Simon says...

I'm just home in Ajax from my second leg in Whistler. Before I go any further, I have to tell you about our trip back. We (Jeff P and I) were originally scheduled to leave on the 9:30pm bus which would have brought us to Vancouver around midnight. Kind of a waste of time to spend in our Richmond hotel room since I had to leave early to get to a 7:00am flight. At that hour, I would miss the complimentary breakfast and also a whole night of sleep worrying about sleeping in and missing my flight! So, Jeff P and I changed our Pacific Coach bus trip to Vancouver so we could both at least enjoy a reunion with some of our Bell team staying at the Executive Suites hotel in Vancouver. The van driver arrived promptly at 5:30pm and took us down Blackcomb mountain picking up another group (they were leaving for Australia on a midnight flight) for a rendezvous with the main bus at the Fairmont. When we turned up the driveway of the Fairmont we were met by red and blue flashes of light. Since it was snowing, our immediate thought was that the snow plough was clearing the drive. Of course that story would not be blog-worthy. It turned out that our bus driver was being arrested on a bench warrant by the RCMP! So much for getting into Vancouver at a decent time! Now most of you know that I have just been going with the flow since arriving in Whistler but I was a little concerned about our travellers to Australia. They had to be at the airport no later than 9:00pm which in retrospect seems to be cutting it pretty close anyway since the Sea to Sky is known to be treacherous in a snow storm! So, Jeff P immediately got on the phone with Pacific Coach to see when the next bus could be expected. It seemed that the person on the other end already knew of the situation and explained to Jeff P what his company was doing about it. By this time, the father of the Australian contingent had called Pacific Coach but was on hold. So with father on hold, the rest of the family was eager to hear of any developments with Pacific Coach. They naturally asked Jeff P what was going on and I'm not sure if he planned this but we all had to chuckle when he announced, "Simon says they have a driver just south of Whistler..." Without missing a beat, the father from Australia was taken off hold and in a loud voice on the edge of uncontrolled laughter said, "Hello Simon, ..."

I have been told by a few people that have been reading my blog that it sounds like we are having a good time. I am not going to dispute that! I reassure you that we are also doing alot of work. It's hard for me to post anything about work because firstly, it's work and naturally not blog-worthy. Secondly, I don't want to be the person that divulges too much about the security nor the new technology at our venue. It really is amazing and I will be disappointed if there is not a special Olympic report from Ron McClean or whomever.

On top of "working to give the world a flawless games," the Bell team have also been busy at Whistler, fund raising. Through the efforts of Jean (we call her Jeannie) and Brian of Bell, we have raised funds to sponsor a Whistler family for Christmas. I have also talked about our trips to Squamish. In one of those trips, we were driving off the main highway and were frustrated to find the road closed with all three essential services present (fire, police and ambulance). An eight unit condo had literally burned to the ground and all so close to Christmas! We were shopping for Olympic stuff later that day and were happy to find that our store (where we were getting the "Paesano discount") was giving away $250.00 of essential stuff to the families in that fire. We met several of the families that day at the store and found them all to be in a state of shock. They had lost everything. One man was explaining that he didn't even have a wallet anymore. It was lost in the fire! Jeff P was so overcome that he pulled out all the money in his wallet and gave it to the fellow. Jeff P couldn't even stay there to hear his "thank you" for the lump he felt in his throat. That event became Jeff P and (paesano) Joe's goodwill mission! So they began collecting money for those victims and the rest of the Bell team responded again as we did for our sponsored family. That just makes me so proud to be associated with this Bell Olympic Team! I encourage all of you reading this to consider sharing what wealth you have to help ease the burden of those finding it harder to give their families an enjoyable holiday. On that note, I want to wish you all a Happy Christmas and I hope to see you in the New Year.

Free Food Friday & the Paesano Discount

There is no better feeling when one is on a per diem than to get a free meal! Now we normally have breakfast at our hotel every morning which I am told has been discounted from our per diem cards. Some people here don't like the breakfast here but I'm okay with my coffee and bagel. That's what I would have at home anyway! Your other choices are "fresh" canned fruit salad, bananas (or apples or oranges), cherry sauce (supposedly for the unsweetened yogurt) with your choice of raisins granola, etc to further embellish the yogurt. Then there is the typical cereals (ie. bran flakes, froot loops etc) and a giant vat of instant oatmeal. Powdered scrambled eggs round out the warm breakfast items although if you didn't mind waiting you could make your own fresh waffles. I just hope my per diem doesn't discount $15.00 for my bagel breakfast because I think I'm missing a daily eggs benedict! Now my roommate Laurent is really getting ripped off because his daily breakfast includes a plate of cherry sauce that he forks into his mouth. Anybody that sits with him for breakfast always looks at him with the "What the..." face.
So today we are told that the chefs would be attending our venue to put on a luncheon for VANOC (Vancouver Olympic Committee). One of the questions the speaker at this luncheon asked was if this was the first time that everybody had eaten at our massive dining tent. None of us on the Bell team put up our hands because we were already guinea pigs the first day the chefs tested their equipment at our dining facility. We now know first hand that the athletes will be eating very well.

There was a little mishap this past week and unfortunately Laurent was in the middle of it. I can't say that it was the last straw but just another item in a laundry list of issues we were having. Because we were tired of waiting for Laurent to finish his texting and emailing to get back to work after lunch we decided to let him walk to the area that we were working. In retaliation Laurent decided that he would try to hold on to at least one vehicle key. Not quite sure if he was texting or what but he didn't realize how close he was and backed into a garage door of one of the units. There was minimal damage to the door but the force was enough to damage the drywall on the other side of the door. (All the garages were made up to look like bedrooms so most garage doors were covered on the inside with drywall). I'm not sure if he isn't sleeping in the condo because I know I have caught him dozing at work. He just seems out of it and he still has that damn cough. None of us could believe that he got stumped at the TR2 with a phone that was double corded to a switch. Our whole day is spent putting phones in. None of us have ever put a single phone into two data jacks! I think he should stop running outside in his underwear! At any rate, we all had enough of it and letters were written, meetings were had and at 11:30, Laurent was voluntold to stay home after Christmas. It wasn't easy for any of us to be involved in getting somebody "voted off the island" but we lost all confidence in him. We were babysitting him more than counting on him. Life's too short!

The nice thing about having VANOC around is that they bring cool Olympic Stuff with them. We all got a chance to touch the Torch and pose with it. I'm not sure which torch it is but we started a rumour that it was the final torch that lights the Olympic cauldron. As I ate lunch (turkey, ham, scallopped potatoes au gratin, carrots and caesar salad), I wondered where all these people came from. In our own little Whistler Athletes Village world, we are aware of about fifty people. I will say that our fifty Whistler people were duplicated by fifty Vanoc Vancouver people that wanted to come and visit this site. I know the rest of the people had to go through some kind of security so they must have been invited but I swear it was like bears to a picnic. These guys could smell the food from highway 99 and they jumped the fence! I didn't see any security staff at the tables, so I think this throng took them out. We'll know for sure when the "missing persons" reports come in! Nobody came out of the security check when we left the venue for the end of shift so they were missing at that time!


Our evening dinner of pizza (and byob beer) was supplied by our Bell management, I think. The aroma of twenty one boxes of pizza in our "Love Lounge" (as Bill puts it)was totally enticing. I might have been walking into somebody elses party but it was like I had blinders on. Pizza! Beer! Pizza, Beer! Must have! Now! I know I had a large lunch but what's the harm in one slice of pizza. Okay two! Three! It wasn't like I was at the trough! My good buddy Jeff admitted to four slices and I'm sure he went up for seconds at lunch! The beauty of free meals on a per diem card!

With all of these "parties," there was an inkling that Christmas was coming. This week wasn't any different from any other work week. We installed countless administration drops, phones and Panasonic TVs. We would go home, eat, have a few laughs in the Love Lounge, sleep and do it all over again the next day. But in all that mix we got ourselves a couple of boxes of Christmas lights which were meant to decorate our trailer. While we were down in Squamish (which we all call Squeamish now), we happened to see a vehicle which was decorated with very similar lights. We had to do it too! After all, we work with DC voltage all the time! It's nice to get smiles from people as they watch us go by (and not because of the weird occupants of the Christmas Patriot). As I write this now, we are the only trailer at Whistler Athletes Village to be decorated for Christmas!

Everybody knows that Christmas brings presents and presents require shopping. I thought I had met the best bargain hunter/negotiater when Laura and I were on the beaches of Mexico with Dani from Jazzercise. She was the inventor of the "quarter turn manuever" which was her feint to have the shop keeper reconsider and lower their price or lose a customer. Compared to what Joe can do, I think Dani's negotiating was easy because the shop keepers and beach vendors in Mexico were used to bartering. Joe walked into a shop in Squeamish, assessed the situation and walked out with what he calls the "Paesano discount." Now before you start thinking that's a different name for a five finger discount, think again! It turns out that one of the ladies behind the counter is a sergeant at arms with "price not negotiable" practically diplayed across her forehead. Joe gathers intel to find that the other lady is actually from my province of Campobasso or in his words a "paesana." That was enough for her to not only get Joe the discount but to get all his friends the discount too! The last time I shopped there with Joe was this last Friday night. We went on a midnight madness type thing where the store advertized a 25% discount on all items. When everything was said and done, I calculated that I got a 66% discount! I'm not sure what the rest of the guys got but we brought a total of six shoppers! Jeff was just shopping name brands like American Eagle, Aeropostale etc. He didn't care what size it was, he just threw it over his shoulder! That really was a good Friday!!

Free Fallin'

The weekend has come and gone and I have been a little lax about getting to my column. I needed the rest! A few weeks ago I went to the top of Blackcomb mountain to ski on the glacier. The snow was great and I had a good time so I tried to get back to that spot on the mountain. I went up the Glacier Express lift and silly me, who knew that there could be different places to ski on Blackcomb Glacier. When I got to the top of the chair lift I thought it looked pretty different and maybe I had skied on Whistler Glacier the last time. Once I had convinced myself that it was indeed Blackcomb Glacier I decided to try to go up the T-bar lift to see if that brought me to the same spot. At this time I noticed that somebody was fishboning their way from the slope up and onto the T-bar lift. He had probably just went up the T-bar and had just skied down. I'm thinking that was far more work than I wanted to do on my way down. Now the smart thing to have done right at that moment would be to turn around and ski down to a spot where there was a map but Laura wasn't with me so I just went up! Now I was in for a penny.

It has been years since I was on a T-bar but this one was one messed up ride. I remember being able to fit T-bars under my knee and riding comfortably all the way up any slope. The slope was so steep and the rope for the T-bar was so short that it got stuck up under my butt and I swear it was ready to pick me up so I could go for a swing. Now if I was smart I would have just let the T-bar slip under my arm like the guy in front of me but I was still wondering what part of the glacier I was on. I was thinking at this point that I should bail on the whole T-bar thing and just do the "ski of shame" off the side of the lift but you had to be a ski patroller to duck out to the right or left. I was now in for a pound! Now I got up to the top and thought this was a good view but it wasn't where I had skied before. I noticed that some of the skiers were making their way higher (by climbing) and some skied down to where I thought you had to fishbone your way back to the T-bar or just continue further down to a map. It must have been the altitude because a few minutes earlier I didn't want to fishbone my way up to a T-bar lift but now it was okay to climb an extra fifty feet, in my ski boots like a lemming on his last leap of faith. So I loaded my skis onto my shoulder and used my poles to steady my climb up into God knows what. I knew there was a chance of avalanche in this location because I read the sign but hey, now I was already "all in!" When I got three quarters of the way up I understood some of the troubles mountain climbers have. I had to unload my skis from my shoulder and rather than descend in a "walk of shame," I used my skis and poles as crutches to help me up the rest of the way, panting! Right about now I started hearing John Pinnette saying, "I payed my fifty bucks, they should carry my ass up there!" Now I'm at the top of this cliff and believe it or not I have to walk up another slight slope to get to a point where daredevils jump off cliffs to make their extreme skiing videos. Again, John Pinnette is in my head saying, "At no point was my butt touching slide! That was a free fall!" Obviously, I made it down but I will be carrying maps of Whistler/Blackcomb from here on in!

Talking about free falls, Joe, Jeff P (not my new best buddy Jeff, but a good guy nonetheless) and I went down to Squamish on Sunday so we could stock up on some stuff. Along the way we went hiking up some trails to Brandywine Falls and Shannon Falls. The views were just incredible. We also made our way to Brackendale to see the bald eagles and the eagles did not disappoint. It was hard to see them at first but we spotted a pair of them. Our last stop on the way home was very near our Athletes Village venue. We went past the military post I may or may not have talked about and I could not guesstimate how many trailers were housing all the armed forces that patrol the backcountry in the Whistler area. It must be nothing short of a battalion. (I don't know what a battalion is but I like the way it rolls off my tongue when I say it) The trailers are not like the regular ones you see at a construction site. They have the same length as your longer construction trailers, but the width of them approaches the width of a school portable. I didn't feel the need to go in and enquire where they got these trailers because we had one more place to visit.


I am going to say this right now. There is no way I am going to bungee jump off any freakin' bridge. I don't care how many bombs I get fed from Michele or Jeff or anyone. It was all I could do to walk on the floor of this see through bridge. I was trying to walk on the strongest part of the metal because with each step you could feel the metal give way. I took a video of the walk on the bridge and after looking at it, it still does not give you an appreciation of the height nor how flimsy the metal is you are walking on! I figure that if they cheap out on getting their customers to the point where they actually jump off a bridge, what's going to stop them from cheaping out on bungees, bungee anchors, weigh scales, trained staff smart enough to know when you're cheating on giving your real weight? I didn't see any bodies down there but Whistler does have bears and coyotes right! Is there a better way to get rid of your evidence?

Dr Evil & his Underlords

All of the Winter Games venues just went through a giant learning curve. We had a week (okay 3 days) of Dr. Evil and his many Underlords creating havoc at our venue. It was called "TR2" probably because they had a TR1 already! The underlords just went around turning things off, unplugging fibre and T1 lines and just making a giant nuisance of themselves. I suggested that we just consider them all as "Level 1" security risks! That way, I could tackle them and put them out of commission! I never did of course, but some of the other guys were talking about watching them enter the "Port-o-potty" and parking their vehicles in front of the door to lock them in so we could just catch up to all the work they were creating for us! We all seriously considered it when we were told that "something was wrong with your network! Now go out and find it!" Our network here contains about 3,000 drops where each drop is attached to a TV, phone, computer or phone going to a computer. We have thousands of meters of cat 5 cable, coaxial cable and glass fibre cable. Never mind all the rest of the hardware at the other side of the cable! I have to say, looking for that trouble was like looking for a needle, not in a haystack but the whole barn, dung heaps included! It was alot of fun though because we had to simulate "Games" time! It was funny to watch people come in and role play as delegates/athletes of different countries that were having problems with anything from computers, cellphones, radios, faxes or TVs. The funniest was when somebody came in as a Spanish reporter. Our help desk attendant, who is fluent in Spanish was asked to deal with this person. It turned out that our attendant only had to utter a few words in Spanish to have this evil underlord say "Oh, never mind! Speak english already!" There was always a meeting afterwards so that made for long days! The nice thing about all this is that we will be treated to a lunch by the Olympic Athletes cooking staff. I can't remember if I posted a picture of the "Dining Tent" but three or four hockey rinks would fit inside it side by side. Let's just say three hockey rinks because all you guys know how much I like to exagerate. The back of house includes freezers, meal prep and dish wash areas and seating for
all WVL (Whistler Athlete's Village) workers. This area would fit into the first hockey rink where most of the space is split between seating and freezers. The middle hockey rink includes a full sized McDonalds and the buffet cooking area. The last hockey rink is split between seating for athletes and small cooking kiosks where athletes can order specialty meals (similar to Marche). We were told to come hungry!

Talking about food, I was invited to eat with Werner and Donna twice for dinner. This all came about because Werner was shadowing me during our TR2 workout. Werner advised us that Donna likes to cook! Let's just say that I gained all the weight I had lost after two meals at her condo. Maybe if I go back to bread and water for a while!

Peak to Peak

I got another chance to go skiing this past weekend and I learned a few things. Since arriving in Whistler, I have experienced wet and cloudy weather where the temperatures are warm. However, I just had a week of sunshine but the temperatures were frigid. Good thing I'm a Canadian! I don't mind the cold as long as that means sun. Anyway, back to skiing. I really enjoyed the skiing because most of the hills were groomed but they were getting a bit icy since it has been a week since our last snowfall. (Snowfall would be good, but only if we can get it overnight when it doesn't interfere with the sun.) My skiing party was stuck on skiing the green runs but once I got to the Blackcomb glacier, I looked down the run and found it too enticing. I let my skiing party go on ahead on the green run and went straight down the blue run. It was glorious! I could feel the snow spray off my skis with each right and left carved turn. I sprung for the $15.00 sharpen/wax at the top of Whistler and found that as usual, Laura was right! It does make a difference. Sharp skis help you carve your turns.
You do get more "traction" in snow with sharp skis although it really doesn't make much difference on ice. Maybe if I invent retractable blades! I could probably only sell them in Ontario though! Doesn't that sound as if I'm such a skiing snob now!

So we skied Blackcomb in the morning and then took the Peak to Peak Gondola to ski Whistler in the afternoon. Now that little trip didn't faze me but one of our party really doesn't like heights. I can't really blame him as the distance between the lowest towers of Whistler and Blackcomb (which is the longest span) is just over 3 km.


The other thing I learned is that I can handle the skiing and of course, the apres skiing! I should just let the younger folk enjoy the apres, apres skiing, especially if I try to keep up with Michele or Jeff! To get a little off topic, many of the techs here are enjoying my Blue Collar Comedy tour DVD's. "Larry, the Cable Guy" has a line where he says he dreamt of drinking the worlds largest Margherita. He then finds himself waking up next to the salted rim of his toilet! To get back on topic, I think I lived that dream! Between Jeff and Michele, I really think they're both trying to kill me! One of them is feeding me a Jager bomb (shot glass of Jagermeister dunked into a glass of Red Bull) and the other is feeding me an Irish Car bomb (shot glass of Irish whiskey and Baileys dunked into a glass of stout). I was fool enough to drink them because "Oh, I bought four of them! You don't want them to go to waste!" Now I'm not saying that they had me pinned to the ground and I wasn't having a good time, but I can tell you that I heard my stomach say, "Right, we've had enough! One more drop comes down here and we're going to lay waste!" Oh, I listen to Jeff and Michele, but will I listen to my own stomach?! So Jeff, Michele, Mike (Michele's cousin) and I close down the clubs in Whistler and we are having such a good time that we think we can survive some more drinking in Mike's condo. I know I passed out on the step above Mike's sunken living room and in the early part of the morning Jeff gathers me up and we make our way home up the mountain. It takes two seconds in the screaming cold to sober us up. We're about a 30-45 minute walk up the mountain and it's close to 25 below with the windchill. Don't we see a coyote on the road and now I'm starting to think they're circling 'cause they don't think we'll make it either. There is not a soul on the road but somehow Jeff feels that if we call 310-TAXI they will send one immediately. I ask Jeff where he thinks the dispatcher will send this taxi if he gets through. "Don't worry, they have GPS and they will be able to track us!" I'm not sure if it was GPS or pure dumb luck but didn't a taxi just about run us down on the road. Of course, Jeff was doing his best imitation of a rodeo clown wrangling a bull in front of the moving taxi (on a icy slick roadway). I think the taxi driver had called it a night but he felt sorry for these two dumb drunk bastards walking down the middle of the road in the screaming cold being circled by an equally frozen coyote!


Sunday was a quiet day!! Me and my stomach were not on speaking terms that day. A couple of pieces of buttered toast and a Brita jug full of water. It was a penitentiary diet! I was supposed to go skiing again that day but I decided to do laundry instead. I learned that there is no need to worry about listening to Jeff or Michele at the apres laundry or apres, apres laundry party!

Perspective

Wednesday morning started out just like any of our other regular work days. Today however, Bill and Laurent were sick. Bill had the sense to stay in bed but Laurent decided to go to work to give us all a chance to get sick. I told him that he had to try to stop coughing at us and maybe wear a mask if he was going to work with us in close quarters. Something got lost in translation because that meant he should wear a scarf which only partially covered his mouth when he was coughing on us. I guess that meant we would only partially get sick. It was time to increase all my vitamins and practise, no not practise, perfect good hygiene. Anyway, we normally get up no later than 6:30am and try to beat the traffic down to the lobby for our 7:00-7:15am breakfast start. It seems that most days it is just the Bell group, but we have found lately, especially with American Thanksgiving that there are many other people around with the usual wailing of children wanting Fruit Loops instead of oatmeal or Cap'n Crunch instead of powdered scrambled eggs. Who can blame them, it's their vacation too?!

On this morning, my good buddy Jeff poured himself a coffee and the second he hit the tap on the coffee urn, the power went out! We heard from a bunch of the other guys that said they flushed the toilet and the power went out, they turned the water tap and the power went out etc. We had to respectfully disagree. We pretty much decided that it was Jeff's fault because none of the other instances could be substantiated. There was a room full of technicians that observed Jeff hit the tap on the coffee urn and boom! No power at our hotel! Now you can't argue with that logic can you!

So the instant the power goes out at our hotel a generator kicks in and we are all left eating in a perpetual "Brown out" situation. I immediately think back to the time that Laura and I were in St. Martin and we were sitting on the balcony, feet on the railing, glass of red wine in hand, bottle of red wine close by to recharge our glasses, watching the lights in the cityscape turn up and shut down. (Another funny story is that we met a bride later that week that said, "This is the honeymoon from Hell!" It's all in your perspective.)

So when 7:30 rolls around, the techs that have the furthest to travel, jump on their horse and decide that it's time to go to work. Good thing too because another early birder put his key into the ignition and you guessed it, the power went out, but that can't be substantiated! Problem was that our vehicles are behind electric gates and our eager beaver is stuck inside a now completely dark parking garage. Right about that time, the fire alarm goes off! So, we are all left eating breakfast in a good ol' Californian brown out with the fire alarms going off. I didn't see too many chairs moving to exit the building in a hasty but orderly fashion. I did hear many people comment that at least we couldn't hear any babies wailing this morning though! Once we finish all the coffee in the urn, we decide there's nothing fore it but to find a way to get our trucks out and get to work. Bill will just have to find his own way to get some rest and/or some coffee while the firemen find a way to silence the alarms!! Good thing we didn't see or smell smoke!! Those of us with full freezers may have found a good way to preserve meat! By smoking it! You see, on top of everything else, Joe is a shopaholic! Maybe that's not the right word. He's more of a bargainaholic! He will find things on sale and if the discount isn't good enough he will barter to the point where the salesperson will say, "Take it, and go!" (That's right, Russell Peters was talking about Joe getting the bargain)

Living in Ajax, I have become accustomed to many power outages. They don't last long usually! This one did! We were informed at the end of our shift that we were to report to our hotel with flashlights to retrieve whatever belongings were required to spend the night at the Westin. So I packed up enough clothes for a one night stay and also included my I-pod complete with the cheap little battery powered travelling base station Laura and I bought for the beaches of Portugal. I played soothing tunes especially for the front desk staff that seemed to be a little harried by a complete hotel to hotel move. We all got a chuckle out of listening to music in all this bedlam!

So once again, a night of heavenly sleep! But before that, it would be remiss if we didn't try out their eucalyptus steam bath, their jacuzzi or their indoor/outdoor heated pool! When morning came at the Westin we were all trying to find a way to claim an illness so bad that just the mere thought of moving us would have led to dire consequences! I just called it "Perspective!!"