Day 1 - went off without a hitch.....

Jan 28 came up very quickly in the end. I always felt that the Olympic “thing” was way down the road but suddenly it was here and it was starting today. The day started very early as we had to be ready to leave for the airport at 5:30 am as Bruce was going to drive us there and return our car to the garage for our absence. The day ahead was mostly to be filled with travel to Vancouver, lunch with Mary and Larry (Bree’s Mum and Dad), my first meeting with VANOC (Vancouver Olympic Committee) and then a drive to Pemberton and a reunion with the family.
We got to the airport on time and had no difficulty with check-in, security and boarding. There was no indication of heightened security in Ottawa and the line moved quickly. The flight to Toronto was uneventful and we spent an hour of our layover in the lounge having a little breakfast. We boarded the flight to Vancouver and settled in for the 4+ hour flight. With the help of the personal TV sets and some fairly good program selection we watched a movie and some TV episodes and without much fuss we were in Vancouver. The airport has now been finished and it looks pretty sharp as it is bedecked with Olympic graphics and lots of VANOC folks walking about helping people get to where they wanted to go. This was our introduction to the light blue uniforms of the volunteer army for the Olympics. We chatted up a couple of these folks and they were volunteers with the Event Services group which is the group I will be working for. It was fun to get their views of the work and they gave a very positive impression of what they were doing. Larry met us and we went to Langley to have a lunch at Mary and Larry’s house. We had a nice lasagne and spent the afternoon chatting and watching the SENS thump Pittsburgh. (Go SENS Go – that makes it 8 wins in a row) At 5 PM we set out for the Pacific Exhibition grounds where VANOC has set up their Accreditation and Uniform centre in Vancouver.
Once there I checked in and was processed in a very efficient way. First I was confirmed as being scheduled at that time and given a piece of paper that was my ticket for the next several activities. I walked into the work area and was verified and photographed with some pretty cool technology. Then I was shuffled to an area where my accreditation badge was being printed. Once printed and laminated it was given to me without much explanation of the codes/colours and bar codes on the badge. I was then sent to the uniform area where I was pointed into a change room and a bunch of clothes were given to me to try on for size. The lady thought I was a medium so she gave me a long sleeve T, a inner vest, and outer jacket and outside (snowboard) pants. I tried them all on and we made some switches as some of the medium clothing was a little snug. Once we got the sizes down I was given a piece of paper with the order written out and sent to the delivery area where yet another volunteer filled the order. At that stop they provided 2 long sleeve Ts (one plain and one with the Olympic graphic etched in it), a vest , the jacket (which is pretty cool as the Olympic graphic is etched in this item also) and the pants with the Vancouver 2010 logo on them. They also threw in a toque and a welcome gift and packed it all into a large 2010 shopping bag. Once I checked it all out through another station I was on my way with Accreditation and uniform in hand. Elapsed time was 30 minutes.
We then drove up to Pemberton and Larry did a great job as Freddi and I head bobbed all the way. It had been a long day as it was about 8:30 PM when we arrived in Pemberton. The highway changes since our last visit (15 months ago) were significant. Basically it is a 4 lane highway almost the entire way. There were signs of some traffic pattern changes as the road folks prepare for the traffic that will be generated during the games. Some of the two lane N sections were divided into 3 lanes with temporary orange plastic dividers and signs indication that only one of those lanes was open for traffic. I am still a little clueless on how the roads will work but it looks like they will have special lanes for some types of traffic. I guess all of that will evolve over the next few days. At night it made for a bazaar display of orange reflectors and it made it very difficult to tell where one was supposed to go. Larry did a great job navigating through the slalom course through the Whistler area.
Once reunited with the kids at gray and Bree’s house we had dinner even though it was a little late in the day. We had a nice local lamb dinner that was delicious and well prepared by the girls. We sat about chatting for some time and finally crashed somewhere near 11 PM PST. It was a full but great day.