Funniest Man on the Planet

One night, Holly and I had the honor of riding the #10 bus with a guy who I determined to be the funniest man on the planet.

Tired after a long day of gallivanting around the town, Holly and I collapsed into our usual seats and lounged quietly across the aisle from each other as the bus lingered its obligatory amount of time for stragglers to board. Normally the other passengers who wandered into the back of the bus would turn out to be Cleanevent employees, but this night it was three burly men in Swiss team jackets who interrupted my spacey stare as they took their places along the last row. My line of sight out the opposite window was soon after obstructed by a tall Austrian man who appeared to be in his early- to mid-30s. A woman sat next to him and they exchanged a familiar greeting before she introduced another Swiss gentleman to her left. I (regrettably) did not catch the Austrian's name during that brief exchange.

A (fairly accurate) seating chart of the back half of our bus

I was still largely lost in thought as the bus pulled away from the curb into the night, though before long I couldn't help but notice the intermittent rounds of exuberant laughter emanating from the Swiss to my left. Even without understanding German, I observed that each time the Austrian said a sentence - just a single sentence - it resulted in the deepest, most honest chuckles from the men and an insuppressible giggle from the woman. He wasn't telling a story, nor was there a discernible conversation between the Europeans; The Austrian just kept cracking jokes in seeming isolation and, based on the reaction he was getting, he was quite the comedian.

As the ride continued, yawning replaced jokes on his list of priorities and I fought to stifle my own breaths despite watching him open his mouth wide enough to swallow a soccer ball. Awkward eye contact was unavoidable based on the combination of the layout of the bus and the seats we had chosen, yet I couldn't manage to muster up enough courage to speak to this intimidatingly hilarious Austrian. What could I possibly say to a man whose every utterance was welcomed with such heartfelt appreciation? I kept my mouth shut (both to refrain from embarrassing myself by speaking and to avoid further infecting the other passengers with yawns), however I silently hoped he would enlighten me with a wisecrack in English. But alas, when we parted ways I was left to only marvel at my fortuitous brush with greatness: I shared a bus with the funniest man on the planet.

"Don't Do That"

Bus 10, “The Games Express”, is really my favorite bus. Not only is it the quickest way to get to Blenz – I mean, the Whistler Village – it is also frequently used by athletes since it terminates at Athlete’s Village. We usually head straight to the seats in the back of the bus, and the other night two young German athletes were sitting across the back as well. Sydney and Charlotte Sarah were the closest to them, and this is really their story.

As the bus zipped along through the dark, it made a couple of stops at which no one got on or off. Sarah picked up on this and, nudging Sydney, pointed to one of the German guys who had his arm wrapped around the yellow cord. Each time he moved, the “stop requested” light lit up and the driver pulled over and opened his doors.

Sydney turned to the kid and, in a surprisingly serious voice, said the most obvious thing she could think of: “don’t do that”. The kid looked at her with a shocked expression on his face, unwound his arm from the cord and placed it in his lap as she burst out laughing in his face. Suddenly a sense of realization overcame him. “That,” he pointed to the cord, “open door?” “Yes!” Sydney nodded, and soon both Germans joined in her laughter. It was hilarious.

Feeling Like VIPs

Saturday morning I had an opportunity to switch out to the Athlete's Village and work with Sydney instead of working at the Sliding Center, so I took it. I was only there a few hours but Craig Madigan, Cleanevent's Project Manager, was there filling in for the Village's venue manager and I was able to ask him lots of questions.

First, I was able to learn what some of the acronyms scattered around these Games mean. At the Sliding Center, for instance, we get lots of calls from two women who work for "VCC". They usually tell us about issues that someone else told them, and now that I know that VCC stands for Venue Communication Center, that makes so much more sense! He explained that OBS stands for Olympic Broadcast Service. These people are take all the footage of the Games and then sell it to the various networks around the world. Their snowsuit uniforms look a lot like Italy's, and I think Romania's too.

My conversation with Craig was scattered throughout my browsing Cleanevent's Manual for the Village. It's confusing enough that there's Whistler Village (the center of town) and Athlete's Village (about 15 minutes outside of town in a highly secure area housing competitors and their crews). The abbreviation for the Whistler Athlete's Village is WVL, for Vancouver it's VVL, and on a 2nd Part Pass that allows access to both, it's just VL. Looking over this book, however, I saw a document containing meeting minutes from October that referred to the venue as OVW, for Olympic Village Whistler.

I commented on this to Craig, and he agreed that it was confusing and explained that various groups throughout (and during) the process refer to the same place in a slew of different ways. The construction team may call something one thing, the Overlay department another, and the venue manager still another. From my position at the Cleanevent Help Desk, this jumble of terms is often difficult to unravel. When Vicky or Lisa from VCC call with an issue, they can only describe the location as well as the person who told it to them, and then I have to gather as many details as possible so that I can ensure my team knows where to go. Each (or most, anyway) trailer at the WSC is labeled - for instance, ours is 7-2 because we are the second trailer in Lot 7. I was surprised to find, however, that the Sliding Center is the only venue labeled as well as that. Apparently it was at the venue manager's discretion. Craig expressed frustration about this, and then proceeded to show me on CE's database how well the Australian Formula 1 labels their venue. Every single location, down to individual porter toilets and propane gas tanks, is micromanaged with a sticker on it that says "Problems with this facility? Call ______ and site #----". In CE's system each number is attached to all important information about it, including what area it's located in and who is in charge of handling problems. Rather than receiving calls such as "The portapotties near the Workforce Break Tent need toilet paper" and then making Jan check 12 toilets, we would be getting calls like "4014 needs toilet paper". If it was something more complex than that and we had follow-up questions, the contact's name, phone number, and email would be attached to that reference number. That would make our lives so much easier!

So far this post has nothing to do with the title, eh? I'm getting there...

I went to Blenz in the afternoon, the home-base for all the interns. I'll have to do a blog spotlighting Blenz, complete with pictures. I love this place!

After getting my internet fix I met up with the rest of the girls, who were buying awesome bags at great sale prices. I get bored with shopping exceptionally easily, however, so I asked Colleen if she wanted to go check out the Jamaican House a few doors down. I had seen a T-shirt in the window that I instantly fell in love with, and we had heard that members of the 1988 Jamaican Bobsled Team were signing autographs. (If you haven't seen Cool Runnings, go watch it. Now. If you have seen it, watch it again. Love it.)

We headed down into the basement of The Savage Beagle, which has been turned into the Jamaican House for the Games. First we stopped at the Jamaican team's sponsor table. MoneyGram, a service like Western Union, had giveaway baggies that included a small Jamaican flag, a lanyard, a keychain, a signed poster, and a book-on-tape about the '88 team. The girls there then directed me to another table where the shirts were sold. I got a green one with a shield on the back and a small logo on the front. It's awesome! (Photo to come).

From there we headed upstairs, where Devon Harris was hanging out signing autographs and posing for pictures. We had to wait our turn a little bit, but then I introduced myself and asked him to sign my shirt. We chatted with him the whole time, and it turns out he's now a motivational speaker. He gave me his card and I'm going to try to bring him to JWU this spring! He also wrote a children's book and has another book coming out soon. I told him I worked at the Sliding Center and asked if he'd be at the bobsled competitions later this week, but he said he didn't have tickets. "I can get you in!" I exclaimed, then reason caught up with me. "Do you have accreditation?" He didn't, so I explained that if he did I could have gotten him a 2nd Part Pass but without the initial accreditation it was worthless. As it is, he's leaving on Wednesday for a speaking engagement. All in all, this was an EPIC athlete encounter!

Me and Devon Harris - a legend!

That evening Craig Madigan was taking all the interns out for a drink. He told me this earlier in the day at WVL, to which I said "Oh." When he and the other girl in the office just stared at me I explained "I don't drink, but I'll still go". We hadn't been there long when the maintenance guy, "Super Dave" Brown, offered to take anyone who was interested to the Medals Ceremony. All of us from the Providence campus, plus Charlotte Sarah (an honorary Prov girl) jumped at the opportunity and grabbed our coats to follow Dave down to Medals Plaza. He has a buddy (Steve) who works for VANOC, and all we had to do was hop in line, no tickets required. We went through the metal detector before anyone even asked us for tickets, and then we gave our instructed response "We were in the Standby line". Those six words were enough to let us glide right in. Once we crossed that threshold, Steve quickly ushered us up to the front and into the Mosh Pit, directly adjacent to the Olympic Family area. SO AWESOME! We felt like VIPs!

We were so stoked to be there!

The guy you can see in the screen on the back said his name was Fred and he was the emcee before the ceremony began. I turned to the group and asked if anyone had seen the movie A Guy Thing. Only Jessie had, and she agreed that he looked like the guy from the pharmacy who ends up cooking the rehearsal dinner. I just IMDb'ed him, and he is!

The first medals presented were for Women's Skeleton. I watched heats 1 and 2 on Thursday, but had to work from 12-10:30PM on Friday and couldn't watch the finals. Brit Amy Williams took gold, the first individual gold medal for Great Britain at the Winter Olympics in 30 years. Two Germans finished behind her, Kerstin Szymkowiak earned silver and Anja Huber took bronze. While the British national anthem played, I continually glanced away from the flags and back at the athletes, watching Kerstin become completely overwhelmed with emotion. It was already a magical night.

Kerstin - GER (left), Amy - GRB (center), Anja - GER (right)

We were quite close to the stage, as you can see.

The next medals awarded were the biggest deal of the night. The first Canadian gold in Whistler was awarded to Jon Montgomery for Men's Skeleton. Late on Friday night I could hear the cheering in the spectator areas all the way from my office in Lot 7. Canada was pumped! As I mentioned before, we were standing right next to the Olympic Family section, so his family were all gathered there. As the athletes make their exit across the stage, many of them throw their bouquets into the crowd; Jon threw his perfectly into his mother's arms. Not long after, Colleen received a text from her mom saying that she saw us on T.V.! We'll be going again on Tuesday (now that I have Steve's number) so watch for us!

Martins Dukurs - LAT (left), Jon - CAN (center), Alexander Tretyakov - AUT (right)

Jon Montgomery's family after he threw the bouquet

The next medals awarded were for Ladies' Super-G, in which American Lindsey Vonn finished 3rd behind Andrea Fischbacher of Austria and Tina Maze of Slovenia. The other girls screamed "Yeah Lindsey!!!" a few times and she waved right at them!

Lindsey Vonn getting her bronze medal - this one's for you, Prof. Zacchilli! I know it's not an autograph, but it's the best that I've managed so far

Tina - SLO (left), Andrea -AUT (center), Lindsey - USA (right)

The last medals awarded were for Ski Jumping, Long Hill Individual. The Swiss Simon Ammann won gold, and he was the happiest person on stage that night. Something about his smile radiated positive energy that outshone all the other athletes before him. I can't explain it, but I could just feel his joy so strong. It was truly touching. He seemed to be besties with silver medalist Adam Malysz of Poland, which was also really cute but I felt like bronze medalist Gregor Schlierenzauer of Austria was a tad left out. Even still, it was a great group to close out the medals presentations with!

Adam - POL (left), Simon - SUI (center), Gregor - AUT (right)

All in all, Saturday night was one to never forget.

Fires, Time, and Athletes

When we got home the other night, someone told us that one of the bathrooms had caught fire. I saw a maintenance guy in the closet by the small women's washroom and I asked him about it. He explained that it was just a small fire in the closet of the large women's washroom. They think the broom got too close to the water heater. A couple of girls who went to the bathroom at about 1:30AM found it burning, and it's a good thing they did because it would have spread to the whole trailor! Here's a photo of the scorched patch of floor.

It still smelt like burning.

On Monday evening the girls and I went to see the movie Valentine's Day in a local cinema. When we emerged from the theater and into the Whistler evening, Charlotte Sarah asked if anyone else had forgotten where they were for a minute. "Yes!!!" I agreed, because it was so true. Being here is truly like being in another world. Days on the calendar don't have the same significance as they do back home - there are no Monday Relay For Life meetings, no Tuesday CHS meetings, no Grey's Anatomy on Thursdays. It's as if time and space are frozen here. I'm not looking ahead more than a day at a time because each day holds enough excitement to capture my attention. I'm trying to remind myself every moment that this is an extraordinary experience, and not to let it feel commonplace just because I've nestled into some semblance of a routine here. Each day is to be savored.

This morning we toured Creekside, host of the alpine skiing events. We weren't able to see too much of the venue since we could only go up as far as the base of run, but competition was going on during the tour. We got up to the finish line just as Lindsey Vonn finished her downhill run of the Super Combined event (unfortunately she fell during the Slalom portion and didn't medal). Our 2nd Part Passes didn't get us into the main spectator area because we weren't in uniform, so I couldn't get close enough to get any good pictures of the skiers crossing the finish line, but I could see fairly well. Here are some photos:

We watched from up where those people are at the bottom of the photo

There was a great sushi place just outside Creekside - Blaire and I were so happy!

After that delicious lunch we had some time to kill before our class and didn't want to go back to camp just yet, so we called Sydney and she brought us 2nd Part Passes to the Athlete's Village (I still think it's so cool that we can do stuff like that!). Our mission: accumulate pins! I hadn't been asking people for pins because I didn't have any from Dalton or Mass or USA and I thought the idea behind it was an exchange, but apparently it's acceptable just to ask people for pins. Some people have had good luck from the police officers or other employees at various places. We, however, wanted athletes.

Blaire is determined to get a USA pin, so we stood in WVL near where the athletes go to the dining tent, since it was around lunch time. We spotted some guys in USA jackets right away, and stood awkwardly near them so that we could pounce as soon as they finished their conversation. Soon enough two of them walked toward us a few moments later. "Hi! Where in the US are you from?" Blaire asked. "Actually, we're foreign" a heavily-accented man said. "Oh, well do you happen to have any pins?" she continued. "No, but that guy usually does. You should chase him down," he told us. Glad to have permission to stalk someone, we hurried off after the man our foreign friend had been chatting with. After a few "excuse me!"s he turned around, as did the young guy he was with. We opened again by asking where in the US he was from (Lake Placid, NY) and then I asked the kid he was with "what's your sport?" (which feels a lot like asking "what's your sign?"). He was a luger! We talked to him for a little bit, and he handed Blaire one USA Luge pin - which I want! She said I could have it if she got another USA pin. Let's pray that she does! I had forgotten to look at his accreditation to get his name, but I checked on the Vancouver 2010 website and found out his name is Chris Mazdzer. I'm going to keep my eye out for him at the Sliding Center, because he said he was going to be around for the rest of the Games!

Chris Mazdzer's official photo for the Games

You're Such a Luger

While I was waiting for the accredited shuttle to go up the hill this afternoon, I noticed a bunch of Sochi guys standing around by the security tent. I asked the driver if he knew what they were doing here, and he said "they're trying to decide if they want Thai or Indian food". I didn't quite know what to make of his joke, and then he clarified "I don't know". "Do you know if they're coming or going?" I pressed him, just because I was curious and wanted to know whatever information he could tell me. "They're leaving - because Whistler doesn't have any Thai food". Not only was this really not very funny, I had a Thai Chicken Wrap for lunch in the Workforce Break Tent today.

Just before the shuttle pulled away, a VANOC "smurf" (they have all-blue uniforms and there are thousands of them, so they've been nicknamed "smurfs") and two Ukranian athletes climbed aboard. "Athletes?!" the bus driver exclaimed. "I get to drive athletes?!" he carried on, fist pounding the two men as they got on. Not getting much reaction from us, he said "You can tell they're bobsled guys because they sat right behind each other". "No, they're lugers," the smurf said, "they compete tomorrow" (which means they're doubles lugers - a team of two people per sled). "Hey, my sister used to always tell me that I was a luger too!" the bus driver cracked, which is so old and obvious that it just wasn't funny. The Ukranians didn't laugh. I got off at the second stop, and wished them luck before I scooted out of there.

In other important news, Jono labled all the nipple grabbers (or "nipple crushers" as he calls them) in Sharpie with nicknames for each worker. Ina's says "The Germinator" because she's German, Steph's is "De Groot The Mad Root" because her last name is De Groot. Culley's says "Ivan Milat", who Jono explained was a crazed serial killer in Australia (Jono and Culley are both Aussies), and Jono's says "Optimus Prime". After lunch, however, Ina's and Steph's were missing and in looking for them I found Libor's which is named "Ice Cold Baby". On another side "Be Aware I Bite" is written, and on yet another side it says "Steal me and I'll crush your nipple". Needless to say, I didn't let either of the girls take that to replace their missing ones.

 

 

While I was writing this, another strange thing happened. Erin, who works for VANOC in SCW (snow, cleaning, waste) came into my office and asked if she could take off her longjohns. "I can't do it in my office or the door would come flying open" she explained. Awkward! Fortunately she did it quickly and I had my blog to distract me!

Russian, Russian, Russian coach, Holly, Russian…

The other night we hopped on a very crowded bus #10 from the Athletes’ Village. Not only was it standing-room only when we boarded, more and more people piled on as we got closer to Whistler Village, and we were forced to walk further and further toward the back of the bus to accommodate the other passengers.

The next thing I knew, Holly was seated in the very last row of the bus, squished between the shoulders of a coach and player from Team Russia. I wanted to sneak a picture so badly because the sheepish look on her face was priceless, but I want to practice good etiquette around the athletes and so I refrained. On the same trip, Colleen was bumping elbows with a Norwegian athlete, and I think some Japanese competitors were sitting a bit further up.

The same night, once we got to town, we took pictures with the fake Olympic rings. Later we saw some athletes in red and white track suits climbing up into the rings and posing dramatically for pictures. We were all impressed and excited until one guy and his snowboarded toppled out of the ring and off the platform. There was a collective gasp of concern from the crowd that had gathered, but he got up and seemed unharmed. The two girls stayed in the rings posing a bit more, but the guy didn’t get back in.

The JWU Providence girls in the Olympic Rings