2/16/10 Leader Telegram Article

Editor's note: Altoona natives Jennifer Holec and Amy Lund are at the Olympic Winter Games. Their reports will appear in the Leader-Telegram through Thursday.

Greetings from the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver! It is not, however, winter here. Sunday, it was close to 60 degrees. The flowers are blooming, the cherry trees are blossoming, and we didn't wear coats at all today.
Some might think our Olympic adventure started on Friday when we left Eau Claire. They would be wrong. This trip has been in the works for more than two years. Even with all the planning, it hasn't sunk in that we are really at the Olympics.
We arrived in Vancouver via Amtrak from Seattle Sunday morning. Our goals for the first day were to take in the atmosphere and experience the city in the midst of the Olympics. We also wanted to do some shopping and see the Olympic flame.
We are staying with a Vancouver resident and another Canadian right in the middle of Vancouver. Our original plan had been to stay in Victoria, on Vancouver Island. We thought it wouldn't be that difficult to get back and forth on the ferry each day. Thank goodness we were set straight by our Canadian friends.
Sunday afternoon we took a cab and headed downtown. Our first stop was the Olympic Superstore at the Hudson Bay Co. store. The line to get in was a block long but moved quickly. The inside of the store was like the day after Thanksgiving sales, but we found some Olympic paraphernalia. One goal met.
We went to dinner on Granville Island and had some great seafood, and had a Wisconsin sports bar-type experience when Canadian freestyle mogul skier Alexandre Bilodeau won the first gold medal on Canadian soil. The crowd was cheering (and so were we). It was hard not to join in when the crowd was so electric. Goal two met.
Our last adventure of the day was to check out what we thought was an authentic Irish pub in the art district. We ended up playing bingo while a duo played the ukulele and a suitcase as a drum while 8-track movies of Russia played on a big screen. The beer was good.
To end the night, our cab driver attempted to take us by the Olympic flame. Unfortunately, you can't get there by car, and the police are pretty adamant about that. No one got in trouble. Goal three not met ... yet.
None of the goals would have been met without the help of our friends here in Vancouver. We would have spent most of our day traveling to and from Victoria and never had a chance to experience the city and some of what it has to offer.
We planned to head up to Whistler Olympic Park on Monday to see the women's luge qualifying runs, hoped it would feel more like the Olympics then.