This blog began as a way to record my musings about preparations and travels to the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada February 16-27, 2010. From that amazing experience came this ongoing story of becoming a sports fan. You can follow my tales of awe, agony, and all the emotions in between as well as view pics from seasons of Phillies baseball. Along the way is a little Eagles football thrown in for fun, and even some astronomy and weather related tales. I feel lucky to have witnessed some historic games, some heartbreaking losses, but all wonderful when told from this new fan's point of view.

Blog Archives postings:
Dec 2009-Feb 2010
Olympics
March 2010-Dec 2011
Baseball and more
2011 The Phillies do again, winning the Eastern Championship for the 5th straight year.
April 2012-Sept 27 2012 Not the best season for the Phillies
2013-We wait and see!

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Speed skating (pics)

Getting greedy, I just needed to see some speed skating, but needed to come up with a plan to stay an extra day. The main dilemma-where to stay?

On Monday, I went to Granville Island, an area with arts shops, an indoor food market and outdoor music. On the way there, I struck up one of the many,  many conversations on the skytrain, in line, and on the streets.with a couple, and talked about wanting to stay another day.  After walking around the Island, I ran into them again and offered me a place to stay. My mouth dropped open in amazement.  We exchanged numbers and I walked away very happy.

What this allowed me to do was see one last event-5000 m women's speed skating at the Richmond Oval.  This venue was the farthest Vancouver site away and involved an hour long train ride and a very fast walking 1.6 miles!  I mean fast. The event started at 1:00 and the lines were longer than for any other event I had been to.


Mind you, the events were scheduled to the minute, so it didn't matter whether you were in or not.
Fortunately, I only missed the first round of 8.
There are no bad seats in this venue, so even in the last row, we could see the rink clearly. I was sitting behind an artist who was drawing and painting the scene (I think I ended up in it). In front of us were 5 people with maple leaf posters spelling C-A-R-L-A for Carla Hughes. She is the only athelete who has won medals in both the summer (bicycling) and winter olympics. don't ya just hate her!  She won the gold 4 years ago