Our recent trip to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, CA went very well. The plan included taking a train to and from Vancouver in one day. We practiced the route on Wednesday, 24 Feb 2010. The intent behind the practice run was to become familiar with the public transportation around Vancouver and pick up our event tickets. By the schedule, we would only have 50 minutes between arrival in Vancouver and the start of the Speed Skating event. It turns out the practice trip was incredibly beneficial.
On 26 February 2010, the train departed Seattle on time at 7:45am. We arrived early in Vancouver by about 20 minutes. Fortunately, our car was the first to go through Customs after business class. This saved valuable time. We used the Sky Train to get to the Richmond Oval. We were able to simply walk onto the train at each station or transfer along our route. We didn’t have to wait at all and the trains were not crowded.
We finally arrived at the Richmond Oval at about 12:50. We missed the Men’s Team Pursuit Quarterfinals but arrived in time to see the Women’s Team Pursuit Quarterfinals. We really had no idea what we were watching.
Speed Skating Team Pursuit was very exciting to watch. Each team has four skaters, however, only three skate at a time. Two teams compete against each other in a six lap race. They start on opposite sides of the track. Times are reported every half lap.
We watched a total of six races between the men’s and women’s events. They were very exciting. We watched the USA women’s team beat the Canada women’s team by 0.04second.
There are some other items worth noting concerning our practice trip to Canada. On Friday’s trip, Alexis had to tie her shoe at the same point coming out of the Amtrak station in Vancouver as we walked to our first SkyTrain stop. When we returned to Seattle on Friday, we ended up with the same cab driver who drove us home on Wednesday. Given all the variables at work here, that is quite the coincidence.
While at the event took over 900 photos with the big lens (70-200mm). They can be seen on my flickr page.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bbirmingham/sets/72157623521919270/