A certain phrase has been on my mental pet peeves list for a while. Every time I hear someone say it, it jars - it's not one of those UK*/North America differences where both ways are equally valid and I just have to get used to it, because the North American version is clearly just plain WRONG!
However, for some reason I've never felt quite strongly enough about this issue to blog about it (not on a Tuesday, anyway).
Last week, though, I was catching up on some (very) old podcasts and found that John Cleese has already said everything I wanted to say on the matter, much more eloquently than I ever could:
(ETA: Eva pointed out that David Mitchell has had a very similar rant on this subject
Love it!)
HA!
Now I have something to which I can refer people who challenge and/or mock me for saying "I couldn't care less". I will continue to say it this way because a) I'm still British, damnit and b) it's correct, whereas the North American way really doesn't make any sense (sorry).
A plague of dead parrots on people who carelessly say "I could care less" when they don't care at all!
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*I say UK just because I'm not 100% sure which version is used in Australia, New Zealand, or Ireland, although I suspect they all say "I couldn't care less".
It always seems to take me a while to write blog posts about my favourite trips, probably because I'm in denial about them being over. So the fact that it's taken me almost a month to start writing this post is a good indication that it was an amazing adventure in my new favourite kayaking destination!
The start of the trip was an almost exact replica of our last one - drive, ferry, drive, stay at mother-in-law's, drive, ferry, drive, buy food and other supplies*, drive - but instead of continuing up the road to Lund, we turned right and headed for the kayak rental company's other location, in Okeover Inlet. As before, we'd booked a beast of a double kayak with a central hatch for all our gear, but got loaded up and in the water in record time. In fact we beat the couple next to us, who'd started loading a good half an hour before we did!
Come on you blues!
There was much friendly banter between us as we raced to launch... and again as we crossed their path on a brief trip back to the beach to retrieve Mr E Man's hat... and yet again as we passed them on our way back up the inlet, heading for Desolation Sound proper.
Approximate routes
This part of the trip was pleasant enough, with nice cabins dotted about on the wooded slopes of the low-lying hills. As usual after a long land-locked spell, it was bliss just to be back out on the water, feeling the rhythm of the paddle strokes and enjoying the sights, sounds and smells of the ocean. The cabins became more widely dispersed as we passed from Okeover into Malaspina Inlet, but I was beginning to be ever so slightly disappointed in the low-lying hills, the signs of habitation, and the lack of any wildlife.
All this changed, however, when we turned right into Desolation Sound itself. There was some chop and some rebound waves to cope with as we rounded the point, but we've been through much, much worse before, and our heavily loaded double kayak wasn't going to flip unless we wanted it to**. But even as we zig-zagged around to make sure none of the many waves and boat wakes hit us broadside, we were already starting to admire the snow-capped mountains at either end of the Sound, and seeing an abundance of seals and eagles.
Calmer water = photo time!
We found an island to camp on for the night, and apologised to the couple on the beach for disturbing their solitude. They very kindly helped us to carry the kayak up the sloping, stony beach to above the high tide line - even when empty it was a struggle for me to lift my end - and we had a nice chat with them before staking out our campsite, a short walk through the woods away. They'd recently retired and had driven an RV over from Alberta with two kayaks strapped to the roof, and were spending the whole summer on the BC coast, interspersing week-long kayak trips with more luxurious RV camping in various locations. I immediately started formulating "get rich quick and retire immediately" plans in my head (still working on it. I'll let you know if I make any progress. Or maybe I'll just buy an RV and some kayaks and bugger off and you won't ever hear from me again).
We got the tent up and went for a swim. Unlike on Savary and the Copelands (our last new favourite kayaking destinations), which as you can see from the map are very close to Desolation Sound but in a less sheltered piece of water, the water was gorgeous; cool enough to be refreshing, but warm enough to swim in for extended periods of time. And it was clear, and surprisingly fresh, for ocean water. There must be some massive rivers and/or glaciers feeding into the Sound somewhere, because the water didn't taste all that salty, and even after swimming multiple times a day for five days in a row, we didn't get that icky crusty salty feeling on our skin or hair.
We had a yummy gourmet hot-dog dinner, and settled in for the night as soon as it got dark. We could hear people in the cabins on the mainland shore, and on the many boats moored in the channel between our island and the mainland, but they all quietened down within an hour and I had a surprisingly good night's sleep, for a camping trip.
On our second day we re-loaded the kayak, said goodbye to our Albertan neighbours, and headed for our main destination. We'd heard that the Curme Islands were gorgeous, but "overrun with kayakers in the summer", according to one source. However, having started our trip on a Friday, rather than a Saturday, we thought we might have a head start on the BC Day long weekend traffic.
And so it proved to be! We saw one or two other kayakers on our crossing on calm waters over to the privately owned Mink Island, but they were mostly day trippers from boats and cabins. We were the first paddlers to reach the Curme group, and had a choice of several islands. We chose the one with the outhouse, and bagged the best of the three main tent sites: close to the landing beach (although we had to lift the boat up several levels of rock steps to get it above the high tide line, which took ages due to my wussy little girl muscles), with a dining room set made of driftwood logs, and with rocks behind us from which to fish, jump into the ocean, or watch the sunset.
After we got the tent up we explored our new home, and declared it to be the best campsite either of us had ever seen. The terrain was similar to that of the Copeland Islands, but with much sparser tree coverage and hence better views in all directions. At one point Mr E Man stuck the camera in my face without warning and said "do a video for your blog where you walk people through the island as if it's our new summer home". So here it is! (Sorry about the low volume - this was our regular camera rather than our actual video camera, and we forgot that the mic isn't as good).
As well as the AmericanCanadian bald eagles, we saw oyster catchers, gulls, vultures, humming birds, squirrels, mice, and dozens and dozens of seals.
And here are some views from the other side of the island (spoiled only slightly by some water on the lens):
I swear I don't work for Tourism BC, I just really really like it here
We kept expecting more kayakers to show up, but luckily when a group did come they chose another island, and we had ours completely to ourselves all day and all night. We cooked another yummy dinner, and settled in on the West-facing rock behind our campsite to watch the gorgeous sunset.
Yes, I wear socks with my beloved Keens in the evenings when I'm camping (because of the mosquitoes). So sue me.
Smoke from distant forest fires makes for spectacular sunsets
Sun down = bed time!
After another surprisingly decent night's sleep we got out of the tent early the next morning to find another beautiful day waiting for us, and jumped straight off a rock and into the ocean to celebrate. This was the only time on the whole trip I ever felt cold. After a brief swim and some breakfast, we hauled the kayak back down onto the beach in a series of painful steps (the low tides were all at really inconvenient times on this trip!), and set off on a day trip to Tenedos Bay. It was another gorgeous paddle, followed by a short walk through the woods to Unwin Lake for a freshwater swim. Unfortunately we had to clamber over a bunch of floating and semi-floating driftwood logs to get to the water... like that bit in Insomnia... this is the kind of thing I have nightmares about, and I fell off once into some shallow water and got covered in stinking black mud (and scraped my leg in the process), so I wasn't exactly happy. The lake was nice though,
It turns out that it's really difficult to take self-portraits while treading water
and we met the couple we'd raced against to load and launch on day one. They were looking for a new campsite after being a little disappointed in how crowded their first two had been, so we told them how great our island was, and they promised to check it out.
After a couple of hours of enjoying the really very pleasant lake, Mr E Man said what I'd been thinking: "this is nice, but it's not as nice as our campsite. I love our campsite. It's awesome". So we agreed to head back to base to see who had invaded our island while we'd been gone. The couple we'd talked to had, as had one other couple and another group of four much younger kayakers, but we were still nicely spread out and everyone had their own space and privacy.
Our new friends from the loading beach and the lake were surviving on freeze-dried food, whereas we had an overabundance of real food, so we shared our pasta dinner with them in exchange for some additional wine. After dinner the other couple joined the four of us on the sunset rock with yet more wine (the group of four younger paddlers kept to themselves), and we all proceeded to spend an extremely lovely evening chatting and getting pleasantly drunk together as the sun went down (and for a few hours afterwards too).
After a not so good night's sleep (too much wine), our drinking partners all left for home or for pastures new. Mr E Man and I had a swim and then a discussion over breakfast, and decided that we really weren't going to find anywhere better than where we already were (based on our own observations and on tales from our new friends), and that lifting the kayak up and down all the rocky ledges was going to be more trouble than it was worth. So we celebrated BC Day by spending a lazy day at camp: swimming, playing cards, swimming, playing Scrabble, swimming, reading, swimming, eating, and swimming. It was bliss, and we felt no guilt at all about our "enjoy the destination" mode of ocean kayaking***.
Improving our "taking self portraits while treading water" technique slightly.
Some new kayakers showed up, and we pointed out the best campsites and chatted briefly, but they seemed inclined to keep to themselves, as did the younger paddlers when they returned from their day trip. But yet again we had a fabulous evening chatting and snuggling and watching the sunset and drinking the last of the wine.
That night I crawled into the tent to sleep, little suspecting the horrors that awaited me. The first three nights had been fine, with little more than the sound of the waves to disturb my sleep, so I'd been lulled into a false sense of security. This made it all the worse when I was awoken at about 2:45 am by The Noise.
It was a kind of combination barking/snorting/coughing/teeth chomping noise. Definitely an animal. A big animal. A big, loud, scary animal. The Noise started on one side of the tent, then moved to the other.
Unbelievably, Mr E Man was still asleep at this point. But not for long, because I switched on the flashlight that hangs from the ceiling of our tent and started shaking him and frantically whispering "DO YOU HEAR THAT???!!! I THINK THERE'S A BEAR!!!!!!"
As a born and bred Canadian, Mr E Man does not share my terror of bears. I keep trying to explain to him that to Europeans, big scary animals with huge teeth that live in the woods and make scary noises are the domain of fairy tales, things that frighten and thrill you when you're a kid, but aren't supposed to be real. So when we do something ridiculously foolhardy like move to Canada, we freak the hell out as our childhood nightmares come to life.
Or something.
Anyway, Mr E Man initially seemed freaked out by the noise too, but then calmly tried to talk me out of my own fear by saying "it's probably a seal. Maybe a sea lion. It's low tide, right? It's probably eating those oysters and clams we saw on the beach when we arrived at low tide".
Yeah, nice try dude. Bears swim and eat shellfish too - our new friends had met someone who'd had a bear wander through his nearby island campsite the day before, also at low tide - and anyway I've heard seals and sea lions, and they just don't make that kind of noise. Or move that fast, on land (The Noise was moving. A lot).
At this point Mr E Man realised that I was too scared to be talked down, so he decided to get out of the tent to see what was happening. Bear spray in one hand and air horn in the other, he peered bravely out into the darkness, but couldn't see anything. A new and slightly different (chompier) occurrence of The Noise, closer this time, persuaded him that he really didn't want to startle or otherwise disturb the maker of The Noise, so he slipped discretely back into the tent. Luckily The Noise soon started to gradually move a little further away, and after a couple of hours of listening intently into the night while sitting up facing the door of the tent, gripping the can of bear spray with white knuckles, I relaxed enough to fall back asleep (Mr E Man had been snoring away within a few minutes of getting back into the tent).
I left the light on, though.
I'd had maybe 20 minutes of sleep when The Noise came back, closer than ever. It was now 5:45 and starting to get light, but it was still too dark for courage. I shook poor Mr E Man awake again, and he declared that he absolutely had to know what it was, and picked up the air horn and bear spray again. I begged him not to go outside - The Noise sounded different, more aggressive somehow, than it had earlier - and he reluctantly relented. After another half hour or so The Noise was gone for good, taking my capacity for sleep along with it.
Of course, as soon as it was properly light and I was brave (or at least slightly braver) again, I regretted not finding out what had been making The Noise. We looked everywhere for prints or scat, but none were to be found on the rocks or scrubby grass and parched, hard crust of soil. Our bag of food, hanging on the end of a rope slung over a tree branch that we'd thought was probably too low, was undisturbed. Our neighbours had all heard The Noise, too, and everyone thought it was a bear. Even Mr E Man says that the more he thinks about it, the more he agrees that it couldn't have been a seal or sea lion. (Our neighbours had met someone who'd claimed to have seen a couple of wolves a few kilometres away the week before, but that's just silly).
Anyway, the thought of The Noise made me feel slightly better about having to leave our idyllic island campsite and head home. We had one last swim before hauling the kayak back down to the beach, packing up, and retracing our route from the first two days, back along the Sound, round the point, and into the Malaspina and Okeover Inlets. It was another nice paddle, although after the splendour of the last few days, the last hour's scenery seemed rather tame and pedestrian in comparison.
Overall it was an amazing trip and I got out of the kayak at the end covered in bruises, bug bites, sun burn, blisters, cuts and scrapes, but with a grin as wide as the Sound itself. Great weather, spectacular scenery, gorgeous campsites, great people, good times. Yes there are scary noises in the dark, but hey, now that I've had a bear in my campsite at night (one of my worst nightmares) and survived unscathed, maybe I'll be a bit braver in future.
A very little bit.
Maybe.
My fear of clambering over floating driftwood logs remains intact, but I'm not going to let that get in the way of more kayaking trips, either.
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*shopping while hungry caused a serious kayak hatch overload problem. We ate a ton of food, gave some away, and still brought a whole bunch back. Maybe next time Mr E Man will take my "let's plan meals in advance and make a shopping list" idea more seriously.
**having said that, I feel more vulnerable in the front of a double than I do in a single or in the back of a double. It's all about having control of your own rudder - without that control over my direction I get a bit nervous in choppy water!
***in the past, we've gone kayaking with people whose idea of a good trip is to cover as much distance as they possibly can each day. To each their own... but what we like most about kayaking is the access you get to beautiful, isolated camping spots. So we try to enjoy them as much as we can once we get there. Also, we're a wee bit lazy.
Now, let's get one thing clear. I do not condone violence - in fact, I hate it. I don't see how smashing things advances any cause, and in fact it detracts attention from the peaceful protesters who have valid points about wealthy nations' treatment of people and the environment. I was angry - livid - at the Black Bloc people who smashed windows in downtown Vancouver and intimidated people during the Olympics, and local activists who've worked for years to improve life in the Downtown Eastside seemed to feel the same way.
But the video below (and others like it all over the news yesterday) destroyed almost all the sympathy I had for the police. They let people torch police cars and smash windows on Saturday, and then on Sunday, this happened:
Let's see if you can guess why I decided to re-do the beginning of the "thank you" video... the video that I sent to my parents, in-laws, aunties and uncles...
(Well, except for the bits that actually were downhill. But some of those bits were really hard, too).
But let's start at the beginning...
(BTW this is a really long post. And those of you who donated will have already received an abbreviated version by email, edited and sanitised for the sake of my parents and assorted other relatives. So feel free to skip to the video at the end).
DAY ONE
My friends showed up at my house at 5:30 am on Saturday, put my bike on their bike rack, and drove me to the start of the ride in Surrey, just outside Vancouver. As we got closer we saw more and more cars with bikes on them, and by the time we reached the parking lot, there must have been several hundred thousand dollars worth of bike within sight. We loaded our bags onto a truck, ate a little food, covered ourselves in Chamois Butt'r, and tried to find constructive uses for all our nervous energy. In my case this mostly meant chattering like a monkey and checking that I had my passport about once every five minutes as we waited for the 7:00 am opening ceremonies. The crowds built up around us, and after the arrival of some Mounties carrying a Canadian flag and the singing of O Canada, we learned from the first speaker that there were more than 2,200 riders, and that between us we'd already raised more than 9.2 million dollars!*
The speeches were short and to the point (although a little bit too Bravehearty for my taste in parts - there was a bagpipe sound track and everything), and off we went! It was a slow and wobbly start as 2,200 riders tried to squeeze through the official start gate, but we were soon pedalling smoothly on the closed-off roads (with the exception of the poor soul I saw fixing a puncture within ten minutes of the start). As expected, I lost my faster, fitter, better-bike-owning friends (who were sprinting for the border to avoid the line-ups) within a couple of minutes, but I was happy enough to go at my own pace and enjoy the atmosphere as riders chatted to each other and supporters waved signs and cheered and rang cow bells and blew vuvuzelas from the side of the road.
The first 28 km to the border went by quickly, although the head wind that hit us on a nice long gentle down hill section was a bit of a bugger; I hate that disconnect where your eyes and brain go "wheeeeee! Down hill! Yay! Let's go!", but your legs go "whyyyyyyy is this sooooooo haaaaaaard????". I also quickly realised that I had omitted something crucial from my training: steep downhill rides! I grew up in an extremely flat place and literally never went up or down a hill on a bike until I was 22. Steepness and speed are very scary things for me, especially when surrounded and being passed by so many other people (almost all of my training was done solo).
The border itself was the only organisational weak spot on the whole ride. People like my friends who got there early went straight through, but by the time I got there the official queue area was full, and people were forming a wide, ragged, and basically stationary line behind the official area. I stood in this line for over 15 minutes before the DJ announced that anyone not already in the official queue area was supposed to have been given a coloured sticker, and they'd call everyone up by colour so we didn't have to stand in line for so long. It then took me 5 minutes to find someone giving out stickers (pink). As I was sitting down 15-20 minutes later, I saw someone else handing out red and orange stickers; those were the first colours called, with pink following quite a bit later. The DJ's tune choices didn't help much - as he played "Born in the USA", people around me started singing "We're not in the USA, not in the USA", and the follow up ("Highway to the Danger Zone") was an even worse choice. At least it was sunny, with lots of food and drink on offer! Once I was in the official line it moved quite quickly and I was through and into Washington State with a minimum of fuss. And waiting so long at the border left me with fresh legs for the remaining 101 km of the first day.
The next bit of the ride was gorgeous - so much nicer than blazing down the I5 like we usually do when we drive to Seattle. It turns out that Blaine is a really nice little town, and lots of the locals came out to cheer us on. We then went through a gorgeous State park by the ocean, and through some really pretty countryside, although the head wind came back with a vengeance at times. The first real hill of the day was in Bellingham, but it wasn't any worse than any of my training hills, and there were lots of stops at red lights that offered short recovery periods. Once through the town there was a very gradual but very, very long hill up to the lake where we had lunch - again, that disconnect between your brain seeing a nice flat road and your legs dying a slow death on the hill! As I said to a fellow rider, "this hill sucks. If you're going to be a hard hill to climb, you could at least have the decency to actually look like a hill. This hill is just mean". (This may have been the beginning of the "incoherent ramblings" stage that lasted for most of the rest of the ride).
Sitting down at lunch time was niiiiice. The lakeside setting was lovely, and the lunch was tasty and full of carbs. There was another section of the long gradual hill immediately after lunch - not fun on a full stomach - but that was essentially the end of the climbing for the day.
The probable shooting incident happened with about 35 km still to go. We'd just passed an interesting section of road, featuring a gun range and a huge speedway with hundreds of people camping by the side of the road, and I was essentially riding by myself** down a hill being a bit wussy and scared by the steepness and the speed. There were quite a few vehicles on the road, and many of them weren't giving us much space (it was one of the few sections of road with no shoulder or bike lane at all), so I wasn't entirely happy to hear another one approaching from behind. Then, just before the vehicle entered my field of vision, there was an almighty sharp BANG!!!!!!!. I was startled and jumped a bit, but didn't lose control of my bike, and the vehicle (a gunmetal grey pickup with no license plate on the back) came blazing past me. I didn't see the source of the noise, but my first thought was "OMG GUN!!!!", because that's totally what it sounded like. I was already thinking "or maybe his engine backfired, although that's really unlikely when going down a big hill, or maybe he did it on purpose, although I don't even know if that's possible, or maybe..." when another cyclist came up alongside me from behind. She said "oh my god OH MY GOD, are you OK???!!!" I said that I was, and she said "that was REALLY. FUCKING. SCARY", but then she rode off ahead of me before I could ask her what she'd seen that had freaked her out so much.
I still wasn't sure what had happened, but then at camp that night a colleague told me that he'd seen someone at the gun range testing out a scope on a rifle by looking down it at a long line of riders in a really scary way. And then - the clincher - a volunteer who'd been riding one of the escort motorbikes told me the next morning that another rider had been hit with a pellet gun on the same stretch of road, and they'd had various reports of guns seen and shots fired (from vehicles and from the side of the road). So I think someone almost certainly fired a gun, either at me or into the air behind me. Either that or they launched a firework at me, although I didn't smell a firework, and that's hardly any better than being shot at, anyway. Several drivers on this section of road also apparently shouted "GO HOME!" (or ruder variations thereof) at riders and volunteers. Nice, eh?
Given that I wasn't sure what had happened at the time, I actually wasn't that traumatised. There was an incident towards the end of the next day that scared me much, much more - coming down a steep hill in the rain and needing to make a left turn off the main road halfway down the hill, I got totally freaked out by my speed and hit my brakes quite hard. I was freezing cold and exhausted at this point and not making terribly good decisions, so I didn't think to look behind me before I braked, and the car behind me (that I hadn't heard) almost hit me - there was a screeching of brakes and tyres and a swerve and a lingering smell of burning rubber. Mostly my fault (I'm really sorry, dude, whoever you are - I'm sure I scared the bejeezus out of you), although I'd say he/she was maybe a little too close behind me (again, no shoulder or bike lane). I had to pull off the road and wait a few minutes before I could calm down enough to continue.
Anyway, I'm still supposed to be describing day one. After surviving the putative shooting incident there were a couple more downhill sections and then the rest of the ride was flat. It was painful, though, and not helped by what I'm sure was some inaccurate distance marking. I seemed to get from the 110 km to the 120 km mark really quickly, but then the final (alleged) 9 km into camp took for-bloody-ever. I think the 120 km distance sign was accidentally put up at around the 115 km mark, and a few other riders I talked to agreed, because the last hour was just awful. The road was also quite rough in texture, which didn't help the sore hands, wrists, and other parts, and the added friction made us pedal harder than if we were on a smooth road. This part of the ride was purely about survival, and I have to say that when I finally turned the last corner just before 4:00 pm and saw the Mount Vernon camp site and the welcoming committee of cheering volunteers, I almost cried with gratitude!
CAMP
Camp was great! I grabbed my bag, set up my sleeping gear, had a lovely lovely hot shower, found my friends, ate some tasty if slightly lukewarm food, and drank some free beer. I ran into a few other people I know, and got one of my colleagues to do a bit to camera about how the money from the ride benefits his research (see video at the end of the post). I love how PIs can snap into this mode at a moment's notice, and then snap straight back into "normal guy drinking beer and shooting the breeze" mode just as quickly. It was great to get everyone else's perspective on the ride (and, if I'm honest, nice to see so many people arriving well after me. I'd been worried about being one of the slowest riders after seeing all the amazing bikes people had, and indeed most of my friends and colleagues finished 2-3 hours ahead of me on both days, but I passed loads of people on some really high-end bikes, while people on fat tyre mountain bikes passed me several times).
There were speeches, clips of the day's media coverage, and then two bands - the first one good, the second one fabulous. We went off to bed at 9:30 pm, looking forward to a really good sleep before the second day's ride.
Unfortunately...
Some idiots decided that the best way to prepare for the second day was to get wasted and whoop and holler and run around. It went on for ages. The security guards were trying to make them go to bed, but they were unsuccessful, and the sounds of rowdiness carried all over the campsite. I hate that maybe 5 or 6 people got to decide that hundreds of other people shouldn't get any sleep; this has happened at every music festival I've ever been to, but I really wasn't expecting it on the ride. However, I love that some of them apparently ended up throwing up and passing out drunk - ride 120 km on THAT, mofos! (I'm assuming they were riders. If they were non-riding volunteers, I'm even more pissed off that they kept everyone up). They finally shut up at around midnight... just in time for a train to come by the camp site, blowing its horn for what seemed like full minutes at a time. At this point the only people getting any sleep at all were the loudest snorers in camp; my tent mate and I were awake almost all night, getting maybe an hour of sleep, two max, in short ten minute bursts, until another train came through at 4:45 am and everyone around us apparently said "screw it" and started talking and rustling their bags as they got up and started packing.
The early start had its benefits, though - we were pretty much first in line for the excellent cooked breakfast (although the coffee sucked and the tea was barely even yellow after steeping the bag for two minutes - hotter water next time, please, guys!). By the time we'd put our bags back on the truck and gone to retrieve our bikes, the line was huuuuge and hundreds of people were still waiting for breakfast when we were allowed to start riding shortly after 7:00 am.
DAY TWO
Once again we started the day in a town, with the roads closed by the police and people riding four or more abreast. In contrast to the previous day's sun and cloud mix, we started with a fine misty drizzle that didn't even warrant a waterproof jacket and actually felt quite refreshing. I was amused to see a humongous queue of riders at the first coffee stand we passed - apparently lots of other people were unimpressed by the caffeinated options at camp!
The route was nicer this second day, with much of it on off-road bike trails through the woods. It was heavenly to be away from the traffic; this relief completely mitigated the increasingly heavy rain fall...
... at least for a while.
By the time I got to lunch I was soaked to the skin and freezing cold. I'd put on my waterproof jacket as soon as the drizzle turned to rain, but the elements defeated anything that I (or any of the other riders) could throw at them. There was some cover at the lunch site, but it was all taken up by other soaked riders, so I sat on a cold, wet, wooden bench and ate my cold lunch and drank my cold drinks out in the open, with my sandwich getting more and more soggy with rain. I was shivering at this point, and would have given anything for a hot (or even a warm) drink - but there was only water and Gatorade. I got out of there as fast as I could, only noticing as I left the lunch site that they were handing out those metallic emergency blankets you see at the end of marathons. Too late for me, I was on my way and didn't want to stop moving!
Now, I'd been told at camp by several people (including someone who shall remain nameless but who one would expect to have accurate inside information) that there were "no hills after lunch!!! Downhill all the way!!!". When I got onto the first hill after lunch I was so grateful for the (relative) warmth provided by the extra exertion that I didn't think much of it...
...but then the hill just did.
not.
stop.
It was hard. Really hard. Really, really, hard. We'd seen hardly any supporters that day, just one or two people honking horns or waving from cars, and the one group who did brave the rain to stand and wave signs and cheer us on literally had me in tears of gratitude. I was miserable. I kept thinking of why I was doing the ride, and reminding myself that whatever I was feeling was nowhere near as bad as the cancer treatments my friends and relatives have been through. This helped - quite a lot, actually - but I was still suffering.
This part is all a bit of a blur; long slogs up hills, occasionally steep enough to force me off my bike for a few hundred metres of walking, followed by short and terrifying downhill sections (this is where I made the aforementioned mistake and almost got hit by a car), followed by turning corners to see yet another massive climb ahead. My phone rang a couple of times during this stage, but I knew I couldn't get to it in time to answer, and that I couldn't pick up my voicemail or even see who was calling without turning on the prohibitively expensive data roaming option; this only served to piss me off more. I followed Mermaid's advice of eating something if I started to feel pissed off, but it really didn't help at all (and this was within an hour of eating lunch), and I started to think that exhaustion / hypothermia / near-death experiences / PMS were viable alternative hypotheses.
At one point, turning yet another bloody corner to see yet another bloody hill, I said loudly "OH FUCK. RIGHT. OFF, you bastard hill", and the rider ahead of me started giggling. This really seemed to lift my mood, and everything after that point seemed easier to deal with, even though the long climbs and steep terrifying descents and pouring rain were much the same as before.
At the final pit stop, I called Mr E Man and my good friend from high school who lives close to the end of the ride. Hearing their voices was an amazing boost to my spirits, even though my friend said she wouldn't be able to see me cross the line because her baby was just starting his nap. I learned that my friends had finished the ride and that one of them was waiting for me with his wife and baby Morgan, and that there was beer and hot food and dry clothes, with only 15 km of very pleasant, flat, smooth, off-road riverside bike trail standing in my way. At this point it stopped raining and I jumped on my bike for the final time, still soaked, still freezing, but no longer miserable!
The last section was a pure pleasure. Everyone was so excited to be near the end, and there was much chatter and laughter and discussion of whether we should have a beer first or a hot drink first. And then, at about 2:45 pm, I saw a sign for Marymoor park - the end of the ride - 1.5 miles away! The joy! The euphoria! The hooting and hollering among the riders!
There were people lining the whole of the rest of the route, cheering and yelling and waving signs. Coming into the park, I could hear the music and the announcer... getting louder and louder... and then I turned the final corner and saw a field full of people... and then I was in a muddy field and crossing the line and people on my right were yelling "CATH! CATH! CATH!"
I have honestly never been so happy in my life to see my husband and friends. I'll spare you the over-emotional details, but there were hugs and tears aplenty, and not just from me.
The beer was so delicious. The food was so yummy. And the atmosphere was so amazing. But we were soooo cold (you'll see me moving from side to side in the video below - I didn't need the loo, I was just trying to generate some warmth and also stretch my muscles out a bit). When we got to our nearby hotel I had a long hot shower, but as soon as I got out, I started shivering again. So I got in the hot tub, but when I got out after 5 minutes to go and grab my camera, I started shivering again. I didn't feel properly warm for about another half hour, but by that time I'd had a couple of beers and was incredibly happy, so it didn't really seem to matter all that much any more. And then I got to have dinner with my hubby, my Vancouver friends, and my high school friend! And then fall asleep about ten minutes after we got back to our room!
Muscle-wise, I felt better than I'd expected. Much better, actually. My quads were pretty tight, but I was fine as long as I kept moving. Stopping was bad, though - I could barely get out of my chair after dinner on Sunday, and the next day was rather painful, especially when I first got up and then again when I got out of the car after the drive home. (It was depressing how quickly we blasted through all the landmarks from the ride - the lunch site, the campsite, the first day's lunch site, the border. It's really not far at all in a car!). Back home, I woke up at about 4 am on Tuesday with all kinds of weird back spasms going on, but that problem fixed itself with an almighty CLICK during a meeting later that day, and on Thursday morning I was back on my bike. My regular commute felt so short, and I stormed up the hills like they weren't even there - but where were all the people cheering me on, and welcoming me into the bike room with signs and pom poms and vuvuzelas?!
My arse still hurts a bit, but that'll pass soon enough.
Overall, it was an amazingly positive experience. I'm immensely glad I did it***, and I'm incredibly grateful to everyone who donated and/or supported me in any other way.
I maded you guys a video! (With some beer in it!)
And then I drinked it! (The beer, not the video!)
THANK YOU, EVERYONE!
YOU ROCK!
Video: Part I (I sure wish YouTube would have told me the original all-in-one version was too long before it spent 21 minutes saying "uploading"):
Part II:
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*I got some more donations after the ride started, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one, so the total will be higher by now!
**having just passed one group of cyclists, and on my way to catching up with the next one (yes, I passed people! Quite a lot of people! Although lots of groups were passing me, too). This was my pattern for most of the ride. I think my speed fell somewhere between the average for the recreational riders and the average for the actual good cyclists. Or something
***I'm also immensely glad it's over! It's been hanging over me for months, and the training combined with 7 weeks of hosting friends and family over the last 2.5 months means that I feel like I've had no time to myself, literally since the Olympics. I haven't had time to get a hair cut, or buy new clothes to replace the ones that are literally falling apart on me - I'm a shaggy-headed, scruffy-clothed ragamuffin! But this weekend I get to do whatever I want! Like, watch every single World Cup game! COME ON ENGLAND!!!
Another friend turned around with his eyes and mouth wide open, and proclaimed that "hockey p 0rn would be the best thing EVAH!"
We started to come up with a list of words and phrases that could be used in this exciting new genre, a meme we resurrected on Saturday night during the Canucks' final regular season game. Once your mind is sufficiently deeply embedded in the gutter, it's amazing what smut you can pick out of perfectly innocent TV studio and living room commentary...
Here, just in time for the playoffs, is what we've come up with so far:
"Here comes the slap shot!"
"I love four-on-four, it's nothing but end-to-end action"
"He's slotted it five-hole"
"What a powerful wrist shot he has"
Two-man advantage
"What skillful stick handling!"
"I think it's time to pull the goalie"
The star would obviously have to be Legwand (who, of course, played at the Gaylord Entertainment Center before it was so sadly and boringly renamed).
Any more?!
And here's the money shot: Daniel Sedin's third goal against Calgary on Saturday. What a fucking beautiful goal! Make sure you watch all the slo-mo replays:
Not really on topic, but still hilarious, is the term accidentally introduced by a British friend who merged the start-of-game terms "kick off" and "puck drop" into "what time's puck off?"
7 pm on Thursday, that's when it is! Puck off, LA!
GO CANUCKS GO!
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ETA: I just remembered this NHL commercial from a few years ago that seemed appropriate:
I was planning to update the hockey pool, but Blogger is borked and I can't upload any new images. Some of the old ones aren't showing up either, including my lovely "kayaks at sunset" banner image. I feel so naked without it! Hopefully it'll be back soon.
To compensate, here's a photo and video montage I put together of Olympic and Paralympic fun and games (hopefully I can still haz videos). The song is "Oh... Canada" by Classified, which was released during the first week of the games; fittingly enough, I first heard it on one of the CBC Radio 3 podcasts, and bought it on iTunes a few days later, 'cos I'm cheesy like that. And yes, I promise that this will be the absolutely last and final Olympic video*.
Enjoy! I'll keep trying with the hockey pool images...
The aim of the pool was to choose the country that would get the most medal points per capita. I assigned 3 medal points per gold medal, 2 medal points per silver medal, and 1 medal point per bronze medal. The final medal table is here, I took the population stats from the CIA's World Factbook, and reader picks from these twoposts. Please let me know if you spot any errors or omissions!
Here's the table:
Congratulations, Chall!
Nice work! The Bragging Rights are yours and yours alone, with no need for the tie-breaker (predictions of the numbers of each kind of medal).
And to celebrate, here's a very celebratory video of the downtown Vancouver celebrations that followed Canada's victory in the gold medal hockey game (with a special shoutout to Nina, as requested!).
Watching my sloppy, drunken footage again made me very happy, but also very sad that everything is over now :( Ah well, it was one of the most fun times of my whole life, and I will always remember it fondly. Inspired by Vancouver 2010, I will probably go to London in 2012. I might even go to Sochi in 2014...
Up next: World Cup! Ing-er-land, Ing-erland! There will be a pool, there will be trash talk. My goodness will there be trash talk...
Or at least, they were. The cow bells are silent now. Yup, the Paralympics are over, and the last few days have felt very flat and empty. It is so, so sad to cycle past City Hall and see the empty poles from which the Olympic and Paralympic flags have flown so proudly for the last four years.
But on Saturday, I managed to get to one last event before the end! And thanks largely to Mermaid's fabulous guest post about the ski jump and luge events she attended during the Olympics, I was adamant that my last event should be in Whistler. My friend and I originally had tickets for the super G slalom - men's and women's standing class, but they had to rejig the schedule based on the latest weather forecasts. Our tickets changed from the original event to slalom - men's and women's standing class, and finally to the super combined (super G + slalom) - men's and women's standing, sitting, and visually impaired classes. We were extremely happy with the change; as you'll see from the video below, our day was defined by variety!
As if Alpine skiing wasn't dangerous enough...
We had an absolutely fantastic day in the warm Whistler sunshine, and think our husbands were fools to go skiing instead, despite their enthusing about the "EPIC!!!" conditions*. And we saw Canada win a bronze, a silver, and a GOLD!!!** The latter was the fifth gold medal of the games won by my new hero, Lauren Woolstencroft. I have nothing bur respect for every Paralympian, but Lauren Woolstencroft stands out even in this exalted company. She was born with no legs below the knee, and no left arm below the elbow, and competes in the standing class, along with every other sighted Paralympian who skis in the standing position. And she doesn't just win, she totally obliterates the field. She ended up winning the event we saw by 12 seconds. 12!!! That just isn't supposed to happen!
I sang the Canadian anthem at her ceremony with more pride than ever before.
I may have cried.
Anyway, here's the video. Sorry for the fuzzy bits; the bright sunshine and glare from the snow were not very kind to my poor little Flip Video.
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*we planned to join them on the Sunday, but it was raining on the bottom half of the mountain, and all the lifts above freezing level were closed due to high winds. They did open later, but the price of a half-day pass is almost the same as a full day, and it just didn't seem worth it. This is the first time I've ever been to Whistler during the winter or spring and not skied, but it was totally worth it for the once-in-a-lifetime experience of going to the Paralympics.
**you'll notice that all three of our medals were won by women. This was a recurring theme of the Olympics and Paralympics, with women accounting for a majority of our medals in both tournaments, but especially in the Paralympics. Canadian women KICK ASS!
Everything went a bit flat after the Olympics, and many of us actually experienced withdrawal symptoms. We missed the crowds and the atmosphere and the flags and the cheering. But never fear, the Paralympics are here! Welcome back, world, we missed you!
After a couple of weeks of vague "hey, we should go to the Paralympics" talk, my friends and I realised on Friday that we needed to get our arses in gear. Top of our wish list was the sledge hockey (or "hockey sur luge", as the French text on my ticket says. Now that would be a sport: stick-handling a puck while you fly down a luge track, with a goalie waiting for your shot at the end. Best. Shootout. EVAH. But I digress). All of Team Canada's games were sold out, but we did manage to get decent seats for Norway vs. Sweden last Saturday - a snip at $20 each!
It was great to be back on the bus with chatty sports fans wearing their team's shirts and singing away. We passed the curling venue, and saw more huge crowds with flags and painted faces. The party is back in town! But none of this helped me with my dilemma; as we neared the stadium, I was still trying to work out who to support. This was the first time I'd ever been to a live sporting event where I didn't already support one of the teams; I've watched lots of sport on TV as a neutral, but never in person. I was truly stumped. I like both Sweden and Norway; I have Swedish and Norwegian friends; I like ABBA and Aha; I'd already seen a team from each country lose to Canada in the Olympic hockey. One idea was to cheer for whichever team had the fewest supporters in the stadium, but it seemed like a fairly even split (most people were cheering in English, though. A big group of local kids behind us had turned their own team's red jerseys inside out (you could see the logo through the fabric) and added blue arm bands and letters spelling out "NORWAY", all made of electrical tape, to match the Norwegian team's jerseys). I would usually support the underdog, but honestly had no idea which team that would be; in Olympic hockey it would be Norway, but apparently they're better at sledge hockey than at regular hockey.
So, I fell back on Plan B: support Norway during the first period, Sweden during the second, and for the rest of the game either the team that was behind at the beginning of the third, or in the event of a tie, whichever team I thought deserved it the most.
As it turns out, this cunning plan resulted in me supporting the team shooting towards our end in every period, which was a bonus. And it didn't take me long to get into the game and cheer loudly for whichever team I was supporting at that time.
Team Sweden get ready for the start of the game
It was a great first period, with lots of action in our end. It was quickly apparent that Norway were the better attacking team, with lots of flair and skill, whereas Sweden were more defensive and had the better goalie. But it was Sweden who went into the first intermission with a one goal lead, with a breakaway goal after some sustained pressure from Norway.
The skill levels were truly phenomenal. Beth Snow has some background information on the sport on her blog; the sticks she shows have hockey stick blades on one end, and spikes for propulsion on the other. These guys can stick handle with both hands while using the same sticks to move around; I'd like to see your average NHL player try that! One popular strategy was to come at the goalie on an angle, with the puck hidden behind your body, then to suddenly sit back, lift the front end of your sled up, and shoot under your body so that the goalie couldn't see the puck coming until the very last second. We also saw one of the Norwegian players lean back and pass the puck under his sled with his left hand, then collect the rebound off the boards behind him with his right hand, transfer the puck back to his left hand, and finally pass it right onto the stick of a team mate - all while using the same sticks to move forward. Simply amazing.
The rules and penalties are pretty much the same as in regular hockey, but with the addition of a penalty called teeing, which basically means ramming another player with your sled. Did I mention that this is one hell of a physical sport? There were full body checks into the boards and everything else you might expect from Olympic hockey.
Failed attempt to get a good photo of a full body check into the boards
The game is obviously not as fast as the hockey I'm used to watching,
but there was no shortage of action and excitement. Power plays, breakaways, shots, saves, goal line clearances - this game had it all!
Norway were still 1-0 behind at the beginning of the third, but I'd already decided to cheer for them in the final period even if they'd tied it up. Both teams were great, but very different, and I'll always go for a good attacking team over a good defensive one. The volume in the stadium ramped up to eleven as Norway finally beat the Swedish goalie midway through the final period, after outshooting the Swedes something like 25 to 8. Overtime was fast and furious, and then we went to a shootout - this game was certainly great value for money! The players start at their own net, build up a crazy amount of speed, pick up the puck at centre ice, and barrel down on the poor goalie. After several saves from both teams, Norway finally broke the deadlock for a well deserved victory (although I was glad to see Sweden pick up a point for their excellent defensive efforts), and we stood up and cheered ourselves hoarse before going for a well deserved pint.
When I was a kid, my sister and I used to love the game show Catchphrase. I don't remember this particular bonus round, which popped up on the Fail Blog yesterday*... but I sure do remember it being played on every UK bloopers show since!
*for some reason they didn't show the whole clip, but I found it on YouTube.
Well, it's modestly entertaining. But rocks made a better pun.
As I think I mentioned a while ago, we bought curling tickets for two reasons: it was Team GB's best medal hope, and the venue is walking distance from our house. Unfortunately Team GB finished out of the medals in both the men's and women's events, but we didn't know that on the night last week when we walked out of our front door and headed to the men's preliminary rounds.
The great thing about Canada is the number of dual citizens. At both hockey games we went to we saw people carrying flags of both of that match's teams, but I went a little further than that...
This was the night of the Canada-Switzerland hockey game, and like us a lot of people left the house at the last possible minute. As a result the security line-up was much longer than at our other events. There were some Swiss fans behind us, and there was a lot of friendly banter within our section of the crowd as several people kept us up to date with the action via some rather long phone calls with their friends watching TV elsewhere. The penalty shoot-out started as we reached the densest part of the queue, and the atmosphere was electric. When we (finally) won the game, there was much cheering and singing and friendly mocking of the Swiss, who busted all stereotypes by taking it all in good humour.
As I said to Mr E Man, listening to the hockey shoot-out results while waiting to get into the curling is the most Canadian thing I've ever done.
Once inside, we realised that the venue had been set up in a very smart way. The permanent structure holds the four curling lanes (rinks? I don't know the terminology), the seats, a couple of bathrooms and a handful of concession stands. This is all that this venue will ever need once the Olympics are over, and clearly it would have made no sense to build it to Olympic proportions and then have it only half full for all subsequent events. To manage the Olympic crowds, huge tents housing additional bathrooms and concession stands had been set up along each side of the building, effectively quadrupling the size of the place. The queues for food and beer were much shorter and better managed than at the two hockey venues (whoever thought it was a good idea to have the same people taking money, serving food and pouring beer should be fired forthwith) and we only missed the first twenty minutes or so of the session.
The bad thing about the venue was that the seats were really crammed in, leaving us both feeling rather claustrophobic, in the middle of a row with people touching us on all sides. There was literally no room to move or to put down a bag or a beer on the ground. Again I suppose that for future events they won't have a full house, but with every seat taken it was uncomfortable for me and borderline unbearable for Mr E Man. Luckily the couple next to him left after only an hour, otherwise I don't think I could have persuaded him to stay much longer!
GB and Canada were both playing that night, but not against each other, so I could freely cheer for both teams*. At first I had no idea what was going on and just waved the appropriate flag whenever other people did, but I got into it quite quickly (my ten minutes of reading the Wikipedia page on my lunch break earlier that day must have paid off). There were obviously some tactical subtleties that we were missing, though, judging by the reaction of the crowd and the conversation of the group of curling aficionados behind us!
While a single curling match has lots of down-time and can be quite slow, the great thing with this event was that there were four matches going on simultaneously, so there was always some action to watch. Here are the Norwegians in their famously snazzy pants, followed up the ice in an adjoining lane by their Danish neighbours:
and here are some photos of the pants
and of Team GB in action
HURRY! HURRY HARD!
In a way, watching the curling felt more Olympic-y than watching the hockey. We go to hockey games once or twice a year anyway (although the atmosphere was very different than at a Canucks or Giants game), but when - other than the Olympics - are you ever going to watch curling? (We quite fancy trying it though, in the same way that we get the urge to go ten-pin bowling about once every eighteen months).
Another surprise was the crazy crowd! There was a lot of chanting, singing, body painting, and general rowdiness (perhaps because of the shorter beer queues). Our Swiss friends from the security line-up were in fine voice,
but the real stars were the three Aussies in front of us who were trying to get a Mexican wave going (they were unsuccessful in the attempt below, but got a few going later), doing the "Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oy Oy Oy" chant (with many non-Australians joining in), collecting every empty beer cup from our section of the crowd to make sculptures, and generally trying to make sure that everyone was having just as good a time as them, despite Australia not even having a curling team in the tournament!
As the final stages of each game began, the tension mounted (no, really, it did). Canada forced France to concede before the actual official end of the game, and received a standing ovation, cheering, and general adoration. All the other games went right to the end, with GB beating Denmark with the last stone of the game. Even I could see that it was a really good shot, and the Canadian crowd obviously agreed, judging by their noisy appreciation. By the end only Sweden and China were still playing, with approximately one third of the thinning crowd shouting for each team, and the other third just enjoying the feeling of space as people around them left.
Overall it was fun, and I'm really glad we went, but I don't think I'm a convert! I might watch the men's final later, but only if there's nothing else better on.
Hockey, on the other hand... I had about five heart attacks in the last ten minutes of last night's game, but we held on for the win and meet the USA in the gold medal game tomorrow. Expect a post tomorrow morning about how I became a hockey convert!
GO CANADA GO!
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*When the two met later on in the tournament, I supported GB because Canada already has tons of medals and the Brits only have one - a gold in the women's skeleton
Our second Olympic event was Canada vs. Sweden in the preliminary rounds of the women's hockey, at the UBC Thunderbird Arena. As soon as I announced that I was going to this game, I was CHALLenged to a $20 bet. And so I made a video for one of my favourite commenters...
(not caught on film: Mr E Man almost peeing himself laughing when I walked into that guy, me explaining to that guy that I was making a video for a Swedish friend who'd bet $20 on the outcome of this game, and then that guy laughing and saying "good luck to your friend!")
Chall, I really did feel bad by the end... we all expected a much closer game. By the third period we were rooting for Sweden to get a goal (when they did, they got a good cheer from the whole crowd - the Swedish fans hadn't stopped cheering all game), and the one guy behind us who was attempting to trash talk and mock the Swedes shut up PDQ when no-one else joined in.
"Canada is the powerhouse of women's hockey. They have a coaching staff that is unbelievably good. They have worked with their players since the first of August to achieve another level of women's hockey and it happens every fourth year. Our team is much better than it was in Torino, but unfortunately Canada hasn't stopped developing".
This situation, with Canada and the US so dominant over the rest of the field, really isn't good for the game. I hope the other teams get a chance to catch up over the next four years and make the preliminary rounds a bit more interesting in Sochi.
On the other hand, it is fantastic to see how much support the women's game gets in Canada. I'd been to a couple of women's team games in England (football and field hockey), and expected the crowd in Vancouver to be a similar mix of women, children, and school groups - but really, the makeup of the crowd was very similar to the one at the men's game the day before. There were lots of groups of men (including two guys in full body fluffy bunny outfits, with a sign saying "Canadian puck bunnies"), and the level of support (including chanting, flag waving, sign making, face & body painting, clapping, stomping, and celebrating) was just the same. And there was such a demand for tickets that the semis and medal games will be in the much larger GM / Canada Hockey Place.
Chall, I will hold you to your bet... but would you mind directing the $20 to my fundraising efforts rather than to me? The fundraising campaign is not going quite as well as the Canadian women's quest for gold!
Thanks for playing, and I hope you are taking comfort in the strong showing so far by Sweden's male hockey players!
Well, my 18th and 30th were pretty spectacular. But my 33rd was right up there with them.
After working in the morning, I walked over the Cambie Street bridge at lunchtime to meet Mr E Man downtown, taking photos of the athletes' village as I went:
Hooray for the Aussies and their boxing kangaroo flag!
We had lunch and a couple of brewskis while watching the US-Switzerland game and chatting to some hockey fans from Calgary and Montreal:
and we left for the game with two hours to spare, having heard stories of crazy security line-ups. The walk down there was incredible - the atmosphere I mentioned from the weekend seemed to have intensified by a factor of several hundred as the men's hockey tournament got underway, and the streets were seething with red. Everyone was smiling, laughing, singing, and chanting, and the few Norwegian fans we met (most of them wearing Viking helmets) were being embraced and having their photos taken with Canadian fans.
We got through the airport-style security in record time:
and joined the happy crowd of people waiting to be allowed into the stadium. As we got closer, a member of the crowd announced local girl Maelle Ricker's gold medal in the snowboard cross, and crowd just went crazy as the news was relayed by a series of big strapping men with very loud voices!
As we finally made it up the stairs to our gate, we stopped to look back down at the crowd behind us. It was a simply amazing sight:
The atmosphere inside... well, words fail me. It was spine tingling, it was unlike anything else I've ever experienced. Here's some video, because my verbal descriptions just won't cut it.
After a tense and scoreless first period, we ended up winning 8-0!
GO CANADA GO!
You should have heard the cheer when local favourite Roberto Luongo's name was announced... he didn't have much to do, but we all shouted "LUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!" every time he touched the puck anyway.
Happy birthday to me!
We headed out of the stadium and into the streets. Thousands of fans were celebrating, high fiving each other, random passersby, the cops, you name it! The singing and chanting were even louder than on the way in.
We obviously needed to celebrate, but where to go?! The bars and pavilions we passed were all full to bursting, and the queue for LiveCity Yaletown was beyond ridiculous (as it turns out, not getting in on this particular night was a good thing. Such a shame that a few idiots ruined it for everyone). So we jumped on an Aquabus and headed for Granville Island.
The Atlantic Canada pavilion?
Full.
Swiss house?
Full. But we did get to see the Olympic light show:
and also the reception the awesome Swiss fans gave to Olivia Nobs, who'd won a bronze in the snowboard cross earlier that day, as she arrived at the docks by boat:
Giving up on the crazy line-ups at all the Granville Island venues, we hopped onto the free tram that's running from the Island to the athletes' village for the duration of the games, then walked to Science World, which has been taken over by the Russians as they showcase their preparations for Sochi 2014.
Sochi house?
Closed. Our best guess: either it was reserved for the Russian team to watch the Russia-Latvia hockey game on TV inside, or all the staff were actually at the game!
Quebec house?
Full.
The Sasketchewan Pavilion?
Yay! We finally got in somewhere!
Before the band started, we were hoping to catch some live event updates on the big screen, but instead we got to learn a lot about lentils, potash, and quartz. Did you know that Saskatchewan produces more potash than anywhere else in the world? And that lentils are high in fibre and protein?! Well, you do now - never say that I don't teach you anything!
Several people we met at the bar were discussing the lentil infatuation, but when the band started, everyone started dancing instead, and forming impromptu human pyramids:
If you do this in Saskatchewan, the person on top can see all the way to Winnipeg!
No, seriously, it was a really fun party, and a great end to the day. I was also HUGELY impressed by the portaloos out back. Having been to many a music festival, campsite, and sporting event, I know what I'm talking about here, and these were the best I've ever seen. Not only did they have a proper flush toilet inside (with a fancy foot-operated pump), they also had lights, heating, running water, soap, and carpets! Very impressed.
