A Brief Update

So I've altered my Olympic plans very slightly.

After receiving my actual tickets in the mail (they're much larger and nicer than I expected), I realized that my tickets for Monday's speed skating event are actually quite good. I then started looking into transportation to Cypress Mountain for the Snowboard event that morning.

That is when I realized there was a slight problem.

I am staying with a friend in North Vancouver. Somewhat in the western part of North Vancouver. The only collection point for the buses to Cypress north of the Burrard Inlet is near Capilano University. That is in the east part of North Vancouver. Cypress Mountain is northwest of North Vancouver. Hence, we have the following route:

View Larger Map

According to Google Maps, that is 46 minutes of driving. Taking the bus, I'd expect at least double that. It would be quite an early morning.

On top of that, I then realized I only had a half hour to get from Cypress Mountain to Richmond. Hence the following gong show:

View Larger Map

Again, using Google Maps, I see that this route will take just over an hour. I would make that about 2 hours on public transit. So either I would have two choices: miss the last hour or so of snowboarding so I can better utilize my good seats for speed skating or miss the first hour of speed skating. Then I found out that the buses coming down Cypress Mountain don't start until around the end of the event.

To top it all off, the weather hasn't exactly been cooperating...

So I decided I needed to get rid of my snowboarding tickets.

I figured if I reposted them on the VANOC website, I might be able to sell them before the games started. Unfortunately they charge a service fee. So I decided to add $10 to the price of the tickets so that I didn't lose money on the sale. (Side note: scalping is, from what I've been told, legal in B.C.) My tickets sold within 5 minutes. I guess I should have charged more...

So I'm one event less, but better off for the loss.

The Opening Ceremonies are tomorrow and I'm quite excited. Should be interesting: Vancouver will be the first Winter Olympic city to have the opening and closing ceremonies indoors.

Up next:

One last post before Vancouver: I'll finally post my experiences at the Torch Relay from last month.