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Hello everyone!
Well, interesting as that previous, pensive little episode was (for me at any rate), it is time once more to return to my rather mundane, linear litany of experiences during the awe-inspiring fortnight that held the Olympics last February. Although the singular, straightforward narration of events may strike as being somewhat dreary, hopefully the events being described will help to make up for this tedium.
As the Olympic dream finally arrived here in the unseasonably warm Vancouver dawn, so it was that I found myself, through a little good fortune and rather more sheer stubborn-mindedness, but one cog in the enormous, tumultuous Olympic bandwagon. There remained, of course, one final heart-stopping moment when it seemed that my employers would have no need of a worker unable to arrive until two hours after his projected start-time, every day, for the duration of his contract. Fortunately, I was able to win over my occupational superiors and the day was mine - and what a day! I would rise every working morning at 4.45am, to be greeted by a cold, empty, oppressive basement. I would munch my way through some cereal for breakfast, try unsuccessfully - every time - to wake myself up in the shower and dress in my fabulous Olympic gear, ready to leave my house, into clear, biting cold or close, soaking rain and arrive at my nearest bus-stop in time for the first public transport of the day at 5.50am. Every shift, regardless of the projected weather forecast for the remainder of the day ahead, saw me dress in my navy blue jogging bottoms, a vest, my light blue base-layer, followed by my body-warmer fleece, finished with my light blue ski-jacket, all of which (bar the vest) is my official Olympic uniform and all of which I have been allowed to keep as a very personal, very expensive, very wonderful memory of my participation in the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games.
Once warmly installed upon the bus, I would settle down on a hard seat towards the rear of the vehicle and pour over the morning's paper, appropriated from one of the free newspaper stands positioned next to my bus-stop. Inevitably, my attention would turn first to all of the Olympic-related media coverage, full of inspirational stories of virtuoso displays by a dazzling multitude of dedicated athletes and also the occasional, sobering tradegy, such as the announcement of the death of the Belorussian luger or that of the mother of one of Canada's medal hopefuls in the ice-skating event. After my fill of these issues, I would often plough on into the more general news, both local and international, if there was time. Often, I am happy to relate, my reading would be interrupted by the chirping of my mobile-phone: whilst it was far too early in the day to expect a call from any of my Canadian-based friends, it was a perfect window of opportunity to receive a much-welcomed connection to my family back home. Through the beauty of the rather strange Canadian mobile telecommunications set-up, I was able to receive calls from anywhere on the planet for free before 8am local-time, every day. Thus it was that from anywhere between 6am and 7am I could quite often be heard chatting cheerily with Mum, Dad, Beth and occasionally even my dear grandparents, informing them of the most recent goings-on here in Vancouver, at the main sites of the Games, as well as at my relatively remote location of the Capilano University transportation hub. These early morning trans-Atlantic conversations were definitely the silver-lining attached to such an early (even for me) morning wake-up call.
Wonderful event that these conversations always were, on the occasional morning when my mobile remained silent in my pocket, the scenes of the early morning commute, both inside the bus and beyond the plexi-glass windows, provided quite the adequate distraction. As the bus pulled me away from my local neighbourhood, out of the receding gloom, I could at first allow my sight to roam the length of the bus, alighting upon faces of the journey, both weary and wary, the darkness beyond the glass yielding little besides the flashes of street-lights and neon-signs from the advertizing world. Leaving Kitsilano behind, we would cross the Granville Bridge into the downtown core and it was from this point that the vistas outside the bus began to grow to become much more interesting than anything the interior ever had to offer as a rival. The lights of downtown would still be shining forth; a series of beacons upon the immediate horizon, welcoming us into their blazing embrace. The sun would at this point be at the cusp of joining the world, sending the first pioneering rays shooting out of the great bowl of sky above, striking the majestic mountain peaks framing the backdrop to the urban flames. Driving on, through the near-empty downtown streets, buildings also would stand lifeless and dark, the majority of vendors and home-owners still slumbering within. Reaching the very heart of the commuter-core, I would disembark from my trusty transporter and walk the short distance to the Sea-Bus terminal, where I would hop onto a small ferry that then conveyed me across the waters of the Burrard Inlet and to the shore of North Vancouver, whence I would catch one final bus up to the wooded peace-haven of the Capilano campus. It was whilst crossing the water that the sun would burst forth in earnest and the waves would come alive with shimmering flashes of blues and greens and grey. Quite often during the return ride each evening, the ferry operators would announce current updates to the medal standings, particularly - of course - if Canada itself was the team on the move. Another exciting addition to the evening journeys was the usual presence of some particularly die-hard fans, wearing copious amounts of their nation's colours, on their bodies, on their heads and on their faces: ice-hockey jerseys, painted national flags upon the cheeks, wrapped in enormous real flags to boot. I was especially admiring of the - brave? Idiotic? Ignorant? - Americans kitted out to the hilt just minutes before the puck-drop for the round-robin meeting between their nation and the Canadians (a game, incidentally, that the Americans won easily: whether this boded well or otherwise for this motley crew I find hard to say).
The job itself was a lot of fun. I enjoyed the distance required to reach the site, as the journey offered me the opportunity to see much of the city, including the all-important central downtown core resplendent with its festive scenery and elcetric atmosphere, at this, the moment of its finest hour. Once actually on-site, quite paradoxically, I rather appreciated being away from the main hustle and bustle of the busy crowds: I was able to relax, to ease into my role; I could forge concentrated working relationships with my team and our transportation drivers, many of the former becoming good friends as the Games progressed and many of the latter, often from as far afield as the eastern seaboard of the USA, providing entertaining stories of their journeys to reach us in the far north-west, as well as illuminating personal details of their own impressions witnessing and working at the Olympics. The nature of my work entailed fiercely frenetic, concentrated bursts of energy, followed by lengthy lulls, when the sun-filled days seemed to stretch out into eternity (I suppose that ten-hours days will do that to a person). It was during these periods of calm that I would chat with the bus drivers and with my fantastic team: on the warm days - and there were many - we would lounge around outside the buses, sitting on the grass and telling stories of our impressions of the Olympics, of Vancouver and of Canada (we were nearly all from outside the city, outside the country even). We would watch the remote-controlled aeroplanes and solitary, awesome helicopter of the local aviation club that met most weekday evenings, if the weather was hospitable, on the field directly besides our 'staging' area. On the wet days, we would pile into the waiting buses themselves, to talk to the drivers, or to watch a film on the in-house DVD-player.
My official title throughout this marvellous adventure was that of 'Transportation Staging Supervisor' and I felt very important indeed. The Games saw an unprecedented volume of people arriving in the city, intent upon seeing the Games themselves and enjoying as smooth and carefree a time in Vancouver as possible: estimates put the number of visitors to the city during the Olympics at some 200,000, roughly one fifth of the total annual population for the whole of the Greater Vancouver area. Wherever possible, visitors and spectators to individual events were advised to use public transport, in a concerted and enthusiastically pursued effort to minimize the impact of further traffic upon the region and the downtown core especially. As part of the motivation to encourage such efforts, major transportation hubs were established throughout the city, at key designated sites: spectators and Olympic workforce personnel alike could travel in private vehicles to these sites, located away from the busiest areas of the metropolis, park up and continue on to their desired destination aboard an official Olympic bus. Each site catered for specific locations: my site of Capilano ran people to and from Cypress Mountain, the location for major snowboard and ski events, such as the moguls, the halfpipe and the freestyle - indeed, Cypress was the site of the first Canadian gold medal triumph; the first success of its kind for the Canadians to enjoy whilst hosting a Winter Olympics (they failed to rack up a single gold medal in either of the two previous Winter Games held in their country). After leaving their vehicles in the designated car-parks, people made their way to the loading zone, where a bus would collect them and convey everyone up to the mountain. At any one time, our site of Capilano would be in control of some thirty to fifty buses, only four of which could be present in the loading zone at any one time, due to safety regulations. The remainder of the buses were to be retained in a separate area, free from visitors and official personnel, to join a queue awaiting their turn to be summoned up to the loading zone. This waiting area was termed the staging area or, as I came rather endearingly to refer to it, purgatory.
As the staging area supervisor, when I was on shift it became my task to ensure that operations ran smoothly in this mid-way between the route up to the loading zone and - depending upon the state of affairs entered into once arrived in that area - either heaven or hell. Often, the situation was relaxed and quite informal; buses often waited for some time, their engines turned off, their drivers smoking on the pavement, eating a snack or reading a daily newspaper. Beyond a certain time in the mid-afternoon at the very latest, the stream of bodies seeking a lift up to the mountain tailed off to a trickle, as the final events of the day commenced: from this point henceforth, the majority of the buses would be required at the mountain itself, ready to carry people back to their vehicles and the remainder of their journey home at the end of a stunning experience - it was around this time that I would redirect most of my buses to the mountain in readiness for just this circumstance. Occasionally, however, things could become rather busy and, just for a brief period, purgatory would take on an entirely altered persona: most days, at mid-morning, I would find myself juggling thirty-or-so fifty-foot plus buses in a space far too limited for such behemoths in such large numbers, taking down individual bus numbers and driver information, whilst constantly relaying details to the loading zone team and receiving their updated needs in return. When required, I would direct my team to send up one or multiple buses to the loading zone, striving to maintain a system whereby the buses left in the order in which they had first arrived, thus ensuring that no one driver spent longer than was proper waiting in my zone. Occasionally, this system would fall slightly out of line, but there was always a magnanimous bus driver on hand to point out exactly where I had slipped up and prod me to remedy any faults, bless.
My Olympic job then, offered me a greater degree of managerial imput than I had ever previously enjoyed and I revelled in the (limited) power that it bestowed. I commanded my own little team, a motley band of Germans, a Kiwi, a French-Canadian and even the occasional native Vancouverite. For the majority of the time, my team consisted of Maja and Anna, the two bubbly, wonderfully happy German girls, wearing perpetual smiles and making the early mornings inspirationally bearable and Danny, one very cool cat from New Zealand and unflappable in the tightest of situations. We spent halcyon hours chatting, away from the busy periods of our shifts, occasionally joined even by my superior, a lovely lady who had travelled from Chicago to help manage our site for the Games and who is a native of Alabama (yes, complete with that fantastic accent). Cathy was a superb manager; a real people-person and a meticulous planner, she is also a thoroughly nice lady and we all had a great time in her company. In fact, the parallels of the scenario, complete with relative working freedom, a great managerial team and interesting, intelligent colleagues, all thrown together quite by chance into a beautiful, academic scene, reminded me strongly of a previous occupational experience when I worked as a Residential Tutor at the Cambridge Summer School programme a couple of summers ago. As with that very special adventure, this Olympic dream proved lamentably short, the Games themselves lasting a paltry, though action-packed, seventeen days, during which time I worked for some thirteen days myself. My working experience at the Games came to an end two days before the completion of the Olympics themselves, giving me the opportunity to soak up a little of the remaining atmosphere on my own time and to experience one final event in particular.
After becoming so engrossed in my work at Capilano, I was keen to spend a little of my free time reconnecting with my friends Mike and Jenna, whom I had initially lodged with upon arriving in this fair city back in November. We scheduled a meet-up in the downtown core to watch the final of the men's ice-hockey, to be contested between the host nation, Canada, and their old enemy, the US. The completion of this massive game would mark the end of the Olympics themselves and was sure to be followed by a spectacular closing ceremony, accompanied and exceeded by a sumptuous celebration on streets across Vancouver. I was somewhat skeptical of our plan when I heard it: we were to meet in Yaletown, the ultra-rich downtown neighbourhood, home to all of the most recent, most lucrative of Vancouver development, at the rather tardy hour of ten o'clock in the morning. Sure enough, the appointed hour upon us, I arrived at our scheduled rendezvous, to be met by a quite ludicrously large queue, snaking away down the street, emanating from every location advertizing the screening of the gold medal game. I slipped into the mass and made my way, politely, to Mike's characteristically shocking mass of ginger curls. Hello everyone, great plan. Never fear David; these are some of Mike's friends from back home in Ontario and they have a cousin who works at this pub that we are lined up outside, roughly two hours (at present) from the front door in queuing time. As soon as the doors open, we are to phone said cousin, who will proceed to appear at the door and shepherd us in, under the watchful, wrathful glare of the surrounding three hundred (more or less; I do not exaggerate) fellow patrons. An improvement upon the plan as I knew it, no doubt, but I could not help feeling a tad skeptical still: if the plan failed, then we were potentially without a place to watch the all-important match; if it should happen to succeed, then we would gain entry to the pub at least, but surely be incredibly marked individuals from that moment henceforth. I really wanted the plan to succeed.
We passed the time amiably enough; after introducing myself and mustering some of the customary speel as an itinerant, international traveller held only temporarily upon these glorious shores, I settled down to enjoy the prolific, partisan nature of the crowd: as seemed the trend throughout these Olympics, there were the token two or three US fans, bedecked in their star-spangled spendour, drawing the inevitable (though rather genial) ire of the vast remainder of the onlooking mass. Once again, witnessing the enthusiastic energy of all those present, I could not help but marvel at the intense, passionate emotion being drawn forth by these Games, surely one of the greatest legacy of the Olympics. I marvelled and then I quivered, mindful (and a little shameful) of the audacious stunt we were about to pull. A shout from the crowd, a swift glance and the situation was confirmed: far from another false alarm, this time the doors really were opening, ponderously, hesitantly, as if unsure of the rationale behind such a commitment to such an overbearing volume of people at its front. Mike's friend, phone jammed against his ear, strode forward, ducked around a couple of burly door-bouncers and swept up his (female) knight in shining waitress outfit, standing guardian at the gate. Minutes passed, the crowd was slowly, ever so slowly, shuffling forward and we were being to wonder what was transpiring within, when suddenly the friend reappeared at the door and beckoned us - all five of us - to follow him back inside. At this point, the howls of indignation from the crowd seriously led me to consider whether my life was worth the experience of a single game of ice-hockey: I mean, it is simply grown-up men, wearing ridiculous suits and body armour, skating around a small rink with large sticks in their hands and a small, black puck in their minds. Being tired, being excited nonetheless and being English, I slunk in after my friends, no questions asked.
The interior of the gastro-pub was suitably luxurious and I let my eyes take in a sweeping fill of the decorous rooms as we were led up two flights of stairs, opening out onto a covered roof-top terrace, where our friend (definitely 'our' by this point) had succeeded in securing us prime seats at the bar, right next to the giant screen, already showing warm-up features, mercifully set to mute. No sooner had I taken a seat, than a drink - two in fact - were thrust my way. Thus we proceeded to drink the place dry (or so it seemed) - and this was merely our pre-game efforts. The game was underway after a steady build-up in anxious atmosphere that did at least serve to reassure me that my life was in no immediate danger, everyone else present numbering among the lucky few to gain admittance and therefore harbouring no recriminatory emotion towards we queue-jumpers. I cannot recount much by way of the game itself, other than to feel safe in writing that it was a game to remember, with both teams playing very well, considering the enormous circumstances surrounding their every move. Momentum shifted back and forth, the Canadians starting the stronger and settling well to build a solid 2-0 advantage by roughly the mid-point of the game. The US, however, were far from finished and they regrouped for an almighty push that saw their stars claw themselves back into contention, levelling proceedings at 2-2 with under a minute (or thereabouts) remaining upon the clock in the final period of normal play.
A tense period of rest followed, before both teams trooped back out onto the ice to do battle in a shortened period of additional time, during which each team was also reduced by one man on the ice (as is the custom in ice-hockey for periods of overtime). Of course, Sid (the Kid) Crosby, the darling of the current Canadian game, popped up to write the fairytale ending to this fraught affair and the rest, as people are wont to term, is history. The crowd went absolutely wild, having been utterly electric throughout the game anyway - all bar two incredibly prominent Americans perched at the end of the bar, in full view of everyone and now, manfully, bearing up under a veritable avalanche of vocal (though, perhaps understandably, good-natured) abuse. Everywhere, both on the television and all around the terrace, people were shouting, screaming, jumping up and down, hugging both friends and strangers alike and generally becoming completely swept up in a mounting tide of emotional ecstacy. What a complete release! There, in that game, in that moment and in the debaucherous, sensational scenes of celebration to follow, long into the night, I became Canadian; I shared in these people's pride, in their unbridled joy and they welcomed me, my friends every bit as emotional, every bit as bacchic in their revelry.
The game won, the closing ceremony underway on the big screen, I took the following hour to regroup, to clear my poor head a little - enough, at least, to realize just how much alcohol I had consumed in the preceeding few hours and just how much my head seemed intent to punish me as a result. The cerfemonies concluded, our group gathered and a night of magical merry-making ahead, we took our leave of the roof-top bar. It was at this point that I discovered that our entire bar tab - running into the thousands between some eight people (our numbers had grown) - had been completely covered on the "expenses account" of our friend's work manager, who had met us during the game and with whom i had exchanged, at best, a handful of unparticular words: fantastic. It was also at this point that I realized just how far I had still to travel in my latent pursuit of soberness (but not yet sobriety): as we took our leave of the bar, I realized that my coat was missing; my coat, which I had not kept in close attendance, which I had in fact completely lost track ofsince leaving my chair some hour or more previously, which in fact contained my bank card, my mobile-phone and, of course, my passport, which I had needed as official proof of my age first to enter and then to drink in the bar that day. Cue five frantic, sickening minutes of desperate panic as I sought to find out just what had transpired over the course of the past few hours, before ending ignominiously, wondrously in my discovering that my coat had been safe all along, kept back behind the bar after its owner had apparently forgotten it and then transferred downstairs at the precise moment that said owner had returned upstairs to scour both seat and bar for the lost coat. All's well that ends well!
My mind lifted, my spirit raised, we took to the streets, where the party was already in full swing. People sang, shouted, cheered, high-fived, danced, hugged, clapped, drank, whistled, kissed and cavorted, on the pavements, in the road, outside and inside cafes, bars and everywhere else that had remained open into this most significant of evenings. Mike, Jenna and I soon became separated from the rest of our group, each content to wend our way through the throng, soaking up the unparalleled atmosphere, the positive energy, the absolute collectiveness. It is a lasting and marvellous testimony to the Canadian people - and to everyone else who chose to celebrate in Vancouver that night - that so little damage was wrought, that so few unseemly spates occurred, that in all the time that I wandered up and down the streets, passing countless multitudes, exchanging high-fives, shouts of joy and gleeful expressions, I met with only one idiotic challenge and that one which many others experienced also, I am sad to record. Still, this dunce was soon swept away in the tumult of the passing masses and he was far outweighed by the inestimable happy moments with the crazy, flag-waving Albertans, with the participants in the numerous, impromptu games of street hockey errupting upon the major throughfares, with the gorgeous female 'Mounties' (Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer). We pounded the streets for hours, Mike, Jenna and I, each swept up in the magic of the moment, each shouting, each screaming, each chanting "Can-a-da!" until our voices were beyond hoarse, each taking it in turns to wave our own Canadian flag and each meeting with new, interesting moments every few meters. We walked the length of Robson, which had been completely shut down to anything other than the obscene level of foot-traffic: we turned around before the beach and walked back towards the Square and on past this central shockwave of frenzied merriment towards the scene of our (their seems wrong) triumph at the ice-hockey stadium of BC Place beyond. We walked up and down Davie Street, then Burrard: each of us tire, each of us nearly spent, we nonetheless could not bring ourselves to leave the party; each of us recognized just how important this celebration had become; each of us knew absolutely that such a moment might never come to pass in our lives again (especially in my case, as an Englishman allowed to assume Canadian citizenship for this single night - and therefore the identity of a successful nation for once). Thus we partied on, well past the time when any of us bodily felt like celebrating, kept aloft by the immensity of the incredible vibes emanating throughout the city that night.
When finally Mike and I took Jenna's example and headed home an hour behind her, walking all of the way, carried aloft still, I took my leave knowing that I had just watched history being made, in the flesh. Of course, we each of us witness and contribute to history being made every moment of every day and yet, this was a special type of moment and this a special type of history. The passion, the drive, the enthusiasm and the well-intended, utterly justified national pride that I had experienced and become so swept up in whilst running with the torch that night three weeks previously in Kitsilano had now brought me full circle to culminate in the fairytale ending of a momentously magical final scene, to be forever etched upon my memory and here, within these inadequate words. A treasure for all time and a treasure shared and to be shared by so many.
Best wishes to all!
David xxx
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