Day 6 .... on the "clean" side

The day started in the middle of the night again. In fact it was so early that it was just after the girls got home from their evening out without the boys. It sounded like they had some fun and I would guess it was at the expense of the boys. The bus rides to the WOP were uneventful and I managed to dose a bit on the second bus. Once there we traipsed into the registration tent to check in and get our assignments for the day. It was a walk to the Gulag as it was very dark still and large bright lights made the people in front of silhouettes against the light. We waited in the warming tent until Rachel, the scheduler, arrived and dished out the assignments. The team leaders go first as they need to find out what areas they will be covering and then they/we go to designated spots to get the equipment and assignment material for the days assignment.


On this day I was selected as part of the “Entry” Team which works with the Mag and Bag team I was assigned to on my last shift. My team was assigned to the “clean” side of the security check-in this time and I met up with 5 hosts who were to make up my team. We figured out our positions that needed to be covered and had a fun time making up our role and responsibilities from the guidelines. This group was made up a student from Queens, a married couple from Toronto, a student in BC from Taiwan and student from Hong Kong. Basically we had to make sure that people with need for use of the Accessible Shuttle got to it as easily as possible and we directed others to the 1.2 km path/stroll up to the X-Country centre for the day’s activities. None of this was difficult but with any job one must deal with people and the chemistry between people and overcoming some personality types that present challenges. To offset some of these issues I resort to some basic principles of Leadership that I have learned over the years and try to anticipate the needs of those in the hierarchy who may not have this experience. Sometimes reporting to overzealous micro-managing youths can be a challenge. But we managed the day pretty well and our team had a good time and helped lots of people enjoy the day.

It turned into a beautiful sunny day as we opened the gates to the public at 7 am. The warmth of the sun offset the coolness and dampness of the early morning dark. Today was the first day I would see the whole Callaghan Valley in sunlight. It is a beautiful place (as some of these shots will demonstrate) and a hard place to not reflect on the natural phenomenon of the mountains. During the day we loosened our many layers of clothing to balance the internal temperature as the sun strengthened its intensity. By the afternoon we were out of work and enjoying the sun as all had entered the venue and had made their way to the races. This day was dedicated to X-country races in both mans and ladies categories. There were a large contingent of Europeans with all of their noise makers, flags, fancy dress and jovial spirits. One Polish guy called our venue for ski-jumping a “mickey mouse operation” as it could accommodate 7K people. In Europe upwards of 50K people show up for a major ski-jumping event. He is the lad photographed in this report and he had several replica medals around his neck. The replicas were of the medals he had won in biathlon in Innsbruck. He has been at every event so far at Callaghan Valley (WOP). I suspect he is the most photographed guy this year.

In the afternoon we were re-deployed as a team to support the egress. There were 6K people who would be interesting in downloading to either Whistler or Vancouver at the same moment. The transportation group has really worked through and fixed their earlier issues and the egress was very orderly and happened in about 90 minutes from start to finish. After de-brief of the team and the Team Leaders I made the trip back to Whistler where Freddi and I had intended to meet for a beer at the Longhorn. Her day had been a bit boring as little happened around the Accreditation trailer at the Sliding Centre. Well the plan was thwarted as the Longhorn and other bars were jammed with sun soakers and folks enjoying the fine weather. We chose to return home on the bus and organize some dinner and couch surf watching the Olympics events. Jamie joined us for dinner.
Sleep came early again.......