My First Day at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver

Some of you may know that I am an absolute Olympics fanatic. For two weeks every two years, I get no work done for two weeks while I sit glued to the TV watching the Summer and Winter Olympics. So when Vancouver was announced as the site of the 2010 Winter Olympics, I started preparing.

On Monday, February 15, 2010, Genny and I made the first of what will be at least six trips from our home in Bellingham up to Vancouver to attend events at the Olympics. Today, we were here for the 500 meter men's speed skating, held at the beautiful Richmond Olympic Oval.

We were a bit disappointed that none of the USA skaters did that well. But it was an incredible experience nonetheless.

The competition was delayed for more than an hour when the ice resurfacing machine malfunctioned. All of the coaches came out to examine the ice right in front of where we were sitting. We could tell there was a problem from where we were sitting. Of course, we knew there were serious problems when the people running the machine pulled out a wrench,

Everything about the events thus far have been incredible for us. There was absolutely no wait at the border getting into Canada. We made it from our house Richmond, BC in 45 minutes, ate lunch at a nearby mall, parked the car on a side street, and then rode the light rail for free. Then we had a short walk along the Fraser River to the Olympic Oval.

There were even some Dutch fans handing out free orange mittens along the walk over to the arena.

Afterwards, we had a very pleasant walk back to our car amongst a very friendly and enthusiastic crowd. We'll be attending five more events over the next two weeks.

There are more photos on my Flickr site.