A lot of people have been asking about my time at the Olympics, so I figured I’d share here. These are all photos I took for my own personal use, most of them with a small point and shoot or even my cell phone!

My good friends over at Destiny River Adventures got a contract to do some bus driving for the Olympics, and when the opportunity arose to do some driving with them, I took it! I don’t have a commercial drivers license, so the only job I could do was driving equipment around in a cargo van. But, that was good enough for me!

We were put up at the Furry Creek Golf Course club house, which was pretty interesting. I think at the busiest time there was 180 of us there. The six of us drivers got to share one room, so we had a ton of room, and even had two beds each! Here’s the view of my corner of our room:

This was the rest of the room, with some of the drivers unpacking.

This would be my view for the next six weeks. I didn’t think so at first, but I actually miss sleeping in a room with five other people!

The Destiny staff also had a temporary office set up, here’s Jim plugging away at paper work.

I was lucky and actually started my shifts on “off” days. It was also my birthday, so I went down to Vancouver for a concert with one of my best friends.

Then it was to work! Here’s the busses lined up outside the athlete’s village, where we were working. This is before the security sweep, once things started ramping up, the busses had to drop us off and we took an internal shuttle into the village.

At first the cargo van I was supposed to be driving wasn’t available, so I got to bomb around in this sweet ride!

Darlene and I shared the same job, so we didn’t see a lot of each other, but we did manage to get a photo of us in our fabulously flattering uniforms. Yellow is definitely my colour, don’t you think?

On my next round of days off, I headed over to the sunshine coast to do some exploring and visiting a friend. Here’s a couple photos from that trip:

Back in Whistler, things were ramping up to games time! This photo is actually one that the bus drivers took, of the bus, Jamie and the Stawamas Chief, which we passed twice every day (the drivers passed it four times!).

The Canadian team moved in and they brought a moose! Of course I had to kiss it. I think everyone who worked or visited the village had their photo taken with this moose.

Back down in Vancouver things were looking festive too!

And to continue my rambling around, I hiked up the Chief in Squamish.

Back at work in the village, the athletes were really moving in, and even Quatchi and Miga came for a visit!

The opening ceremonies fell on the last day of my shift, so I actually got to watch the last half of them, and then made my way into downtown to see the cauldron for myself!

And with the opening ceremonies, the party really began. I spent a lot of my time off at Robson Square, where there was constant entertainment and crowds!

I even met up with some Swiss fans on the SkyTrain. These two came to Canada to cheer on the Swiss skiers. Hop Schweiz!

Back in the village, everything was into full gear. Teams had their banners and decorations up, and everyone was making inukshucks everywhere! As you can see, we had some really nice, not very wintery weather.

When Jon Montgomery won the first Canadian gold in Whistler, everyone was super excited! A bunch of volunteers got together to make a card for him, and a lot of us got to sign it.

Back in Vancouver, things were really kicked into party mode. I never actually made it to any of the pavilions, but I did spend a lot of time wandering the streets, meeting interesting people, joining impromptu choruses of “Oh Canada” and participating in mobs of flag waving.

Giving directions via charades to some Swiss tourists who only spoke French. They wanted to get to Granville Island and I couldn’t remember anything from high school French classes. (sorry Celine!)

And what’s a hockey game without good friends and beer?

That was a game Canada won, so the crowds were pretty amped after!

Robson Street will never be the same again…

I got a chance to go skating at Robson Square as well, only waited in line for about an hour! This is the view of the stage from the ice.

As we neared the end of the Olympics and the start of the Paralympics, the buses contract was nearly done. The days were getting longer and all of a sudden we were driving home when it was still light!

This was the view from where the dumpsters (one of my most frequent stops in the village) were.

On one of the last days of the Olympics, someone made an inukshuck out of traffic cones. There was that little snow!

But back in Vancouver, at the top of Mount Seymour, there was a lot of snow! I actually did this hike twice while I was in Vancouver, but this time the weather was much nicer so we could actually see something.

And then, just in time for the end of my contract, it started snowing. And snowing. And snowing. It was amazing how much snow could fall in such a short time!

I didn’t take many photos during the Paralympics, but I did get this photo of the traffic jam the Russian team caused when they were leaving. Behind me was another 5-6 vehicles, all trying to get around a one way loop!

I snapped this on my last trip out of the village. This was one of the security check points along the road into the village, with the river running below. The people who will eventually live here are very lucky to live in such a beautiful environment!

So there’s my story and my pictures, I hope you enjoyed them!