Tobin Blog: Vancouver 2010

Whoa, what is this? Yes it is a blog post. For those of you holding your breath for more insightful and pithy comments by yours truly, I apologize. My posting screeched to a halt over the last year. This was partly due to being in Seattle and not living overseas, thus most of the people that I kept this blog for outside myself knew what I was doing or were just a phone call or e-mail away. And it was and still is due to the fact that I use my work laptop for almost everything and I can not for the life of me get the laptop to talk to my good camera. All the pictures you see here are from the little camera. Now being the Olympics, we brought the big camera but it never left the apartment so this post is not missing anything. Now on to the post.

Vancouver 2010 was our destination. Paty was in Mexico the first week of the Olympics and only got home on Tuesday. I spent the entire week before trying to secure a place to stay in Vancouver that would not bankrupt us. Luckily my friend Craig and his list came through for me and we found a great place to stay that was very close to downtown and even closer to the metro line.

Paty and I arrived Thursday evening at around 6 PM. We had our first Olympic night downtown in Yaletown, it was also the Woman's skating final program amongst other things so as always there were Olympics on. It was a very crowded and extremely festive atmosphere. Once you found a place to eat and drink you really did not leave since every bar and restaurant in the town was full.

Friday morning was the US v Finland hockey game. The puck dropped at Noon so we had to find a place to watch the game early. We ended up at the German Fan Fest.

Almost every country that had a significant population of athletes at the games sponsored a place to gather. Some were just informative about their country like a tourist info stand. Some went the other direction and basically sponsored a party. All of them had TVs in place to watch the games and most of the time if their athlete won they would go from the medal ceremony to the fan fest of their country. So that is me at the German Fan Fest sporting my USA Hockey jersey that I bought for Salt Lake 2002 Winter Olympics.

The US dispatched Finland with 6 goals in the first period to coast to a 6-1 victory. The Canadian men's semi-final dropped the puck at 6:30, with the woman's curling final at 4, so we had a bit of time to find another place to watch the Canadian semi final, but we knew we had to be at the bar by around 4 PM or we would never find a spot. We eneded up at the Lamplighter pub in Gastown. We got in line about 4 o'clock and I think we were among the last people they let in the bar at 4:30. After that they were at capacity for the evening. No one was going to leave with the hockey game about to start. Here is a picture of Paty and I at the pub. I went with the Pelican shirt and not the USA jersey as this was definitely enemy territory. The Canadians take their hockey very seriously.

It was a great night to be in the bar. The woman's curling team started the night on a low note by basically choking in the clutch and gifting the gold medal to the Swedes. But the rest of the night was all Canada all the time. This is the best picture that shows the atmosphere in the bar. Notice how attentive the people were to the TV? And notice in the background that the hockey game had not even started yet, this was just the curling:

The biggest cheers for the night were actually not for hockey, but for when the Canadians won the Short Track Speedskating Relay Gold Medal:

The Mexican was talking USA smack to the locals later that night:

Saturday we spent a lot of time just walking around the city and experiencing all the sights. One thing about the Olympics is that you do come across the athletes out and about. Here is a picture of Paty and I taken at the Cactus on Robson Street with the Great Britian (all Scottish) Woman's Curling Team:

The city set up public viewing sites called LiveCity to watch the games, you probably saw them on the broadcast a few times. This place was packed beyond capacity on Sunday morning for the US v Canada hockey game, but Saturday night in the rain it was quite empty:

Some pre game smack photos from Saturday night before the game:

After staying out later than planned on Saturday night, this is where we found a spot to watch the historic US v Canada hockey game. We were the only US fans in the bar.

Canada won 3-2 in sudden death overtime. If the entire trip all we did was watch that game with all the uber-passionate fans it would have been worth it. But we did much more. The spirit of the games and the friendliness of the Canadians made the trip well worthwhile. The US lost, but the game was so good that we did not even care at the end. And trust me when I say that the Hockey Gold Medal meant more to Canada than it did to us. Even walking home with the jersey on, we did not get heckled. The Canadians were just relieved to win and 9 out of 10 people congratulated us on a good game instead of gloating. The walk home, our last pic of Vancouver: