Just imagine

Day 7 of the games and day 6 of competition

Ok, so you will need to use your imagination for a minute here.  Just imagine that the whackado L.Ron Hubbard was correct and we were put here by aliens.  Suppose that these aliens were none too bright.  Suppose this planet was naked - no human beings to speak of - and these aliens were told to plant the whole race, at once, on the planet.  Suppose these none too bright aliens got confused and planted everyone, at once, in one spot rather than to spread us all over the globe.  They planted everyone - all 6 billion of us - in downtown Vancouver.  That is what it felt like today.  It was the perfect storm.  The USA hockey team was playing earlier in the day and the Canadians were to play later.  EVERYONE was downtown.  I couldn't move along Granville, Robson or Georgia streets.  At one point I was watching from my window, 29 floors up, as a sea of people moved like lemmings along Georgia street making their way to and from Canada Hockey Place.  It was an amazing sea of people.  I do not think anyone ever thought we could hold so many happy people.

As I write this, Canada just won the game against the Swiss in a shoot-out.  The neighbourhood just erupted.  I can hear bells, horns from the barges in the harbour and the crowd down in Yale Town.  It must be even wilder downtown again.

And again, as with the last gold medal win, I knew the minute today's gold medal was won in speed skating.  I could hear the cheers all the way up to my office and again the cannon went off. 

Now, back to the crowd on Granville street.  I was trying to make my way to the salad bar for lunch and was drawn to a crowd in the middle of the street to see what they were all watching.  Turns out, it was Batman.  Not sure what Batman has to do with the Olympics but there he was up on a box and taking a few sheckles from the crowd who wanted their picture taken with him.  I like to think that he is here to protect us from the bad guys.  He could also be confused.  The laser beams shooting across the sky each night from English Bay could easily have been mistaken for the bat call.

After I obtained my salad, I tried to fight my way back to my office to eat in some peace and quiet.  However, I was again drawn to a crowd and someone yelling.  Turns out it was a preacher and he was getting visably upset that people were not listening to him as he tried to tell us that we needed to be saved and reach to our God as our saviour in order to make it to heaven.  He was red in the face and sweating.  He started to pump his fist in the air and stomp his feet.  Suddenly, I heard something that brought a collective gasp from the crowd before people started to laugh.  The preacher had reached his breaking point and just would not stand for people not paying attention to his message so he yelled "for F&*% sake!  Will you people just shut up and listen?"  Gotta tell ya, that kind of made my day.  I went back into my office with a smile on my face.

I am in bed early tonight for another big day at Whistler.  I will be wearing my walking cast as I found after yesterday that it is a must if I do not want to contemplate chewing my foot right off myself to make it stop hurting.  I guess I will find out if they will let me continue or not.  I will keep ya'll posted.

today's picture is of the view that the ski jumpers have of the mountains at Whistler.  How perfect is that?  How can the British papers say these are horrible games when you have something like that to look at?

Stay tuned.