soaking it in

Stepping back into something I didn't get a chance to post while in Vancouver... One day while we were working, someone walked into our office and asked if anyone wanted to go see snowboarding the next morning. My co-worker Victor immediately said "I'll go" and I was left stunned and thinking "wow, I can't believe how fast he said that." But then I piped in "is there more than one ticket?" There was. We were set to go to a mountain venue event the next day - something I've always wanted to do, but usually not feasible since the distance is usually so far from the broadcast center in-town that we have to be back to for work. Awesome, right? Our first confusion was that the website listed the various segments (qualifying, finals, etc) as different events and times, but our tickets only said Women's Giant Parallel Slalom at 10am, so we weren't sure whether our ticket was for the entire group of events. Since we got home from work around 3am, I talked Victor into going at 11, because it was 90 minutes to get there and I still had other work to do that night. True to Vancouver, it was raining. But unlike the constant spritz in the city, on the mountain it was pouring rain. And it was cold rain. We hiked a ways in the slush to get to the venue, which of course were bleachers with no cover. And nowhere at the event site was there any kind of cover to even duck under. Suffice it to say, we were miserable. (We actually were great from waist to neck, it was below the waist we weren't prepared for since neither of us had waterproof pants.) We saw a few races, but then the action broke for about an hour. We tried to stand in the rain and wait it out, but after 20 minutes, I was done trying to argue for staying and ready to go myself.  That was a long walk back to find a bus (especially since, in typical fashion, everyone pointed us in different directions to find the media bus back.) But hey - I finally saw a mountain event at one of the Olympics. It certainly was an experience we won't forget!