Trip to Whistler

After all the consternation trying to get to Whistler, we had a fun time. After walking through the Village a little, we made our way to The Brewhouse for lunch.....sounds like my kinda place right?

Just as we sat down, the hostess tells us that we were lucky on our timing as she was expecting it to get really crowded with wait times up to an hour. By the time I had ordered my chicken sandwich without a bun and a Lager from the young Australian waiter - who was really a nice guy but certainly thought the no-bun idea was just plain silly, it really started to rain. We were glad to be inside and I really felt like our luck had changed for the good....too bad there wasn't a casino nearby 'eh...(That's what you say up here).

Well when we finished lunch it had stopped raining and we made our way up to the Whistler Sliding Centre where luge, bobsled and skeleton will take place. To get there we took a gondola up to mid-mountain which was cool with big views of the ski mountains and the valley floor below. After exiting the gondola we then trudged through some sludge and started the climb up to the track. Today's event was men's luge singles. The total event is comprised of four runs and we were able to see a good part of the last two. The crowd was good, lots of cowbells, flags and cheering and the weather ended up being great. Actually so good, ie sunny, that they had to put shades up on the south facing parts of the track to protect the ice from the sun.

We certainly chuckled that we had spent 5 hours trying to figure out how to get to Whistler, riding the bus up, navigating through the village, riding the gondola up, and making our way up a sludgey hill to get in position to watch people flying by at 90 miles an hour for about 0.6 seconds. Blink at the wrong time and you were hosed (I think they say that here too.)

 We then decided to start trying to take pictures of lugers which is high comedy unto itself....it aint easy!

We stayed in a position toward the bottom of the track where they are really flying for quite sometime, before eventually walking up the track towards the top. As you walk up the lugers are going slower and it is a little bit easier to see but the road to get you there gets steeper and steeper....I was huffin and puffin in no time.  To put it in perspective:   The steepness of the road and the icy-wet conditions certainly struck me as an American plaintiff's lawyer's wildest fancy.

Luge is certainly a European deal - lots of Germans, Swiss, and other central European countries in abundance.  The track itself is something to be seen....the engineering, plant and frankly the cost that goes into it is incredible. I would say easily 10s of millions of dollars.  And lots of maintenance!

The best American finish was 8th....Tony Benshoof from Minnesota. Gold and silver went to the Germans while Italy took the bronze.

I certainly thought about the Georgian a lot while walking around at the Sliding Centre. And I felt like the lugers that finished were staying around the finish line longer than normal to great their fellow sportsmen as they finished, regardless of country. For example, I saw an Indian waiting to congratulate a Japanese guy, even though both were no where near medal contention. There are literally less than 10 "real" luge tracks in the world, and the community of lugers is pretty small. I can't imagine what these last few days have been like for these guys.

All in all, I was really glad we made it up to see some luge. My only regret was that I didn't run into my friend Gordy Sheer with USA Luge.


After seeing the first 3/4s of the last run, we decided to head down and explore the village a little before it was time to cross our fingers in hopes that we were indeed going to be able to get on the bus to get home to Vancouver.

One of the neatest things happened on the gondola on the way back down:  7 people got on board.....yours truly from the great state of South Carolina, my 2 colleagues from Fairbanks, Alaska, a Frenchman from Normandy, a Mexican woman from Guadalajara, a young fella from Switzerland, and a man from Saudi Arabia!

I proposed that we go ahead and have a UN meeting!

All the non-US folks feigned a little laughter --- I'm sure thinking "what did I do to get stuck 50 feet in the air with this nutjob American!" The Alsaskans truly chuckled as I think are getting used to being stuck with me......Bet they will remember this Valentine's Day for a long time.

It was really cool though.

After a little time in the village, we grabbed some coffee....and drum role please.....we made the bus back to Vancouver!!!

Amen!  And thank you Baby Jesus!