Once in town we went to visit Colin in the hospital as he was still being held captive by the system in Vancouver N hospital. He is not doing well as he is an active young guy and they are doing everything possible to hold him down. His spirits were pretty good when we were there but he confirmed a T12 bilateral compression and he will be unable to work for some 6+ months and will go through a very rigorous therapy before he is able to get back to his normal lifestyle. He is very concerned at Elisha is due in July this summer. We stayed for awhile and left Elisha and Colin to settle with the hospital and let him get out of there sooner rather than later. In the end he was right and they let him out later that day. Elisha joined us for the rehearsal event later in the afternoon.
After we left the hospital we drove to the Seabus from the Lonsdale Quay where we parked the car. From there we took the Canada Line (new subway/LRT to YVR) to the City Centre where we went to meet Bree’s sister in the Pacific Mall in downtown. We visited for a brief period and then Tara-Lee, Bree and I went to the Brew Pub in Yaletown for lunch. We had a great lunch with a little beer and wine in the early afternoon as we had a date at BC Place for the final dress rehearsal for the Opening Ceremonies.
We dealt with the 40K crowd in a semi organized fashion but it was raining so we had to protect ourselves form the rain in line for security and ticket validation. It was interesting for me as the jobs that the volunteers were performing are the jobs that my team will be undertaking at the Whistler Olympic Park for the Nordic events. Once inside the huge venue we found our seats very easily and joined the Hempel family as our seats were together. We sat down at 5 PM and enjoyed the three and a half hours of the ceremony rehearsal very much. Now i would like to tell all about what happened but we have been sworn to secrecy so that the event on Friday evening is unique to everyone. The time went by very quickly and I am proud to be a Canadian. All I can say to you, as a reader before the Friday night event on TV, is “Watch your TV and enjoy the time as you are a Canadian”. It will be viewed by some 3 B people around the planet and the team who organized this did a wonderful job. I hope you enjoy it.... and would be happy to hear about what you liked and what you feel may have been done differently. There are opportunities on both sides of that discussion.
Today I pretended to be a retired guy. I stayed in bed longer than I normally do, had a quiet breakfast with Tara-Lee, went to town by myself and walked about, had a Starbucks while watching people, SMSd a friend, found some clothes to buy, did some grocery shopping and started dinner for the family. I made a Chinese dinner for the 5 of us with enough left-overs for Gray tomorrow. It is now later in the day and we are all sort of watching TV while engaging in interesting and controversial conversation. What a family .... and I love it.
I have no new pictures but Freddi did send me a picture of a Linx running across the downhill course that was featured on the website. I share that picture with you as this is a spot where folks have spent many hours over the last few days and will be well inhabited over the next few special days. We must remember that they were here before we were......Happy Olympic Day in Canada to all of you and I hope you enjoy the activities of the many athletes who will be pushing hard in their events. I know we will!
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