Day One (Opening) a Day Late

Yesterday was Kuh-Ray-Zee.

I got to WVL at 8:30 am and didn't get home until 10:40 pm. We started off in a flurry of last minute plans. The Alpine Training schedule was all moved around, and for a short while we thought that would mean our Ladies Alpine skier would not get to the Opening Ceremonies on time. Luckily, she did - and I hope you saw her beaming face on the screen last night!

Of course, the giddy frenzied mood of the morning turned sombre pretty quickly when we learned of the luge accident. There were lots of tears in the village yesterday at the loss of such a young competitor. Everyone's thoughts were with the family and teammates of Nodar Kumaritashvili of Georgia. When the Georgians came back to the Vancouver Village after their march in the Opening Ceremonies, everyone stopped what they were doing and bowed their heads as the athletes passed by. It was very moving. As you probably saw, all athletes at the ceremonies last night had black armbands to honour this young man's memory. Everyone at the village felt just horrible yesterday.

It was hard, though, to dampen the enthusiasm these athletes felt at representing their country by marching in the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympic Games. As we herded them all out of the house yesterday, our Andorrans stopped for a group picture at their residence. Gulp. I'm just so proud of these guys, who I've only known for a week! Thanks so much to Shelley, who was at the Ceremonies last night and captured the Andorrans!

It was crazy trying to get all the athletes on the bus. I think we transferred 1500 from Whistler yesterday? Then of course, just as we all breathed a sigh of relief as the buses pulled away in the police convoy, we heard that some athletes had missed the bus. So we scrambled and searched the village for the stragglers, got them on another bus, and sent them down. Then I got in the Andorran VANOC car and drove to Vancouver Village to wait for my guys. Since two of our athletes were scheduled to compete this morning, they opted to bail out of the opening ceremonies just after the parade of athletes. So my job was to race them back to Whistler so they could get to bed as early as possible.

I'm glad they left early; turns out the rest of the convoy got back to WVL after 12:30 am!

Anyway, there were seven of us in the car and I don't believe I have ever made the trip that fast! One of the coaches was driving and turns out he'd had some training as a race car driver... yep, I could have guessed that! It was quite a fun trip up, I must say.

I got back to the cabin at 10:40, and Jack was still awake so I got kisses and hugs from him and Mike. Ethan got kisses and hugs from me, too, but he didn't really notice as he was snoring away. It was an emotional, sad, fun, long day and I'm so happy I got to be a part of it!