Feb. 15th started on just 2 hours of sleep. Yup. That is all I got last night. No, not because I went out. In short: my Sunday shift finished at 8pm and my Monday morning shift started at 6:00am. Here's a little breakdown for you so that you get the picture of what we sometimes go through (you'll see later why it's all worth it in the end):
- I leave my work position at 8pm
- I board the bus to Lonsdale Quay at 8:55pm (yup, almost a 1-hour queue)
- The bus drops us off at Lonsdale at 9:30pm
- I make it across the bay to Waterfront Station on the SeaBus for around 10:00pm
- From there, I get on the SkyTrain and get off at Nanaimo Station at 10:30-ish...
- Finally, I hop on the bus (line 7) around 10:40pm and ride it for another 10 minutes
- Add a 5-minute walk home from the bus stop and that brings us close to 11pm
- I'm in bed by midnight only to get up at 2am today
- I'm out by 2:30am to car-pool with a very cool volunteer, Hilary (in a white Mercedes B200, thankyouverymuch)
- She drives us to Capilano University, one of the 3 Olympic bus transportation hubs
- The bus leaves Capilano at 3:10am and we get to Cypress just before 4am.
Yeah... exactly...
My shift didn't really start until 5:45am. That's when we get our daily briefing and assignments. So, what does one do with close to 2 hours to kill? One gets RCMP officers to take pictures of him on the moguls, where Alexandre Bilodeau (or as they call him here now: Alexandre The Great) won the first Olympic gold on home soil. One also gets a ride on the chairlift that the world's best snowboarders will be taking later in the day to get on the snowboard cross (SBX) track. One basically loiters in search of the best spots to get a glimpse (and maybe a photo) of the athletes.
"Snow 20" was my assignment for the day. What does that mean? It means that our team would be taking care of the area in front of the spectator stands and the bottom of the run (i.e. the mixed zone reserved for photographers and media). Originally, this area was designated for general admission tickets but those got canceled due to unsafe snow conditions, i.e. the snow is too scarce to support the 4100 persons that the tickets were sold to. Sorry, folks! Refunds will be issued...
After helping with the set up in the area, I was positioned as Access Control coordinator for one of the gates at the Mixed Zone. Translation: I got front-row-seats' view of the athletes as they would come off their last jump and down the final stretch of the course and through the finish line, into the bay, out through the gates and the Mixed Zone, and down to the chair lift. Amazing! I have a few shots of Seth Wescott (USA - winner), François Boivin (Canada - 12th) and Mike Robertson (Canadian silver medalist), Zan Kosir (Slovenia, n/a), Damon Hayler and Alex Pullin (Australia - 10th and 17th), Xavier De Le Rue (France - 19th), and others. The chance to be so close to these fantastic individuals combined with sunny skies made for a great day at Cypress.
Exhaused, I crashed as soon as I got home around 7:30pm. I slept until 2:45am, when the alarm sounded to wake me up for my next morning shift and a day of women's snowboard cross...
Do we have more medals on the way?
We'll see...
(Picture: Mike is on your left)
