Witnessing History...again

After last night's blog entry Virtue and Moir won gold. While neither of us pretends to understand ice dancing, we both appreciated the beauty of the programme and the promise of the young Canadian couple winning gold. Go-Canada-Go!!!!!

Today we had tickets to curling. The venue was about 5.5 kilometres from our condo so we decided to walk and see some of Vancouver. There were genuine mansions on the way that were fun to look at. What stands out about the walk though was the moment walking along Broadway when a small child, maybe 5 - 7 years old, called out to Paul as we walked by, "will you trade with me?" He had noticed the pins on Paul's IIHF federation lanyard. A trade was made; it was a small Oylmpic moment that was touching out of all proportion if you weren't there.

We were a little concerned that we didn't have the knowledge base to follow the today's curling action, but we heard an announcement during figure skating that you could buy closed circuit radios for curling, sledge hockey and figure skating, so we made a beeline to the concession stand at curling and sure enough radios were for sale. Thank goodness for the radios or else we would have been helplessly lost trying to follow four sheets of curling action. "Hack Radio", as it was called, was not all we'd hoped--not an in depth analysis of strategy or tactics--but three "buds" who seemed to have had a few before the match. Think your average morning radio show with a couple of drinks at a curling match. Fun, nonetheless.

We called this blog entry "witnessing history" because we were there for the first time that any curling team has ever gone undefeated in round robin play---that team is CANADA and it was awesome.

The curling venue was managed as expected--catering to an older and quite Scottish crowd. There were Mounties in full dress uniform posing with spectators. The concessions included "Cornish Pasties". The man sitting to the left of Kim was older, born in Scotland, moved to Canada later in life and played curling...his observations were in many respects more insightful than those of "Hack Radio".

Curling ended just after the Canada v. Germany game started. No chance of getting into Saxony House today, so we didn't even try. We went to what we thought was a local pub, the "Smoking Dog" pub. It turned out that the food was WAY better than any pub food we are used to. It had perhaps the best french onion soup Kim has ever had outside of Quebec. Although the food was excellent, the atmosphere was casual and we were able to watch what remained of the hockey game and cheer freely.

While we were out watching the curling Ashley McIvor won gold for Canada. Awesome. While we missed the competition, we saw the medal ceremony live. While we were at the Smoking Dog Ashley McIvor received her gold...we stood, we sang and we enjoyed. We wish we could say others stood and sang with us, but mostly they watched. None frowned though, and other tables smiled while we sang of told us we had done well when it was over. And, by the way, in an aside to Sports Illustrated, Ms McIvor is WAY hotter than Ms Vonn.

We got home and watched the women's short programme in figure skating. What a story: Joannie Rochette lost her mother tragically and unexpectedly in the week before the Olympics. Kim, as someone who lost a parent when she least expected it, was particularly affected by the story. Joannie skated awesomely: third after the short program. What an amazing accomplishment.

Tomorrow we will try to get into Saxony House before heading to the women's aerials at Cypress. There are no Canadian women in the finals tomorrow, so we'll just enjoy the show; flying people are always entertaining.

We still can't believe we're here.

Wow.

The Entity

Kim Boara Alexander
Paul McCulloch Alexander