TOP: Finishing curve on the bobsled/luge/skeleton run. Riders will be going around 90mph at this point, and totally horizontal
2nd: Laraine, always the watersports person, getting into the Pacific Ocean...well, OK, it WAS a major tributary to the Ocean
3rd: "Tyra" modeling at the finish line
BOTTOM: Zipline rider (find the horizontal cable, look to the left to find the actual rider) traversing a canyon
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We were pretty puckered out after the day in victoria, the gardens, and the ferry rides, so decided to make it a lazier day today by driving up to Whistler, the home of the 2010 winter 
olympics. Laraine is an olympic junkie, taping something like 200 hours last summer, and she was really psyched to try out some of the venues. Luge is her forte actually, what she competed in back in college...you know, in those rare days when she wasn't driniking.
olympics. Laraine is an olympic junkie, taping something like 200 hours last summer, and she was really psyched to try out some of the venues. Luge is her forte actually, what she competed in back in college...you know, in those rare days when she wasn't driniking.x
Along the way we stopped at Squamish, where the last vestiges of the Pacific Ocean reach far, far inland through an incredibly deep fjord. It was all we could do to stop laraine from diving into the ocean. We had to practically tie her to the car. She was screaming "let me be free"! We finally settled her down with some sushi and a cafe'and moved on "up the hill" to Whistler.
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Whistlers was also quite beautiful, nestled in the mountains. There was a mountain biking race on the calendar the day we visited, so we watched a bit of that (the hill climbs were incredible, they biked up hills that I don't think I could walk up!), and walked around the various ski towns for a while. We came upon the sliding centre, where they host the luge, skeleton, and bobsled, and a bunch of workers were busy trying to wrap up the wiring, lighting, and TV so that they could freeze it up and start testing the track under race conditions. One of the workers kindly gave us a guided tour, and told us how they put the workers on roller-sleds to test out the track after it was first constructed. Oh, yeah, that's what I want to do...be first down an untested track on a bobsled at 90mph.
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Fortunately, the town had lots of coffee for me, tom, and kathy, and a nearly endless supply of vodka for laraine. We'll be waiting with baited breath to see the Winter Olympics in January, so we can yell out "We were there!".
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"Can you ride skeleton if you're Lumpy?" Lumpy out
