The mass e-mail is outdated. The blog is so...in. For those who are interested:
A week deep in Whistler has proved to be a bittersweet experience. I'm not going to blow smoke here - ski racing can be a real pain in the ass, especially when the Mother herself decides to work against you. This I have found out time and time again throughout my ski racing/coach/volunteer career, but let me tell you - when you mix quadruple B-nets and A-nets on an Olympic downhill with pending training runs, PUKING snow, and the world expecting a race this coming Saturday, it tends to max out the muscles, mind, and patience. But it's nothing a little beer and sleep won't remedy.
My first days included obtaining credentials, accommodations, meeting people, figuring out who will be barking at you, realizing that you won't really be able to bark at anyone yourself, and training. Beginning last Friday, my crew and I began putting up double and quadruple layers of protective B-netting. Rolls of B-net weigh approximately 11 million pounds each, and hundreds are required to line the course with the goal of slowing down an athlete who crashes at high speeds at a safe negative velocity before he or she hits other obstacles. In some high-risk sections of the course, four layers of netting thousands of feet long and only erected by manual labor is needed. Simply put: B-net duty is tough work.
My crew is responsible for the section of track from the slalom start to the finish - probably 500-700 vertical change and 2-3000' of track length. Again, we've been on B-net duty from the beginning, but now recently have been dealing with new snow (pushing it off the track...raking, shoveling, etc. etc.) as well as making changes to the net setups depending on the needs of the race jury (safety adjustments), the weather (snow buildup in the nets), and the snow cats (opening up sections for pushing excess snow off the run, or opening up "pick points" from which snow cats can self-aid by winching back and forth as they're working so as to cut down on course degradation).
With the impending weather, I ended up in ski boots from 3:30am Wednesday morning until 4:30pm. Some people in my boat ended up working into the dark as well. Today was a bittersweet day - we ended up pulling off a complete mens training run, but immediately after, the ceiling dropped and it started puking snow. It's not looking good for the final training run tomorrow, let alone a successful Olympic downhill on Saturday.
Aside from the work, life isn't too bad here, either. I've had a couple of good nights in the bar and have met a ton of quality (and not so quality) souls. There have been additions to my crew, and finally I'm working with two people of 20 and 24 years of age, as well as another 22 year old in the other crew in my section. We're becoming friends and sharing some legit laughs.
A couple nights ago I ended up in Dublinh Gate Pub with someone I knew, but more importantly later on with some off-the-clock Vancouver police officers who didn't hesitate in buying me whiskey. After a good sesh of talking to them about whether legalizing marijuana in Washington State would do good or bad things to tax revenue (and life in general), I realized it was getting late and went back to the condo. That was when I read my e-mail and saw that I needed to be at Creekside ready to load at 4am the next morning. I can't have too many of these instances, because nights of drinking make for long 14-hour days.
Attitudes are waning this early on as well. When crew and section chiefs realized yesterday that the weather was coming and we hadn't even completed one discipline of mens alpine skiing, people started snapping at each other on the track as we were trying to work and keep things in condition. This weighed heavily on the shoulders of volunteers who had been up since 2:30am. Yes, this is the Olympics, and it's a unique atmosphere to be a part of. But shitty attitudes and drama can really bring down a brigade of unpaid people who are playing an integral role in pulling this off on a platform of energy derived from the "Team 2010, With Glowing Hearts" catch phrase.
So now the weather is here. We got kicked off the hill midday today, which was surprising but also a major relief. I think it's because they're gearing us up for a 24/7 push to make an attempt at conquering this weather and pulling a race off. But I'm hesitant to express optimism in that. Luckily my next day off is Sunday, which means Saturday night will be nothing short of a party with the world in Whistler Village, as the games will have officially begun, and hopefully the USA will have podiumed in the mens downhill.
Between now and then, though, we'll have to come up with an answer for the Swiss and Austrians looking at this wet snow and heavy accumulation asking, "Vat is matter vit dis place?"
And I apologize for the length - ensuing posts will be shorter and hopefully filled with better substance. I just wanted to give the last week some justice to those who have asked.
I am thinking of you all.
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