Moving day

We received our uniforms last Monday and I have to say that I (and most everybody else) is totally impressed. Many of the other groups at our venue have complimented us on our uniforms. Although our ski jackets are blue, we don't appear to be smurf like at all. We were asked to provide black pants and if it is cold enough we wear a black Sun Ice fleece jacket. Without the blue ski jacket, we look like "Men in Black." Maybe that's a bad analogy but at least we don't look like smurfs anyway!

Twice this week our venue was buzzed by CF-18s. I'm sure each venue here in Whistler is claiming these jets as their own. It seems they do a fly by when the skies are blue so I figure we won't see them again for a while. In the meantime, we get daily 'sorties' from several assorted helicopters. There is also this tethered balloon that we generally see high in the southern sky with what we assume to be a camera. I've begun to call it the "Eye of Sauron" (Lord of the Rings).

If we are not being watched from the sky, then we are being greeted by a host of RCMP officers and police, all from a variety of cities across Canada. (Don't forget about the armed forces lurking in the woods and patrolling the venue) I asked an RCMP officer if he, like me, got into this detail from some sort of lottery or competition. He said he was reassigned to the Olympics and had no choice. RCMP officers could only refuse this detail if they had what was considered a legitimate excuse.

It is Friday and I still don't have my full accreditation pass. I received day passes for Wednesday and Thursday and was pleasantly surprised at how smoothly it was to get through that whole procedure. I thought everything was taken care of Thursday evening when Christian (at the day pass office) told me to go across the tent to find out if my accreditation check by CSIS was completed. (He doesn't do that unless he knows it has been completed). I got another surprise though once they handed my pass to me to find that although I was "bona fide" according to CSIS, I could not get into my own venue to work. That's the venue I helped complete! I only got a mini pass. I needed an acceditation upgrade to work at my own venue. I guess for now that only makes me "fide!" (Or another "f" word) At least that only adds to the number of "souvenir" passes I have, compared to my other Bell team members.

We figured today (Sunday) that since the Teams were arriving, we would head into the athlete's dining tent to check that their phones and TVs were working (but really it was to see if their food was better than our food). Apparently, our food is better than their food since they have none yet. On our way back we ran into Aunt Shirley's friend Laura. She is working directly under Michael Smith, host of "Chef at Home" which runs on the Food Network. When not working, she is staying on a cruise ship in Squamish and hates it because she has to travel on a bus to and from our venue. She gets up at 2:00am to start work at 5:00am. Suddenly, our hours don't seem so bad.

One of our (Joe's and I) first repair tickets today was for an HDTV which was not working. Most of our HDTV troubles thus far were for user error where the customer changed the input from cable to antenna. I guess many people don't realize that most of our channels have not yet been turned up so they try to watch CBC on antenna(that's probably all you could get in the mountains, on a sunny day when the wind is blowing in from Rick Mercer). Just like all of our HDTV troubles, this was an easy fix but something funny happened as well. We were greeted by a woman whom introduced us to the "chef." I guess Joe has been watching the Food Network too long because he became interested in the kitchen where this "chef" was cooking. It was explained to him that he was not that type of "chef" and I had to open my mouth and say that the Olympics uses French expressions. I told Joe that this was the "chef du village." Apparently, that too is somehow insulting because I was corrected with "No, no! This is the 'chef du mission'!" I'm not sure if that will create an international incident because people with that title are generally some type of dignitary, but I think we might have ruffled a few feathers today. We did get their national team's Olympic pin out of the deal so it couldn't have been too bad!

The Sweep

Another year has come and gone for my best buddy Jeff. I told one person (Remo) at breakfast on Wednesday that it was Jeff's birthday. Jeff typically comes down to breakfast at the last second to grab a coffee and a "dart" before jumping into the "Christmas Jeep" to get to work. This morning though, Remo jumped up with his whole table to wish Jeff a happy birthday. Jeff thanked me for embarrassing him but I know that he meant "thank you, gracefully."

Maybe, by happenstance, Joe decided to make chili for us that Wednesday night. In true Italian "Iron Chef" fashion he thought that one large pot of chili would not be enough to feed the eight of us. So he also baked pork strip loins wrapped in prosciutto. He said it was the first time he tried that recipe and we were glad to be around to experiment on. I was sad that we didn't have enough time to get Jeff a birthday cake but honestly, we were all stuffed! There was room enough for wine and brandy though. We has such a good time that we went to Jeannie's room to wind down a bit. While there we found her "stash." At least that's what I called it. I guess Jeannie is tired of the same old breakfast from what is now called our "Coast" hotel that she bags oatmeal or granola in snack bags. I decided to entertain everybody by grabbing a bag of this stuff and pretending to do a few lines of it! I thought it was funny but Jeannie just thought I was drunk. Jeannie was right! Both Joe and I wished that we could have stayed "home" to do laundry the next day.

With permission from Remo, we were treated to his old fight footage after dinner. He is a retired lightweight boxing champion and now working at Bell. It is hard to believe that this happy, mild mannered, gentle man would jump into a ring and beat the crap out of his opponents. It is against my own blog rules to publish his last name because I would really like to let you know that we are in the presence of a true celebrity but I will protect his privacy and his celebrity. I am just so proud to know this guy!

Many of our wives have corrected us when we say we have gone "home" after work. I guess it's just habit to say you are going home after work. We are trying to train ourselves to say that we are back in our condo or hotel. Joe says that we should say "chalet" because after all, we do have a "love lounge." I think I like that!


As if on cue, our venue received it's Olympic rings. I tried to tell Jeff that in lieu of a cake, I arranged to have the rings placed for his birthday but he wouldn't believe me. Everything now seems to be in place. We have our rings and we have this white chimney looking thing just outside of our celebration square. The chimney looks like a giant torch and was placed there quietly enough a couple of weeks ago. There hasn't been much said about it to us but if there is not a flame on top of it during the Games then as Russell Peters would say, "come on, be a man! Do the right thing!" Personally, I would use his line (if there is no flame), "somebody gonna get ahurt, real bad!"

Our venue has been turned over to the RCMP for the weekend. Their officers (including their dogs) are combing over everything. We have a large room full of empty boxes of HDTVs, IP phones, WIFI nodes etc. The mounties said that they would go through all of them. Maurizio asked that as they go through them, could they count them as well since he lost count at about 195 HDTVs. On top of the RCMP scouring around, we have bus loads of VANOC, security, armed forces and cleaning staff buzzing back and forth. We have nicknamed the cleaning staff our "smurfs" since they have been uniformed in blue outfits and walk around in large packs of blue. I always comment to Jeff that my day is not made unless I see "Pat" among them. But that is another story you will have to hear in person only, please, as it does not translate properly into print!

We are done for the most part except for some odds and ends. Whenever we say we are done the phone rings and we hear Alexa agreeing to adding an IP phone here or moving an HDTV there. She has volunteered to saying it is all her fault that we are not yet totally complete. We found a wool glove on our venue and since nobody claimed it we have made a sign of it. (3 R's, these are the green games after all) The sign resides on the wall to the right of Alexa's computer and it has the index finger (be nice, the index finger is the one you point with, not the one you use for the Trudeau salute) pointing toward Alexa. It says in bold hot pink and lime green, "HER FAULT!" I guess we're not done until March 26th.

On a side note, I spent most of Friday afternoon trying to get my accreditation pass. I joked that I would be able to get a few days off (to ski) once the security sweep is done and our "load-in" pass becomes invalid. Maurizio said that he would ensure I got into the venue by getting me "day passes" if he had to. After the initial accreditation ordeal, getting a daily day pass and then going through security would just be a nightmare! Hopefully, I won't have to go that route. The skiing would be nice though as we have worked continuously since January 2.

The Games are done! What!

We have been putting in long hours to try to complete our work before the Athletes arrive. With all this work, it has been difficult, many days, to get up out of bed. It was during our lowest point on Tuesday afternoon when Maurizio (our VTCM-venue telecom manager) announced that the Games were over! (What! I have been working so hard I didn't even see anybody compete!) I can't tell you how happy that made me feel! Never one to let anybody feel good for too long, Maurizio then dropped a stack of drawings (artwork, as my best buddy Jeff calls it) onto our table. (In defense of Jeff, our drawings are coloured with blue for IP phones and computer, green for Games computers, pink for analog phones, faxes etc. and yellow for HDTVs) Let the Paralympics begin! For those of you that watched "Cool Runnings," I clearly saw this scene played out. "Sanka, ye dead?" "Ya mon!"

I haven't had a chance to go skiing since the first attempt with the head cam on January 2/10. It's just as well though since we have had another 10 days straight of rain. The sun might have poked through for about two hours in all that time. Time to look up the "artwork" for an ark again! I borrowed a USB adapter for an SD card so that Christine can see there are easy runs on this mountain. One of these days I might be able to go to London Drugs to get that adapter. I know, back east we would go to Future Shop or Best Buy etc. In BC however, one does all their electronics shopping at London Drugs and all their drug shopping near the airport hotels in Richmond. :)

We have had another two weeks of rain and although "they" have tried to grade our access roads into the venue, both remain full of potholes. There are a choice of two roads into our venue for now. We have nicknamed them the road to "Beirut" and the road to "Kandahar" because they both seem to be bombed out. You either drink your coffees before you get to the venue or you wear them. With all that rain, many of the potholes join together, so I think the salmon are considering a new spawning ground. Although we have four wheel drive in our "Christmas Jeep," we still seem to bottom out in some of these deeper holes. Our Kabota "Gators" never make it out to those roads, but if they did we might get wet from the waves that bounce off the "shores" of the potholes.

In scouring our venue to route our cabling we were able to find some secret locations that only a few people would have had the chance to see. We were able to get some pictures from the top one of the apartment condo units. I also included a picture of a helicopter that was performing training maneuvers but I don't want anybody thinking that we were in trouble for climbing on the roof. I didn't see any red spots on Jeff and he said he didn't see any red spots on me! (Just a reference to laser targeting. Try to keep up people!) We were merely looking for a route for our cabling to go from one unit to another. I think the armed forces were in the same mood we were in after days and days of rain and cloud and they were merely buzzing our venue.

The good news is that it's now Saturday evening and we have also completed the cabling for the Paralympics. Hopefully, from here on in, there will be fewer hours involved although we still have some Panasonic HDTVs and Nortel 1130 phones to install.

The Iron Chefs

Alot of things happened since Christmas break and I haven't had a chance to blog them because we seem to be working all the time. We have enlisted on average about 6 guys each Saturday and Sunday from the other venues to help us complete the work at our Athlete's village. I just felt ripped off though because every other crew is done and getting to enjoy Whistler while we are working late and on weekends busting our asses. I learned a long time ago at T. Harris that burn out is a real issue. I'm really starting to feel burned out as my best buddy Jeff kept pleading with me one night to stay and all I wanted to do was get back to the Love Lounge!!

I now have a new room mate! Kudos, if you guessed it was my new best buddy Jeff. We were all deeply affected to see Laurent (my old "room homie") not return as one of our team members. I have to admit that things were lonely in my room in the few days that I didn't have a room mate. I even looked at Laurent's room and decided that I didn't want to move in after all. I was already settled in and liked the fact that I can throw things on top of the top bunk to get it out of the way. The main bedroom closet is too small anyway. I have to say though that the maids were cleaning over our holidays so when I first stepped into my room, I didn't get hit in the face with the smell of ass!! It smelled clean. Back on topic, Jeff was ready to take my old bedroom so that I could have the ensuite bathroom but I was moved in already. Maybe I had hit my head too many times on the bunk bed above but I decided I wasn't moving! It's funny though that Jeff knocked on my bedroom door that first night and asked "Buddy, are you using both your pillows?"

"Why," I asked?

"I just can't sleep! These pillows smell of ass!"

"No problem my son. Use my spare bunk bed pillows. I've never even slept on them."

Courtesy of my best buddy Jeff, we got all new pillows when he went down to complain the next day.

We had one of our trainers (Alex) from Vancouver come to Whistler for Christmas week. Alex stayed with his family, in Jeff P's room while we were all home for Christmas. Alex heard us talking about the meals we were preparing for ourselves (and each other) and he commented that we were all turning into "Iron Chefs". Now most of you guys know that I don't cook. However, I have not only been stealing recipes from Laura, I have been calling her and setting up video calls so she can manage me while I attempt her recipes. Joe gave me the compliment of "raising the bar" with Laura's lasagna recipe last Tuesday (when our Canadian juniors won the silver medal in hockey, just losing out to the Americans in overtime). It was meant to be a "celebratory lasagna" but it tasted great all the same. That was a two day lasagna that was prepared the night before and cooked on the second night. Everybody at work on the second day was planning to send me home early so that we could eat at a reasonable hour. The lasagna was made in a giant roasting pan and must have weighed close to 30 lbs. That lasagna inspired my best buddy Jeff to rant to his wife that he too can now prepare a lasagna dinner! Micki (Jeff's better half) said that she has been trying to get Jeff to cook for years and all it took was a five minute video call to Laura to inspire him. Strangely, that conversation sounded familiar. On the other hand, I had to contend with my wife barking orders to "stir the sauce" or "take out the noodles" etc. I had to turn to her and say "Hey, I'm only one man!" It felt like I had my own show, "Cooking with Luciano." I know the ratings would not have been very good though because the director kept harping in on the talent. Or maybe it was the talent! All that was left over were four pieces. That was another two meals of lasagna for Jeff and I. Jeff still came to me later and asked why we had to invite so many people. He wanted to have his own private lasagna. Off to Nestors Market! Although I had overestimated the amount of noodles I needed for the first lasagna and I had some left over, it still used the total of three jars of sauce and three packages of cheese.

This little guy was added a few weeks ago and is outside of the Team Germany residences. I know it is a pile of rocks that have been piled up into an inukshuk but I was not the guy that did it. I just don't have the time to do it. There are only fourteen more days until we get kicked out of our venue and we get a security sweep done. So naturally, we will need to work like dogs to complete all the wiring. It has gotten to the point where by the time I get home, I am too tired to cook or do anything else. I was happy last Friday to get the night off, just to be able to wash my clothes. (Thank God I did my wash before going home for Christmas). So now it has gotten down to the "Friday night wash." I was seriously looking at recycling my socks and underwear (by wearing them inside out) to make it by. After all, these are supposed to be the "greenest games!" I just don't think they meant it "that" way. "Let there be clean socks and underwear for everyone" (as long as you use phosphate free soap). I'm not quite sure who the official supplier of phosphate free soap is to these Winter Games. You would have to watch TV to know that. Oddly enough, even though I have been installing loads of LCD and Plasma TVs, I have not been watching them. Okay, I'm rambling now, so let's just quit while I'm ahead.

On a sadder note, I could not finish this blog entry without talking about the ordeal that Liz (working in Vancouver for Bell) is going through right now. Liz looks after arranging our flights home and making sure we all have a bed to sleep in (as well as much more I'm sure). Liz lost both her parents within three days of each other. My heart goes out to her. Although I know she won't be reading this, we at Whistler send our condolences.

Cheakamus Crossing

After a week at home, I found it hard to come back to Whistler. I came back knowing that it would be weeks before I could come home. Obviously, I would miss New Years day with Laura and that is something that I haven't done in about 29 years. There are other people here that haven't missed a New Years day with their spouses for 35 years! We all made the calls home at 9 pm local time (some of us making video calls over the internet) but it just wasn't the same. We tried to go out for New Years but either the bars were full or the cover charge was ridiculous! There was even a cover charge to get into the walking Village (because they had bands playing on the streets). After a few hours of walking around in the wet snow we just barely made it back to the "Love Lounge" (our Bell common room) for the stroke of midnight! I really felt left out of the partying at home in Ontario.

So we're back at work at our Athlete's village. At this point we have about seventeen days to complete all our work! I'm not sure if my attitude is "half full" or "half empty" when I say we only have a little more that two weeks until the security check must be performed. I do feel a little more confident now talking about our venue since our work site has been posted on the web by real estate agents. I was going to add some photos of our venue from my own camera but you can peruse the pictures provided from this website; www.cheakamuscrossing.ca You can get a scope of what we're up against when you see the aerial photo of our venue! In case you're interested, my copy of "Whistler the magazine" advertizes lots at $510,000.00 and three bedroom townhomes from $787,000.00. Let me just get my bill fold out!

I meant to include video taken (by head camera) of a few of my favorite runs (Hugh's heaven from Seventh Heaven lift and Springboard from Solar Coaster lift). We are having difficulty trying to point the camera in the correct direction while I ski. My first run showed a lot of sky and my subsequent attempts showed snow moving quickly below me with a couple of cameos from my ski tips. I guess I'll just have to keep skiing until I get the camera pointed correctly!