From North Bay to Vancouver Part 2

Jason (in orange) and Marissa Pichette (Maple Leaf Touque) engulfed in a sea of Canadian fans at Cypress Mountain. Photo from TSN's on-line feed.

North Bay residents and avid Baytoday readers, Jason Pichette and his wife Marissa are in Vancouver this week to attend the Olympic Winter Games. With tickets to both the preliminary and final for Aerials, they will be cheering on local product Steve Omischl all the way to Gold. All the while they will be providing readers with a glimpse of their experiences at the games.

Vancouver’s beautiful city and mountain back drop is a perfect setting for the Olympic Games. Although as Canadians we identify the flaws of the games including the Olympic caldron and the weather, I hope I can share more of what really worked with the games.

Now that we are here we needed to get orientated to the city so we can take in the venues. We are staying in Richmond on the South Arm of the Fraser River. My first instinct is to Google Map any location so that I can determine how much time it will take to get to any planned event. At first glance it seems we are too far to take in the games but then was informed that we are just far enough away to enjoy them and escape from the chaos.

Sunday Feb 21, we planned our first trip into Vancouver. With assistance and guidance from Marissa’s Aunt Diane and Uncle Derek the trip was a breeze. The city has built an automated Sky-train that runs from downtown Richmond directly to Vancouver’s core and waterfront. On the day of your Olympic event all public transit is free by presenting your ticket. VANOC (Vancouver Olympic Committee) has made extreme efforts to remove traffic from the city core and insisted that people use public transit in its place. As a local I am sure I would be aware of the traffic changes as an inconvenience however taking the Sky-train is a real time saver. A typical trip to Vancouver downtown from Richmond should take 40-50 minutes with regular traffic….add 2 million people and no parking…we made it in 30 minutes!

Once we arrived to the core, Aunt Diane was like a veteran tour guide sharing all of the important tidbits of the area. A very thorough lady she gave us a fire drill on where we needed to go to get to Cypress Mountain. Within hours of being ingested by 2 million people trying to get a picture of the Olympic flame, I started to appreciate how far away Richmond really was. Even with the volume of people you could see friendliness and courtesy as everyone squeezed closer to the flame for a perfect picture. Many people quickly volunteered in taking a picture with your camera to ensure your entire group was captured.

Through all of the chaos we noticed thousands of Olympic volunteers dressed in blue Olympic attire everywhere. For simple reference I will call them Smurfs through the rest of my time here. VANOC brought in thousands of volunteers from all over Canada and the world. After speaking to several of them I could see that their orientation was extremely thorough which provided every visitor to the games a plethora of valuable information. I can’t say for certain but there must have been additional profiling with volunteer selection. Every volunteer worked long hours, was polite and even thanked people constantly for coming to the games. They really chose the right people for the job!

I won’t punish you with the details of the hour long waits for shopping but can summarize our first Olympic day as follows; 2 million people from all over the world, $600 in Vancouver souvenirs, not a single unhappy person…priceless!

More to come…Whistler Skiing, Cypress Mountain Aerials and Pictures!

Jason & Marissa Pichette