Travel Day

Sunday was my travel day. It had been a long time since I flew within Canada, so it never even occurred to me that I wouldn't have to go through customs and immigration, and there was no line up for security at 8am, so I ended up at the gate more than 2 hours before my flight.

There were lots of Olympic bound people on my flight (CTV and NBC) plus some kind of Junior hockey team (about 20 young 6ft guys in suits). It was an uneventful flight - watched Surrogates (with Bruce Willis) which wasn't bad, and The Invention Of Lying (with Ricky Gervais) which was pretty funny.

I got my Olympic accreditation validated at the airport ("David McKinnon", they never get this right!), and then NBC ground transportation was supposed to meet me at baggage claim. However, I had to call them and they sent somebody over to find me, and then they called to get me a car (driven by "Ron", a man from the Squamish First Nation who was really nice) to take me to my hotel.

There is no "Media Village" in Vancouver (though I think there is one up at Whistler). Whenver the host city has enough hotel space (like in Salt Lake City and Atlanta), they tend not to build a Media Village.

The Sandman Hotel is right downtown on West Georgia and the room is pretty typical. I was able to walk over to the International Broadcast Centre (IBC) in about 20 minutes, getting there just after kick-off time for the Super Bowl.

I met up with all my friends in COMMs and tried to get familiar with the setup since my first day at work is tomorrow and the studio production staff are going into full rehersals - nothing like getting thrown into the fire!

I am told that the NBC Commisary food quality is excellent this year (YEAH!), and the pizza and wings I had for dinner was pretty darn good. Don't worry, Susan, I'm heading back to the salad bar starting tomorrow!

Stayed till the game ended, and then instead of walking back, I hopped on the "Sky Train" (subway) at the Waterfron station, and travelled for three stops, taking me to about 100m from my hotel.

My hours for this week are going to be 7am to 7pm, so I can try to do any evevening activities this week, and then after Opening Ceremonies, my hours are switching to 3pm to 3am. This is actually pretty good, because I should be able to visit some of the places I would like to see during the day, and then be at the IBC while most of the "Prime Time" events are going on.

Gotta get to bed now, since I have to be at the IBC for 7am tomorrow! I couldn't upload any of my photos of today because I forgot to bring the mini-USB cable I need (hopefully I can get one at the IBC tomorrow and I will update this post with a few pictures). Good Night!