Skeleton

My friend Sarah from Bend arrived in Vancouver Wed, so I spent the afternoon showing her around my beautiful city. Wonderful gorgeous day. If you're in Vancouver one of my new favourite restaurants is Cafe Mumbai on W Broadway around MacDonald St. Super yummy Indian food. Took Jen there over Christmas on a recommendation from Sylvia....she always knows the best restaurants. It helps that her sister is a food inspector! Hee hee.

Yesterday I headed back up to Whistler for skeleton. It was heat 1 & 2 for the men and women. The women were supposed to start at 4:00 pm, but the start track had basically melted, so it was delayed until 4:30. They may be even crazier than the lugers!!!! It's luge, but head-first! Sheesh. I took lots of great pictures...but my mom borrowed my camera today so I can't download the pics yet.

As my dad and I were walking to the gondola to go to the sliding center we happened to catch the end of Christine Nesbitt's gold win in the 1,000 meter speed skating. They have these big screen tv's set up several places in Whistler and people are gathered around watching. It's super fun. Up at the sliding center in the break between the women and men's skeleton they showed the 3-2 shootout at the Canada- Switzerland hockey game.

It got so cold watching skeleton that dad and I only made it through the first run of the men. By the time I got back to Vancouver it was about 11:30. I finally warmed up on the drive back in the car with the heat blasting! :) It was great, again, to see all the flags and people out there cheering for their countrymen. People from all over the world.

Today Ana, Sonia and Rob arrive. Woohoo!! :) We have hockey tickets for tomorrow (Germany vs Belarus) and then Sunday Sonia and Rob are off to aerials and Ana and I go to Whistler for the rescheduled men's super combined and bobsleigh!

Btw, it really is bobsleigh not bobsled. Who knew?

Men's Super Combined postponed

I was supposed to go to men's super combined today, but it's been postponed due to weather. I'm hoping that it'll be rescheduled for Thurs morning, since I have tickets for skeleton at 4:00 up at Whistler that day! That'd be great. Or Friday will work too. I suppose Sat would as well... It's been raining quite a bit here, but it's supposed to dry up today and be clear until early of next week. Keep your fingers crossed for that. But this is NOT unusual for a winter olympics .... people need to remember that!!!! :) Right now I see sunshine out my window, so I've got my fingers crossed that the weather continues to improve. There are, of course, people complaining, and people probably saying this is the worst Olympics ever...it's not.

CANADA RULES!!!!!! :) Hee hee.

I was trying to embed this video of Bilodeau's gold medal ceremony... but I think the best I can do is a link...
Men's%20Moguls%20Medal%20Ceremony

Awesome day!

Ok, I've got my Olympic spirit back! I didn't go to men's moguls where Canada got their first gold at home, but my brother did. Can't wait to hear from him how it was or see his pictures. I went to luge at Whistler. I was a bit hesitant about going, given what happened, but I'm so glad I did.

Those guys are INSANE!!!! It's sheer insanity. They're going 130-144 km/hour, which is about 100 miles/hour. It's crazy. Takes a bit to figure out how to watch it, and even longer to take a good pictures. After a couple mistakes, I got this great picture:

In my gallery you can see all my pictures from the day. The Canadian Sam Edney was in first place with five people to go, and ended up 7th, which is historical...top finish for a Canadian luger. It was awesome.

The Whistler Sliding Center is fabulous. On tv you don't get a true feel for how fast they are going. It really is amazing. And scary!! :)

Tomorrow I go see women's alpine skiing back up at Whistler and Thursday I see women's skeleton back at the Whistler Sliding Center.

Should be great. Today is yoga and watching more Olympics on TV :)

Olympics picture gallery

I forgot, I did upload my pictures from yesterday. Seeing the torch go by was SOOOOOO exciting!!!! There were hundreds and hundreds of people there. I waited for about 40 minutes, and then right before it came a bunch more people came and I could barely see! :) Hee hee. I uploaded the pics here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chandravan/sets/72157623419856960/

Check that gallery for updates. That's where I'll be posting them.

Tough day

It was a tough day today. The news about Nador Kumaritashvili's death was really tough. My mom who is volunteering at Whistler says people up there are in shock and are hurting. But his team decided to stay and honor his memory. The opening ceremonies is dedicated to him, and the athletes were tasked with competing with his spirit in their minds. I have tickets to luge on Sunday....it's lost it's luster for me. I'll definitely go if it's on though! Those athletes deserve an audience. If you haven't seen the video of the accident, DON'T WATCH IT! I wish I hadn't seen it. It's horrible. I watched it before they knew he was dead. I really wish I hadn't.

Also today, protesters made the torch relay detour from it's route right when it was approaching the vet memorial in Vancouver! Those poor vets were moved to tears. They wanted the flame to come to honor their fallen friends and "some brats" as one soldier called them, forced the route to change. I have no problem with protests...but that was a heartless choice of spots.

So all in all...a tough day and start to the games. I'm trying to find my Olympic spirit again.... I'm sure it'll come once I'm out at an event. I hope. I'll upload pics as soon as I have them.

Olympic Opening Ceremony

I went to the dress rehearsal of the opening ceremonies tonight. It was fabulous!!!! I have no intention of telling you what happened, but you should definitely tune in on Friday. The excitement there and in the city overall is just AMAZING!!!! :)

Yesterday my drive up was fine. Left Bend at about 2:00 and got here at about 10:45. The border crossing, which I thought might be bad, only took 5 minutes. Awesome! As I was driving up to the border there was a line of 13 charter buses in front of my. I gunned it to get by them. Hee hee.

Tomorrow I plan to go watch the Olympic Torch Relay which will be passing close to my parent's house. I'm trying to figure out if I can get down to watch it go across the bay in a dragon boat too. GO CANADA!!!!

Going to the Olympics

Hey look, it's been over a year since I last updated!!!!!! :) Oopsie. Oh well. I'm off the Vancouver for the Olympics today. I'll be using this to keep everyone updated and share pictures and my experiences. I'm SOOOOOO excited!!!!!

I'm actually going to be able to see a lot of things: luge, skeleton (like luge, but headfirst!), bobsleigh, men's downhill, women's slalom, ice hockey (Germany vs Belarus) and curling. I know people laugh at curling... but I think it's going to be a lot more fun that something like xc skiing! But that's just my opinion.

WOOHOO!!!!!!! Next time I update I'll BE IN VANCOUVER!!!! :)

Inauguration

Wow, I'm HORRIBLE at updating! :) I'll try to be better. I watched the inauguration yesterday, and I could not have been happier. It was truly a fabulous day! I wish I could have been there.

I knew I could record it and watch it later, or watch the replays, but I really wanted to watch it live. So at work I watched it streaming on my laptop. There's a part of me that thinks yea, big deal, an African-American in office. So? Because race has so little impact on MY valuing of people. But then I take a moment and really think. Really, truly think about what this means...and it makes me cry every time. I am so happy, and so proud and so...overwhelmed when I think about what this means. And the inauguration happening the day after MLK day....could not be more perfect.

Last week I had a third grade class visit the library, and the teacher had asked me to read a picture book about MLK day. I chose one of my absolute favourites: Martin's Big Words written by Doreen Rappaport and illustrated by Brian Collier. If you have not read it, you should. It is a wonderful book, and really reaches kids. I have a hard time reading it without tearing up. It's just wonderful. The kids I read to could not believe that MLK died, that he was murdered. This little girl asked me "Why would someone kill him? He was just trying to help people!" I could see that her teacher was as nonplussed at me. What can I answer to that? I think I just shook my head and shrugged my shoulders.

The other local third grade class came on Tuesday, and that teacher too wanted me to read a book about MLK. So, same book, same reaction from the kids, plus a question from one little boy who asked "Who made the laws in the first place that said black and white people couldn't be together". I LOVED that for these kids the idea of race being the reason you're not allowed to do something, that the color of your skin would make something you did illegal...they just cannot understand that.

I did try to make sure I said something along the lines that there still are people who think that way. They just could not understand that. Yet, they also DID understand the momentousness of Obama's presidency. One kid said that without MLK, Obama would probably not be our president. I was amazed by those kids. Gives me hope.

I loves myself an Adirondack Chair!

I just completed one of the funnest things I've done in a while, and I'm so proud of myself. My friend Ana and I took a woodworking class for women, where we made our own Adirondack chairs! :) It was super fun! We got to use all sorts of tools - table saw, chop saw, band saw, scroll saw, router, sanders ... and lots of things I'm now forgetting the names of. It was 5 weeks, and I had a lot more fun than I'd thought I would.

I want to take it again so I'll have matching chairs. So here's Ana doing some free-handed cutting on the table saw. All the machines made me a bit nervous at first, but you get used to them quickly. I think this one was my favourite, the router. It's what helps make these nice rounded edges on things. Here I am learning how to use it the first night. That's Mary Anne, the instructor showing me what to do.And here we are in our finished chairs! :) I'm so proud of us!
And here it is outside my front door. I want to paint "I made this chair" on it so that everyone looking at it knows that I made it!!! :) Have I said yet that I'm really proud of Ana and myself? I'm not really a tool-type girl...or at least I never thought I was. But now... I can see how you can get the woodworking bug.

Ankylosing Spondylitis and how to deal with it

Wow, really, I'll try to get better at updating! :) You know, it's been a really tough year medically. My back got all messed up when I was in Vancouver. In looking for a cause of that...well, we found out why. I've been diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis. Oh hooray.

It's a type of arthritis that affects usually the spine and causes inflammation which can lead, in severe cases, to a fused spine. But hopefully it won't get that bad for me. It does most likely mean chronic pain and flare-ups. And there's nothing they can do about it. Exercise, good posture and pain management...that's about it.

I've been thinking for a while about what I want for my third tattoo. For over a year I've been thinking about Randy Pausch and his comment about choosing to be a Tigger or an Eeyore. If you look two posts below this one you'll see my explanation. Well, this latest just made me want it even more. So this last Sunday, after careful research of artists, I got my third tattoo. :) I'm very happy with it.