Thursday, February 25, 2010

Wednesday February 17th

This week has been going by slow. Yesterday (Tuesday) was one of the longest days I think I have ever worked. I got to Creekside around 430 am and did not get off until 530pm. I usually wouldn't be as worn out after that long of a shift if I were able to sleep later than 330 in the morning. It has been tough to get good sleep with so many people in our trailer and on so many different schedules. Everything around the games is exciting and the amount of people in Whistler is clearly a lot more than the week before. However the long working hours and low amount of sleep have been the downfall. Today(Wednesday) was a much better day and arguably will be the best day of the Olympics for myself. Work began at 6am and at 12 I got off to take a trip to Cypress Mountain with the other USC interns to see the Men's Snowboard halfpipe outside Vancouver. It was a hectic morning at Creekside because Hughie was hear trying to run the show. Gabby was also here helping with rosters and helpdesk, and once Hughie got wind of the planned trip he had not been informed about, no one was safe so to speak. Hughie seemed infuriated that some sort of trip had been planned without his knowledge, especially on one of the busiest work days for the company. He proceeded to tell me that what if everyone decided to take the day off to go snowboarding, that I was here to work and there would be no trip to Cypress. I was frustrated because I felt like I was being singled out of a group trip that I had not even planned. Hughie went on to say that I needed to be on-site at Creekside every event day of the games and half days on non-event days, regardless of the other interns. This did not seem fair to me or make sense when we have four interns assigned to work at creekside to do a one, sometimes two person job. Luckily Gabby was present and not afraid to challenge Hughie after he calmed down and explain the fairness of the situation. Gabby and I had just enough time to run in our rooms at camp and change clothes before the bus left for Cypress. This was a nice getaway from a stressful work area and an amazing opportunity to see one of the most anticipated events of the Olympic games. We arrived at Cypress around 5pm in time to watch the semifinal runs for the halfpipe and stayed through the final rounds. Shaun White was the clear-cut winner, winning on his first of two runs, allowing himself to be able to do something of a victory run/lap in which he unveiled his new trick the double mctwist. I was amazed at the slope of the halfpipe and its overall size. One of the other Americans, Scotty Lago medaled and Gregg Bretz, another American, was also in the final. Cypress was an interesting venue because of its layout and the fact that the playing field had snow but all the area around it was rocks and mud. Cypress was the talk before the games because it had been too warm for it to snow and it ended up having to be brought in. Visually Cypress was nothing pretty but it seemed to work, and was reported to have been a very expensive project. While watching the semifinals I got the chance to be within feet of former skateboarding star Tony Hawk who was in attendance. Many of the girls were able to get a picture with him. The other celebrity I saw was Chris Collinsworth from NBC, who is commonly seen on Sunday Night Football as a football analyst. Chris was down in front of the bleachers in the media area where Dolton and I stood to watch the event. I spoke to him and said how are you doing Chris as I passed him and he smiled back. This was an awesome event to see live because of how few people get to see it and for the fact that Shaun White had arguably his best performance ever.

No comments:

Post a Comment