Olympic Fever Grips City

Well, here it is.  Sporting Vancouver’s first (of what should be many) “Official Sporting Vancouver 2010 Olympic Blogs”.

With two days to go before the opening ceremonies this Friday February 12th, 2010, the city appears to be holding its collective breath.  The type of breath one would take before diving into deep waters.  This is it…its here.  The world has come to Vancouver.  Lights, camera, action.  The curtain comes up in a matter of hours…is the city ready?  Probably not…  Will it ever be ready?  Probably not…You see the thing with Vancouverites is we want to be a big city…but we don’t want traffic jams.  We want to have big, world class events…but just “not in my back yard”.  We want tourists to come here and spend millions of dollars….but we don’t want them jamming up our Starbucks and making us wait an extra eleven minutes for our non-fat, non-dairy, fair-trade, mocchajavalattespressoccino served in an eco-friendly, sustainable energy, renewable resource, bio-degradable cup with that oh-so-beautiful-and-status-ensuring Starbuck’s logo on it which we have to stir with our fingers because we’d have to chop down a tree for wood stir stix, re-usable spoons would have germs and would need to be washed in an electicity-guzzling dishwasher, and well…you can forget about plastic stir stix!!!

You see…Vancouver is a city where, in my humble opinion, common sense and democracy go to die.  It is a city where the vocal minority run the show.  Special interest groups ‘squeak’ very loudly in this city and, thus get most of the governmental ‘grease’.  This is why you will see many protesters around our fair city decrying the 2010 Vancouver Olympics as a waste of money…money that should have gone to give them free homes….not just any free homes…but free homes in downtown Vancouver, virtually the most expensive chunk of real estate in North America.

Anyways, I am getting off-topic…this is a sports blog after all.   I was acting like I was trying to get a gold medal in political griping.

I was on hand, behind the scenes at BC Place Stadium for the dress rehearsal for the opening ceremonies and was amazed by the amount of security present.  I am hoping that these Olympics will be a safe, and enjoyable event for all.  I am also hoping that all protesters will be free to demonstrate and voice their opinions democratically and not violently or destructively.

Its the calm before the storm.  We have two days to go, Vancouver.  Let’s tuck in our shirts, put on our faces, check our hair, pop those zits, and open the door to the world…after all, we want them all to come back and spend more money in the future…money we could use to buy ourselves free houses downtown.