Vancouver 2010 - Weather Delays

It was another early morning, up at 3:15 to leave Semiahmoo at 4:00 to catch the bus to Whistler at 5:15. We had two scheduled events today, Men's Super Combined Skiing and Women's Singles Luge. The park and ride for Whistler Creekside, venue for the alpine events, is at Langara College in Vancouver. It was actually a park and walk in the pouring rain, the buses blocks away from the parking lot. We were already soaked through and the day hadn't even started yet. We boarded the bus and had just gotten settled when the announcement came that all Whistler Olympic events had been cancelled for the day. Shit!!! No doubt, the weather was a mess, but it's hard to walk away from several hundred dollars worth of tickets on the word of a nineteen year-old volunteer with a walkie-talkie. With almost a foot of snow overnight, it would make sense to cancel alpine events if conditions were bad, but not luge, which is climate-controlled. Unless the Sea to Sky highway was closed, I was skeptical. I tried to confirm the cancellation on the Olympic website via BlackBerry, but it would be many hours before updates were posted. Back on with the soggy coats, hats, and gloves for the trudge in the rain back to the car. News 1130, the official radio station of the games, reported that the alpine events were cancelled, but made no mention of other Whistler events. So, it appeared that luge would run, but we had no way to get there. Our ride to Whistler was the bus we just got kicked off of. Other buses were running, but not from our location and getting tickets would be a challenge. The weather might not impact competition in luge, but it would make for a miserable spectator experience, standing in the snow and rain. The forecast was improving, but not fast enough. So, we turned around and headed for the border. We stopped at Big Al's for breakfast in Blaine and then went back to bed.

When the weather cleared and all events were accounted for, here is how it shook out. Men's Super Combined Skiing was rescheduled for Sunday the 21st. Men's Giant Slalom, originally scheduled for Sunday the 21st, for which we also have tickets, was rescheduled for Tuesday the 23rd. Our tickets for Women's Ski Cross Freestyle Skiing on Tuesday the 23rd were cancelled, as were all 20,000 remaining standing room tickets for the Cypress Mountain freestyle venues. The story of the games has been the warmest winter on record in the Coast Mountains. With its low elevation and location just half an hour North of Vancouver, Cypress has virtually no snow pack. The organizers have done heroic work to ready the venues for competition, creating the infrastructure of the runs from bales of hay, crowning them with snow trucked and helicoptered in from around the region. While the "field of play" has been a solid platform for competition, organizers have not been able to maintain the standing room spectator areas. As rain eroded more than a foot of the snow cover, spectators started to fall between the underlying bales of hay. With no time to restore the area, the tickets had to be cancelled. German slider Tatjana Huefner won the luge competion, as expected, and we have no regrets napping though the event.

The Olympics is not just about sport; this is a festival of the arts as well. The Cultural Olympiad presents installations and performances in various mediums around Vancouver. One of the most anticipated of these events is the world premier of Laurie Anderson's "Delusion" at the Vancouver Playhouse. Tonight was opening night and we had tickets in the front row. Laurie Anderson is an experimental performance artist. Her multimedia solo shows feature light and projection, violin and keyboards, and the spoken word. She sometimes speaks through a voice modulator that gives her a deep, throaty, almost mechanical, male voice. "Conceived as a series of short mystery plays, Delusion jump-cuts between the everyday and the mythic. Combining violin, electronic puppetry, music and visuals, Delusion is full of nuns, elves, golems, rotting forests, ghost ships, archaeologists, dead relatives and unmanned tankers. It tells its story in the colourful and poetic language that has become Anderson's trademark. Inspired by the breadth of Balzac, Ozu and Laurence Sterne, and employing a series of altered voices and imaginary guests, Anderson tells a complex story about longing, memory and identity. At the heart of Delusion is the pleasure of language and a terror that the world is made entirely of words." What a load of pretentious crap!!! There were some pleasing visuals and interesting projection effects, but the new age electro pop rock music and the dramatised breathlessness of her streams of consciousness were over the top. The arty crowd ate it up, delivering a standing ovation lasting several curtain calls. Our polite applause were more than the show deserved. We hit the streets just as the crowd was thundering out of Canada Hockey Place, Team Canada having defeated Norway in the opening round of the hockey tournament. There is nothing like a drunken scrum of Canadian hockey fans to relieve the stupor of bad performance art.

Vancouver is one of my favorite food cities. The incredible bounty of the region, the early and deep devotion to local, sustainable, and organic produce, pristine seafood, artisanal meats and cheeses, the ethnic diversity of the population, and the "Hollywood North" scene, have combined to create a food culture of true quality and creativity. Many of these great restaurants are downtown and overrun with Olympic crowds, but many more are in the neighborhoods South of False Creek and are easily accessible even with the city in the spotlight. We had a late dinner tonight at Refuel in Kitsilano. The restaurant launched a couple years ago as Fuel. I had an amazing multi-course meal there last year, sitting at the kitchen bar and watching the talented brigade prepare beautiful food. The concept was great, but couldn't be sustained in this economy, so Fuel morphed into Refuel with "honest food" and a "relaxed atmosphere." We started with a round of drinks, the Dark 'N' Stormy, a classic Commonwealth cocktail of Gosling's Black Seal Rum and ginger beer. Then, bread service with housemade butter and...whipped lard. Oh, yeah, whipped lard!!! We followed with seasonal olives, dry spiced pork ribs, and croquettes. The pork rib tips were deep fried and dusted in a spicy salty rub that was almost on the verge of too much, but stayed just inside the lines. And the coquettish croquettes, unassuming fried balls of love, eaten in a single bite, they exploded with a flood of molten foie gras. Damn!!! Then, a creamy onion soup, rich and subtle, garnished with croutons and a drizzle of herb-infused oil. I continued with the signature buttermilk fried polderside chicken. Light and crispy, juicy and tangy, the gravy dark and rich, the jalapeno biscuit dense and buttery, the coleslaw salted and dressed in vinegar with celery seeds. On the side, I ordered the cheesy Refuel potatoes, a humble name for the classic dish Potatoes Joel Robuchon, a silky puree laced with lusciously rich and mild cheese. It is the ultimate fusion, tastes so complimentary, textures so contrasting, smoother than a stringy cheese with more chew than a fine mash, strands pulling from every bite. To finish, a peanut and chocolate parfait with crumbled honeycomb. This is the true Cultural Olympiad. Good food is great art.

Next Event: Men's 1,000m Speed Skating

TG