Feb 22: A tear-down day, and victory ceremonies with Devo!

No racing at Whistler Creekside today, which was somewhat unfortunate, given the continued ideal weather conditions and the fact that snow is forecast over the next few days.  So, that meant that our work program today consisted of more "tear-down" work on the upper starts.  On the one hand, it's good to get a jump on the work that must ultimately be completed to close off the Games.  On the other hand, it sort of dampens our Olympic spirit a little prematurely to be involved in ripping stuff out when there is so much more left in terms of competitions and celebrations.

The tear-down work today involved chopping our buried plastic conduit out of the starts and intermediate timing points and extracting the timing cables that were placed in the conduits.  This stuff is now very much iced in place, so we had to hack away at it with pick axes, and we even broke a few in the process.  In some cases, the amount of cable we had put in place to reach out to starts or intermediate timing points exceeded 200 metres, so it also took some effort to get that cable all coiled up and cycle it back to the "Garbo Hut" for storage by the Whistler Mountain Ski Club.  Now that the courses are very hard and slick, it makes carrying multiple pick-axes and shovels, bundles of conduit and polyethylene poles and large coils of cable quite challenging.  It definitely makes hitting the shower and cracking a nice cold beer a priority when we get off the mountain!

This afternoon, my roommate Lou and I went to the village and lined up for standby admission to the Victory Ceremony.  We had not witnessed a victory ceremony from inside the fence yet, and we were also looking forward to seeing the 80's group Devo perform after the medal presentations.  Well, I am so glad we went!  I think this evening will be one of the main enduring memories for me from this whole Olympic experience.  Although no medals were presented to Canadians at Whistler tonight, the ceremony was very entertaining and moving.  I was so proud of the job that Canada has done at hosting these Games and conducting the medal presentations.  I was also feeling very proud that the company I work for (Teck) made the metals for the medals.  When I saw the German, Austrian, Swedish, Russian and Norwegian athletes receiving their medals and proudly clutching them as their flags were raised, it really hit me what a central contribution Teck has made to these Olympics.

I also really enjoyed watching the victorious athletes' fans celebrating with them.  It was so nice to see several instances when they threw their flowers out into the crowd and someone who caught them immediately handed them over to someone waving the athlete's flag.  In one case, I saw a man (probably a Canadian!) catch the flowers tossed out by an Austrian athlete and after passing them along to a woman with an Austrian flag, he offered to also take her photograph with the flag and the flowers.  That, to me, is what this is all about.

Then there was Devo - what a fabulous show!  Those guys rocked hard for an hour without pausing and they sounded fantastic.  They seemed genuinely thrilled to be performing at an Olympiad and everyone in the crowd seemed to enjoy their music thoroughly - everyone from Canadians, Americans, Norwegians wearing viking hats, Swedes, Russians, Germans, 4 year olds, 64 year olds, 20 yr olds and every age in between.  We were all bouncing up and down, shoulder to shoulder, at the best "block party" in the world.  The "smurf blue" Devo plant pot hats that were handed out really completed the night.