Here for a good time, not a long time

All good things...

If only the Olympics were held so 'close' every year. We talked about how crazy we were for doing this. I have absolutely no doubts anymore - 100% worth it. Honestly, the drive was not bad and totally worth spending my time cramped in such a small space. Odometer reads 4177km as we leave Richmond.

Since I last wrote we've actually experienced some Olympic events.
SIDE NOTE: just so everyone reading this knows, we didn't go on this trip solely for the events. It was more about experiencing the atmosphere and overall Olympic movement. If we were all a little more wealthy we would have gone to many more (and maybe flown).

So last night we went to our first Olympic event - Curling. The Olympic curling venue was pretty amazing and even though we started off somewhat skeptical, by the end we were cheering and getting into the intense action. Great to finally experience the athletic part of the games.

Two nights ago we went to an area of Vancouver called Gastown. I split up with everyone to meet up with a friend of mine Chris Mckenzie from Durham College where we took their version of SPAD. After I chilled with Chris for a bit I went to another place called The Cambie where I met other SPAD students Mike Latty and Alex Lea who are volunteering for Right To Play in Vancouver during the games. The other guys met up with us after an hour or so and we spent the rest of the night debating greatest hockey teams with frenchmen and talking to 80 year old men about the Leafs - great times

I missed a little bit of our adventure after we met up with Dave Bedford and the twins. We went to Lennox pub and met Sean and Lawren. Met some Australians from Perth. One named Jesus who made Muskoka Chairs. Apparently he walked to Perth from Sydney.

Road trip with 4 of my close University friends and one that I've known most of my life but even though we've wanted to kill each other at times I feel like after this road trip we have been brought even closer and changed our outlook towards each other in a good way - I think. Driving through these mountains for some reason I can't stop thinking about a Stan Rogers song "Northwest Passage" and the verse "How then am I so different from the first men through this way? Like them, I left a settled life, I threw it all away. To seek a Northwest Passage at the call of many men. To find there but the road back home again."

I've asked each person to write a short portion on their personal experience; everyone wrote them individually without reading the other's part.

Corey:

The long drive to Vancouver seems like a walk in the park compared to the journey home - a drive that felt like it took months to complete. The excitement is all but gone; we now drive back to Ontario where the cold and snow await us. Almost forgot that it was indeed winter. The weather was beautiful in Van City; only got rained on once and it just so happened to be when we were dressed to the nines. Came on a road trip with almost complete strangers and not really sure how that was going to play out. I think that a 2 day drive will really bring strangers together. Couldn't really ask for a much better crew. Came looking for gold and left with a treasure of memories.

(Glad that was a SHORT post)

Dana:

Despite the fact that I thought I was gonna be driven insane before we even got to Vancouver by the boys and the fact that we are now beginning our drive back to Sudbury, I'm still smiling thinking back to the last week. I can't help but smile, I became part of something beautiful and simply amazing that I'll remember for the rest of my life. Sitting here trying to think of the best part of the trip seems impossible because so many things come to mind. The vibe and hype in the city streets would be enough of a reason to drive 2 days to simply experience it. I couldn't of chose better fellers to come with; they are big reasons as to why I had such an incredible journey. Our laughs were endless despite the lack of sleep at times and the days we weren't feeling so hot after a night on the town. Although we only saw Curling, we still got to experience the Olympic Games knowing that everything was happening so close made it that much more exciting. I've never been so proud to be Canadian. I've done my fare share of traveling and can honestly say that this road trip is placed at the top and wins gold in my book bie. Thanks Mom & Dad!

(Who knew Dana could talk so much, eh?)

Nicole:

From the time we hit the highway in the Sault I looked at Dana and said "Are we really doing this?" In shock and amazement this road trip across the country was actually coming true. I'm not sure if I was more in shock or worried about what could happen to my parents vehicle during the thousands and thousands of kilometers we were about to conquer, and quite possibly how much trouble I would be in if something was to happen. The great sleep from the Sault to Winnipeg put Dana and I in perfect driving status for fourteen hours, all the way to Blonda's in Calgary. Thank you again for her great hospitality. The prairies were flat and foggy but we were entertained by thinking we had a flat tired and getting lost thanks to Garmin (technology isn't so great all the time). The mountains are something everyone should experience in their life - they are breath taking. Debbie, thank you as well for being such a great hostess and for feeding us more than maybe physically possible. Vancouver was electric, having been to the city before I knew what the "normal" crowd of people in the downtown area looked like. This was no where near what we saw. The packed streets of Canadian fans chanting on Granville street showing their true Olympic pride gave me even more of an adrenaline rush than just being at the Olympics. The first time I realized how amazing it was to be sitting in the core of the Olympic host city was when we watched the Women's speed skating for 3000 meters, Kristina Groves brought tears to my eyes as well as Cindy Klassen and just the crowd around us. We are truly blessed to have such a beautiful country, one that I have seen a lot of in the last week and it is true that Canadians are extremely nice people. Being in the city, experiencing the roar of the Olympics and what Vancouver has to offer was an amazing time. But, I think the real experience was spending it with friends and having many, many stories to tell for years to come. I had a great time guys, thank you, and thanks Mom and Dad for the use of Marlene! And now were on the road again....

(Good story, Nicole)

Shannon:

Greetings from Perth,

Coming up with song titles was probably the most challenging part of the trip, but luckily we all put our melons together to solve that little dilemma. There were so many highlights of the trip for me, but the ones that stand out to me are seeing Imran dancing with the Dutch hat on at the Heineken House (NOTE: we got a whole crowd of Dutch people to play the "Invisible Ball game"), going to the Canada house, discovering my new favourite drink, walking through tent city (cause I was not afraid at all), Nicole and I trying to convince Dana to get off the Skytrain and I mean I knew she was a little slow - but I finally realized it, seeing Muk Muk everywhere, how pretyy much every night Jarrod and Corey attempted to walk home, pointing out every Subway along the way, Reuben and Corey in the bathrobes, Debbie's house - UN REAL, just walking through the streets of Vancouver, seeing all the acts like that awesome freestyler, the guy telling the dad with the umbrella in his stroller that he lost his baby, and the old french guy on Tuesday night. I honestly thought I would be ready to kill someone by the end of this trip after such a long drive, but I couldn't have had such a good time with any better friends. Thanks guys, I had a blast.

(Are you from Perth?)

Jarrod:

‎​As my time at the winter games is already over I am sad to be leaving the city I have become quite fond of in my short stay. I'd like to start my reflection with a giving a congratulations to Lynsey Vonn. She is an alpine skier for USA and was unsure if she was going to compete due to a shin injury and ended up with a gold medal.. A decent accomplishment, however I am congratulating her for the spread she did in the new Sports Illustrated swim suit edition. Wow. Just fantastic, what an athlete.
While at the games we were fortunate enough to take in womens curling and consequently fell in love with team Denmark, more specifically the Dupont sisters, man can they curl. In all the trip was an experience of a lifetime, something I'll never forget. From the Heineken House, to the COC's office and even wandering where no tourist should getting a real life glimpse at some of the negatives of the Olympics, these memories are amazing and it certainly feels great to have been a part of the whole experience...

(Good post, Son)

Reuben:

As I write this we are listening to the live broadcast of the Canada v. Swiss shootout on my Blackberry while driving through the Rockies...can it even possibly get any more Canadian?? - that's pride and dedication.

Huge thanks goes out to all our 'sponsors' who made this dream possible:

Brenda
Alan
Steve
Wendy
Stewart
Lisa
Debbie
Larry
Mikell
Lloyd
Lucille
Gordie
David Bedford and the whole COC
Blonda Martin
Debbie MacIntyre
Billy

I may not post on this blog again anytime soon. Its been an interesting experience writing this. Its not only documented the journey forever but its also given me a chance to reflect and think. This trip has brought us together in so many ways. Who knows where we will be in 10 years. Done our degrees and likely apart, but this trip will bond us for life. We will tell our kids of traveling across the country in a 2002 Dodge Caravan with Dana, Corey, Nicole, Jarrod, and Shannon and how it was just the most amazing - each.

Thanks to everyone following our journey and here's to Toronto - 2020.

I would do any-thing for Gold

We're still alive. Yesterday was the first time we haven't posted a blog so I'm sure that at least my mom was wondering what was going on.

Two nights ago we went to the Heineken house at the Richmond Ozone not too far from our hotel. Pretty crazy place. We went at around 11 o'clock to find a huge line of about 300+ people trying to get in. After much debate we waited in line for about half an hour. When we heard some rumours that they were not letting any more people in we started to walk away. As soon as we started to walk away they decided to let everyone that was left in the line (only about 20 people) into the House.

Inside it was comparable to a rave/beer garden. All they sold obviously was Heineken and it was a completely cash free bar - you had to buy a card for $5 and then put money onto it. There was a Netherlands store in the building where they were selling pretty much everything orange. After we met up with Imran and his cousin we hung out at the House for a few hours and then headed back to the hotel around 2am.

Yesterday Jarrod went to see his cousin and Nicole went to the Island to see some of her friends for the day. Shannon, Corey, Dana and I stayed around the hotel and watched some Snowboard Cross. Once the other two got back to the hotel we left for downtown to meet up with Dave Bedford at the Canada house. The Canada house is different from most of the other Houses in the city. The Canada house is a VIP house where most Canadian athletes will go after they win a medal to do interviews and such. It is on the 6th floor of a Bay store. Lawren and Sean also met us there with a few of their friends and after chatting with Dave for a few hours and sampling the open bar we left around 11.

Today we are going to watch the Mens hockey game at a bar downtown. We are talking about the possibility of going to Whistler for the night but we aren't sure about the logistics.

As I'm writing this we just won our second gold - Snowboard Cross!!! We're looking into getting medal ceremony tickets! Tomorrow curling!

I will try to post a longer one tomorrow when I have more time. Hope everyone is enjoying their Reading Week or Work Week, depending.

Heart of Gold

Well, we did it. This city is going nuts right now after winning our first Gold medal on home soil. Congrats goes out to Alexandre Bilodeau capturing gold in mens moguls. So glad to finally break the ice; all of the dedication and hard work by the athletes has paid off. Heres to hoping it is only the start of a snowball affect. We watched some of the speed skating events in the Vogue theatre on a huge screen. The theatre was packed and the atmosphere was amazing when Groves won the Bronze.

As I'm sure you can imagine, now that we have arrived these blog posts will be less frequent - less frequent posts only means that we are having an amazing time and are too busy to write.

Last night we headed downtown Vancouver and to the Ontario House where we met up with fellow SPAD kids Imran Gill and Sean and Lawren Carroll. The place was very busy but worth waiting in a the Vancouver rain in line. Famous blues band Down Child played and were amazing. The lead singer fell in love with the girls - or maybe vice versa I'm really not sure. Dana wants everyone to know that she got a kiss on the hand. After drinking more than a few Ontario beer we left to explore other places around the area. The Quebec house had some Cirque de Sole acrobats, poutine, and very expensive beer. The Carrolls were staying on the other side of town so we split up for the night and we went for a walk down Granville to explore. I met up with my first cousin from Los Angeles, Julia who goes to UBC. Great to see her and we will probably meet up again this week before she goes to LA for reading week. We saw some amazing late night "buskers", including an amazing freestyle rapper who talked about everyone in the crowd and then sang Just a Friend by Bizmarkie. The downtown core was crazy, everyone singing "Oh, Canada", yelling GO CANADA GO, and just generally being loud, patriotic, and crazy.

The skytrain is a bit confusing here and we end up buying way more tickets than necessary - I think Corey ended up with 8 tickets just from the one night. I think maybe he was worried he might come up short.

We left downtown around midnight as we were all very wiped and still getting used to the time difference. Today we woke up around 9 and went down to the Cucumber Cafe in the hotel for breakfast. Then headed back down to Granville road to see what we didn't see at night - it was a beautiful day out; probably about 10 degrees outside. We saw street performers(Basketball Jones, Unicyclers), zip-liners going over the city, crazy people in full red body suits - just so many people. We walked so much today and we are all dusted right now and have no energy but we all know its a once in a lifetime experience so were going to suck it up.

Tonight we had a very romantic Valentines dinner at a local restaurant to start the night. We are back at the hotel now and we're going to go to the Richmond Ozone and the Heineken House to meet up with Imran and a few others.

Tomorrow Jarrod is going to meet up with his cousin and Nicole is going to the Island to meet a friend. Shanno, Corey, Dana and I are probably going to try to watch Canada's hockey practice in the afternoon. David Bedford of the COC is going to take us to the Canada House tomorrow night - look it up online. Should be an amazing night.

Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream

It has finally arrived.

Were here at the Sandman Signature Hotel in Richmond, BC. Probably the nicest hotel in Richmond. We all felt kind of out of place among the people coming and going from the Hotel. Lots of Olympic workers coming in and out and lots of high class looking people. Thanks to David Bedford from the COC for hooking us up with this amazing hotel. There's a pool, waterslide, Steve Nash Gym, Tennis Bubble, and about 3 fancy restaurants.

Last night we spent the night with my mom's friend from Sudbury, Debbie in Coquitlam. SIDE NOTE: Coquitlam seems to be Canada's version of San Francisco - so many little hills and houses that are built on the edges of these hills. HUGE thanks go out to her for the amazing hospitality. We arrived around 9pm, within 5 minutes she had cold Kokanee for us. Within half an hour she had the most amazing food spread ever. Wings, pizza, nachos, pecan pie, ice cream - just an amazing host; we cannot thank her enough for not only letting us spend the night but also for the amazing food and company. While we ate, we watched a time-shifted broadcast of the Opening Ceremonies. They were extremely moving and we all sat and watched in amazement. Made us all very, very proud to be Canadian. Since were three hours behind Ontario, we were all tired by midnight and went to bed soon after the ceremony was over. I woke up around 7:30 and was treated with a chorus of snores - we were all clearly exhausted after spending over 4000km and 60 hours since we left Sudbury. Once everyone was up and we all showered and found Dana's missing jeans, we were treated to, again, an amazing breakfast. Debbie made eggs and hashbrowns, we had bagels, cheese, yogurt, granola, and berries - again we cannot thank her enough. We ate and watched Mens Luge training run. Thanks again Debbie! See you on the way back, possibly.

After we said goodbye to Debbie and her son and daugther and found out that we couldn't check into the Hotel until 4 we decided to head to the mall to kill some time. We plugged the address into the GPS and we were off to the mall. Thanks to the amazing navigating team of J-Rod and Shanno we ended up at a mall comparable to the Rainbow Centre in Sudbury. After we walked around for a while and got Dana some new luggage, we decided that we were tired of the high quality stores and didn't want to be back in Sudbury. We quickly found the original mall we had been looking for and went in. The mall was extremely busy with many, many Olympic tourists. Oddly enough, the largest contingent in the mall were people from the Netherlands. Everywhere you looked you would see someone wearing Orange - either Richmond has a very high Dutch population or that people from the Netherlands are extremely loyal fans who traveled this far.

The guys split up with the girls and we went walking around for a bit, took some pictures of Olympic displays in the mall as well as looking at different merchandise (MukMuk - Cole Julien) and eventually ended up at a bar to watch Corey's favourite Olympic event - the Biatholon. After a couple drinks (each) we met back up with the girls who soon realized they would need to drive to the hotel. Upon arriving at the hotel we were all excited as we had finally made it to our home for the next 5 nights. It's very nice to have a home base where we can unload or bags and not have to worry so much.

Tonight I think we are meeting up with other SPAD students, Imran Gill and Sean and Lawren Carroll to go out in the City. It will be nice to hang out with some other SPAD students while 4000km away. We are all extremely excited to check out the city as we haven't been into Vancouver yet. Richmond is only about 20 minutes from Downtown Vancouver - think GTA for all those people from Ontario.

Right now we are switching back and forth from Canada routing Slovakia in Womens hockey 7-0 and Women's moguls and Jenn Heil. More stories to come tomorrow. BC is amazing, the hotel is amazing, this trip is just the most amazing.

Cold Beer On Friday Night

Driving to Vancouver > Flying to Vancouver without a doubt. Sorry guys, there's just no comparison. Words cannot describe what we saw today.

Three hours from Vancouver. Staying in Coquitlam tonight at Debbie's place.

The Rockies were amazing, it felt like every 5 minutes I was pointing something out and saying "wow". The massive slopes and snow covered evergreens were amazing. The drive from Banff to where we took the picture at Kicking Horse was fairly straight but as soon as I took over from Corey it seemed to just be winding mountain roads like something from a movie. Between Corey and I we took over 200 pictures in about 5 or 6 hours.

After driving for a few hours we stopped and mucked some subs from Subway in Revelstoke. After we stopped in Salmon River to get some "supplies" for our hotel room. The views were amazing. The rivers and lakes around this area reminded us all of Lord of The Rings - long and winding around huge mountains (but not statues unfortunately). So worth the 48 hours, 3835km we have traveled so far. Couldn't have picked a better group to experience this with - even though sometimes Dana's feet smell, we forgive her.

We've been talking to some people about the opening ceremonies (BILLY) and as most of you are witnessing they are supposedly extremely moving and are bringing people close to tears. So proud to be Canadian!!!!!!

Tonight we hope to go out to a pub or small bar around Debbies house and celebrate the end of the long trip. Debbie says she's got cold beer waiting for us - it will be a amazing after 48 hours in a car. All we need now is a little bit of chicken fried.

- In memory of Nodar Kumaritashvili, Georgian luger. RIP -

Group Pic in Kicking Horse Valley

Let's see how far we've come

Yep, they're definitely rocky.

We left Calgary this morning (huge thanks to Blonda for the amazing hospitality) and are heading to Coquitlam for the night. Currently driving through Canmore, Alberta and wow these mountains are big. No sign of Mike yet, but were keeping our eyes peeled.

Now were driving through Banff National Park. Moutains are only getting bigger and bigger. Banff seems like an amazing town. People seemed to be very nice. Definitely a tourist town, apparently its also very expensive and caters to the rich American tourists.

The views are spectacular and the air is fresh. It was around +5 when we were driving to Banff.

Our arrival time in Coquitlam is around 9 or 10 tonight. Coreys driving right now for another couple hours and then I will take over again.

Right now the Olympics are a second thought in most of our heads as we take in the amazing views around us. Tomorrow is Vancouver's turn, today we'll appreciate the drive. More to come after I drive. Oh and I hear they are having some sort of ceremony for our arrival tonight and lighting a torch so we can see our way into the city at night, that's nice of them.

Check out the SPAD Olympic blog: http://spadlu.wordpress.com