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!