less than stellar. Just as she came into view she crashed, got tangled up in the nets and had to be freed. She broke her pinky finger in the process. Now she will have even more reason to slam the runs at Whistler. It’s a world class resort that comes highly rated, but all she can do is complain about it. She makes me want to stick my fingers in my ears and hum lalalalalalala.
We left Whistler before the second run which was subsequently cancelled due to the bad weather conditions on the hill. The ride home was just as easy as the ride to Whistler had been. We walked over to the bus, got directed to the correct bus and then waited about ten minutes until the driver deemed the bus ready to go. It wasn’t full, but the crowds hadn’t come down the hill yet, and it was probably 75% full. The weather was clearing to the south, so those on the bus could actually look over Howe Sound and get an idea of how beautiful the area is.
We were unable to take advantage of the tickets back to Whistler today to see the end of the giant slalom. We had bigger fish to fry – HOCKEY! We were going to the bronze medal women’s game which was Finland vs Sweden.
The game was a lot of fun. It was sooo exciting at the end when it went into “sudden victory overtime” as the announcer said. Finland scored the winning goal and history was set. The gold medal game was after, and Canada women won the gold medal in that one.