Venue Tour - Athletes' Village

The Athlete's Village is located about 15 minutes south of the center of Whistler. Perched atop a former landfill, 80% of the homes were sold at an auction before they were even built. This "venue" is definitely counted among the successes of the Vancouver 2010 Games, coming in under budget and successfully converting the methane gas produced by a nearby waste facility to provide 80% of the energy used.

All the houses have garages and driveways, but the athletes are not allowed to have their own cars during the Games to cut down on carbon emissions and encourage the use of public (or at least shared) transportation. Also, the kitchens in the houses have not yet been installed in order to force the athletes to eat in the dining tent. This ensures that the caterers' food does not go to waste, and encourages social interactions by the athletes.

Here are some exterior photos of the athletes' sweet digs.

Little Italy of the Athletes' Village!

L-R: Chile, Iceland, South Africa

New Zealand

Me with the moose in Team Canada's neighborhood!

USA!

In addition to the actual houses where the athletes live, there are other buildings providing anything the athletes may need...

One of the buildings that features many amenities to cater to the athletes.
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Classy black leather furniture was standard around WVL

There is a "water bar" for the athletes - how cool is that!?!

 

Chef de Mission tent - where meetings are held, not where press conferences take place

There is a hostel in the WVL (which I intend to stay in when I return to Whistler) that includes a T.V. room (pictured below), a mini movie theater, an interfaith worship center, internet stations, and other amenities in addition to guest rooms.

T.V. viewing room

Laptop station in the front part of the hostel. The windows look out into the WVL.

To give you more a sense of of the WVL, here's a map of the entire venue:

Areas 10, 4, 3, 11, and 17 are where the houses are. The parts printed in a lighter gray are back-of-house.

This section shows some more of the athletes' areas, including their retail shops (such as their own Olympic merchandise store, a bank and a post office), their recreation and leisure center, and the hostel.

Daily Commute

My commute to work starts off not too fun, crammed in a van with a dozen other people. The next leg is nothing spectacular -  on the BC Transit bus #2 as it winds its way through The Highlands residential area, taking longer to get to the Whistler Village than the #10. The #2 does, however, drop off at the top of the Village rather than the bottom, making it more convenient to get to the best part of the trip - the gondola!

I took this video one day when I found myself all alone in the gondola. I had to take the rare opportunity to record the beauty of the pristine, fresh snow!

You Couldn't Pay Me To Do Skeleton

I was lucky enough to have the evening off on Thursday the 18th to take in some of the action at the WSC with the other girls. We caught Heat #2 of Women's Skeleton and Heat #1 of the Men's.

For this event, I decided to check out the vantage point by the finish line. Please note that the finish line and the finish dock are different, and quite a distance from each other. The finish line marks the conclusion of the official timing of the slide, but when going 90mph it takes quite a while to slow down. By the time the athletes reach the finish dock they have slowed down enough to stop and get off their sleds (or in the case of skeleton, they crash head-first into sheets of foam placed in the track).

At the finish line, the athletes were still a blur shooting past me. My first shot would have been awesome...had I stuck my camera out further!

That little blur is a skeleton woman crossing the blue finish line - trust me.

This one is better of the athlete

I'm pretty sure this was up by Turn 15, just up the hill from my normal spot in Turn 16

This is a Vancouver band called Swarm that entertained the crowd during the break in competition. They were awesome!

Tubing!

Having only been skiing once previously (7 years ago) I didn't feel comfortable braving the slopes alone, especially on such a world-class mountain. I did, however, find something more my speed...

Tubing!

Just above the entrance to the Sliding Center, parallel with Lot 8, is the Coca Cola Tube Park. It was $18 for an hour, or $27 for two hours. We were warned, however, that an hour was enough. In fully-winterized gear, we trekked up the hill to the entrance, then dragged our tubes over to the "lift", which was a moving sidewalk angled up the hill.

The other girls riding the lift up the hill

There were a few tracks designated for little kids, a few "black diamond" lanes, and a happy medium section. Naturally, we headed straight for the black diamond. Unfortunately it was drizzling that day, and the staff told us the course wasn't running very fast because of it. That didn't stop us from having fun!

After some solo slides, we teamed up and went down in pairs. Going down with Holly was the most fun because the entire time we were tubing she could not contain her excitement - she definitely had the most fun!

I hope this doesn't make anyone dizzy!

At the end of the hour, we were all pretty tired and crashed in the tubes for a photo shoot.

Prankster Payback

Our crazy Australian supervisor Jono likes to play pranks. I never seem to be there when he attacks his victims, but I am fortunate enough to be there when they retaliate against him.

The other day I was walking through the office and I saw Erin's accreditation, sitting on the table, covered in doodles with a black Sharpie. Lucky for her, it mostly came off with water and now bears only black smudges. Still angry, Erin wanted revenge. "Give me something of Jono's! Anything!" she said. She found his boots.

For some reason she had Corn Flakes with her. And yes, she put gloves on before touching his nasty boots.

The cereal started coming out the hole in his toe!

Needless to say, Jono wasn't too pleased to stick his feet into his boots that night. His next victim, however, was not Erin again but rather another SCW employee - Tyler. I wasn't there that day, but Holly said Jono took everything out of Tyler's backpack and duct taped it all individually to the ceiling, along with the backpack itself. Today Holly and I were in our office and could hear duct tape being pulled off the roll and ripped. I went to check it out and found Tyler in the VANOC office duct taping Jono's wallet. He first covered each card in duct tape, then wrapped and wrapped duct tape around the open wallet. He fastened it closed with six zipties, then added more duct tape for good measure. He then duct taped it dangling from the ceiling.

Tyler exacting his revenge

As if that wasn't enough, he coated it with hand sanitizer too

When Jono came into the office looking for his wallet, he searched the shelf and kept asking us if we knew where it was. He even walked by it hanging there a few times without even noticing that anything was there. Finally Scott suggested that maybe Tyler stole it, so Jono gave him a call. Eventually Jono caught on to the game and found it.

It was right in front of his face the whole time.

The whole time he was cutting his way into the wallet, Jono was laughing and admiring the great lengths Tyler went to in his payback. It was all in good fun, and both guys knew that.

Hang Tight

WOW! So many interesting and AMAZING things have happened this past week! I've been trying to post frequently, but I'm still behind on so many things, especially the information I've learned in class. Today and tonight, too, could fill a few blog posts - so much has happened!

Tomorrow (Sunday) night the JWU Providence interns will be taking a shuttle from camp to the Vancouver airport (YVR) at 11:00PM and we will be "sleeping" in the airport overnight until our early morning flights (mine's at 8:30AM). The good news? YVR has free WiFi! I hope to get caught up then. If not, I will be blogging over spring break. In addition to reporting on my experiences, I will be doing some deeper reflections while the memories are still fresh.

So basically, please hang tight and bear with me while the dizziness of this whirlwind fades away. Some of the best stories are yet to come. I will leave you with this captionless picture as a cliffhanger...