The Olympics (or, why I hate NBC)

The Olympics are a pretty big deal here in the Cook household.  For me it's great because it's sports, but an ever-changing variety that, best of all, ENDS after two weeks.  (Sidenote:  Before the Summer Olympics in 2008 I found The Sports Book by DK Publishing  at Costco and it's awesome. It explains the basics of pretty much every modern sport you can think of.  Eaton Fives, anyone?  It's not quite as necessary for the Winter Olympics, but still a nice thing to have on hand).

This year there's been quite a crisis.  You see, the Canadian Broadcasting Company, or CBC, lost their broadcasting contract for the Olympics this year.  Normally we watch all of our Olympics coverage on CBC to make up for NBC's craptastic tape-delayed hack job attempt at Olympics coverage.  To add insult to injury, Vancouver is only about a three hours drive away--so the tape delay means I could watch an event and be home before they even broadcast it.  Yes, even with traffic.  Last night NBC aired the games in Afghanistan before we got them!


Saturday morning, a mere 12 hours after tape delay hell had begun, we were fed up.  I idly mentioned that I heard that tickets were still available, and we were off.  The cheapest ticket we could find (even at face value) was for woman's curling.  But hey--an Olympic event is an Olympic event.  We also managed to find a reasonable B&B out in West Vancouver so we wouldn't have to sell any organs to afford a hotel room for the night.


So early(ish) Monday morning we dropped the dogs off at a "bed & biscuit" for the night and headed up north.  Right after crossing the border we ended up behind a car with this license plate frame.  Ironically, this car did turn off at the first Tim Horton's we saw. Vancouver bound!

Since we were already in West Vancouver, we drove out to Horseshoe Bay to look around and have lunch.  Heron!


After lunch we parked the car and took the bus over Lionsgate Bridge to downtown Vancouver to pick up our tickets.  I'd bought them on razorgator.com, which has a special Vancouver Olympics office.  We walked and walked and walked to the end of Howe street, tucked under the Grandville Bridge.  We find the address but there's no sign or anything, just an unmarked door.  We tentatively walk in to find a temporary office with four or five guys poking away at their laptops.  They offered up the tickets without a fight though, so it ended well.



Turns out this post is getting long, so you know what?  MULTI-PART POST!  Stay tuned for more later!