Day 14/15 - Great Day on the hill plus GS Race day

I now have 597 pictures in the album and I'm not uploading all of them either! The camera I have is really easy to use (smile feature is a blast) and I've been taking an average of 60 photos and/or videos a day! Be sure to check the 'My Olympic Photos' link on the right.

Yesterday's skiing was awesome again. Blue bird skies, light soft snow everywhere. The Harmony Bowl offers a wide variety of terrian. Our group had a wide assortment of skill level, with Ferd not being on skiis for more than 10 years, Randy for 3 or 4 years. Mike and Christine joined us for the day too. Mike is a great skier and an ex-skipatroller. I wasn't aware you could become an 'ex' skipatroller :-) We ripped all over the place up there, going 60+ kph on the cruisers. You can feel a form of g-force at the bottom of some of the knolls. We also managed a few steeper turns in the morning before have lunch on Whislter. We then boarded the Peak to Peak and made a stop at Blackcomb. 11 minutes, you can switch mountains.

At Blackcomb, our first run was down Ridge Runner and Rock n Roll. This is about a 6.5 mile long. From there, Ferd and Christine decided it was time to start the apres and they headed to Merlins at the base of Blackcomb. The four of us then headed out to 7th Heaven. We skiied Xyggy's Meadow first. I'd totally forgotten about this run. Great fall line skiing straight down for about 1000 vertical feet. A couple of other runs that I can't remember and we wrapped up the day with a run down the Cougar Chutes, just to skiers left of Pakalolo. Nice to get a bit of steeps in for a change to the cruisers.

I headed back to Whister via Peak to Peak again (3rd time now) and the Creekside Gondola since that is where I have to store my skiis. I was back on the GS course again today, so I needed my stuff. Rather than spend $7.50 a beer at a bar, I made my way to the Weasel house. This was fun, since I then met up with Steve Podborski. He's an original Crazy Canuk for those of you who don't know him. I brought my netbook with me this time and gave Sue and my kids a 'visual' tour of the tent. They got to meet a couple of my weasel friends, but it was still early (4:30pm) so many were not there yet since they were still working on the hill. You can still go to the tent on your days off, so I took full advantage.

From there it was off to meet the gang at 'Monks' resturaunt. This is a classy joint with expensive food. I didn't find out just how expensive until they brought me my bill for just Wom and me: $250. Yes, I'm not kidding. 1 cheap bottle of wine, 2 gunbarrel coffees and 2 entres sure add up fast. After the awesome meal, we closed down the Fairmont lounge with some serious antics. Some pictures of this were not included on the picture site. You will have to wait for the 'other Olympic blog' to see those. I put some up anyway and we had a real nice time until Ferd got stuck in the bobsleigh the hotel had in the middle of their lobby. Wommy and I had to pull him out. Why I didn't get a picture of that I'll never know, but Wom has a few I'll get him to send me.

Last night was the first night that I slept in Whistler (rather than Pemberton, 35 minutes away). Chirstine and Mike kindly allowed me couch space for the night, which made sence since I was due back on venue at 6:30am.

Randy and Ferd woke me up at 6:15am since they were heading out to the Nordic combined event at Callaghan. I dressed back into my smurf suit and said goodbye to the boys as we walked to our buses. Ferd and Randy were heading back to Van after the event. Great visiting with them for a few days. See ya boys!

Dave Willis (crew chief) had to head back to work on Sunday so the remaining team (Lange, Greg, Ron, Elizebeth and myself) were reassigned to Randy Tarchuck's group. His group is quite large and as I rode the gondola Walter called me on my cell to tell me he had already been dismissed for the day. I called Ron to see where he was only to find he was sitting in the midstation soup tent. I joined him for a bit and then we both dismissed ourselves for the day. There were over 100 racers in this two run event so any work would'nt be happening for a long time. Since the GS track is about half of a downhill there were tonnes of people available for the work. I feel a bit back about not being there, but sometimes there isn't much yiou can do. Sorry team! I sid goodbye to Ron and Sally today. They have another week left before returning to Thunder Bay and are heading out to the island to visit friends. Ron was a real pleasure to work with too.

Back at Wom's in Pemberton, I cleaned the house, did some laundry, shopped for groceries and booked a massage for tomorrow morning. My hip is really bugging me from the high speed skiing and all the work over the last 12 or 13 days. I called the hot line to see when I was due back on the hill and found out that all men's crew had been given the day off. With one small race remaining, there really isn't too much to be done until race day. I expect I'll be back on site Thursday and/or Friday to get the track ready. I'll be there on Friday regardless since the women are running their slalom event that day and I want to watch it. I haven't missed a race day yet!

This evening I spent calling people like Al Buck, my Mom and brother. I updated the pictures site. It seems I've taken many shots of the same thing, so the daily quantity is slowly going down.

If you want another perspective on the Olympics as seen by Lange, one of our team, his blog is at http://soulberg.blogspot.com

Go Canada Go