Dylan in Kelowna

Hi to all of Dylan's loyal readers:

He is currently at Big White Ski resort in Kelowna. He does not have easy access to a computer so I am posting this message to inform you he has not snowboarded off a cliff. Thanks for commenting on the blog, I think everyone has enjoyed following Dylan's trip, and he has done an excellent job of keeping us informed. He will try to make a new post soon, although it may need to wait until he is home on Thursday. He has informed us he has many more pictures to share.

He inadvertately put up some kind of filter so your most recent comments needed to be cleared by the author before they were posted. I confirmed all comments and they should now be up for Dylan to read.

Thanks for enriching Dylan's Olympic experience with your words of encouragement and supportive messages.

Parker

BIG WHITE SKI RESORT

Feb. 18 (Pt. 2 ): The Medal Ceremony

Jacob Hoggard playing the piano during the song " For The Nights I Can Remember".

Jacob Hoggard, lead singer (white T-shirt), Dave Rosin, lead guitar (far end of the stage), and Tommy Mac on bass who is closest to in the picture. There is also Chris Crippin who plays drums but I was not able to get him in the picture.

Shaun White (gold medalist), the Finnish boarder Peetu Piiroinen (silver medalist) and Scotty Lago the bronze medalist walking up to the podium for their medals.

Christine Nesbitt impatiently waiting for her gold medal. Beside her is Annette Gerritsen who placed second and Lauren van Riessen who got bronze.

The medal ceremony is one of the greatest moments of my Olympic Trip. Hearing Oh Canada play in a stadium that is jam packed with these Canadians and everyone is singing the National Anthem of our country made me proud to be there and proud to be Canadian. Seeing the gold medal being presented to a Canadian on home soil is something I will probably never get to experience ever again. I've got a video of Christine Nesbitt's medal presentation that I will try to put up later because it is not working right now. I've got pictures though! After the medals were presented, there was a concert afterwards and Hedley was playing. When you're about 100 feet up from the presentation and about 200 feet away from it, it was quite hard to take a good picture but I tried.

Feb. 18 (Pt. 1): Curling

The Norwegians were wearing one of the funniest uniforms I've ever seen!

Team Canada and Team Sweden shaking hands after their match.

The Dutch team minus 1...

The Swedes sweeping thier rocks into the house.

The Canadian vice John Morris throwing his rock.

On the morning of the 18th at 9 a.m. I went to watch a match of curling. Canada won 7-3 over the Swedes! The good thing about the curling match is that the crowd is so animated so every time Canada would do something good the crowd would go nuts! Another good thing about the curling is that there is more than one match at a time, 4 actually. The other games were Denmark and U.S.A. which went into extra ends Denmark won by a point 7-6. There was a Norway- Germany game and Norway won 7-4 and last but not least Great Britain and Switzerland played and Switzerland won that one 4-3. In the row behind us, there were some passionate G.B. fans (well all G.B. fans are passionate because curling is such a big thing there, the Brits are good at it) who were cheering (singing) these really long cheers and that made are experience more enthusiastic.



Sorry for falling behind in my blog (got busy again and had some technical dificulties.

Feb. 17 (Pt. 2) : Whistler Sliding Center

A video of the mountains going up to Whistler.

Me in front of turn 9 of the luge track.

The Canadian luge doubles team flying down the course.

The Russian luge doubles team at the very beginning of their first run.

The gondola taking you from Whistler Village to the Whistler Sliding Center. The line up for this thing was huge!!!

A view of the Horseshoe Bay. This is on the way to Whistler.

The trip up to Whistler was amazing, such a nice view! The luge was really exciting. The announcer described this sport perfectly, "two big men going down a tube of ice on a lunch tray going 135 km/h". Pretty much close to impossible to take a picture of them.

Feb. 17 (Pt.1) : Back Downtown

Mmm... smokies...

Where's Dylan? This is the Canada Place on the waterfront. 

These are just a few of the many statues of the eagles downtown Vancouver. (the kid beside me is just another person taking a picture. It is not someone I know). 

Looking out on the waterfront of the Burrard Inlet. 

On the 17th, we went back downtown to pick up the luge tickets and go to the waterfront. The Burrard Inlet separating the City of Vancouver and the City of North Vancouver. Lots of cargo ships and cruise ships pass through the inlet. Guess what... more pictures!

Feb. 16: The Hockey Game

On the left, #88 Patrick Kane. In the middle, #9 Zach Parise and finally #15 Phil Kessel.

Players shaking hands after the game.

Not the best pictures but OUCH!!! 

Ryan Miller, goalie for Team USA.

Patrick Kane of the Team USA .

The hockey game at the GM Place was awesome! The United States defeated Switzerland 3-1 which was a much better game than I anticipated. I saw lots of N.H.L. stars like Jonas Miller (Swiss goalie), and Patrick Kane, Phil Kessel and all the others. Here are the pictures.

Feb 14 & 15: Downtown Vancouver

Me waiting for the Sky Train at Marine Drive Staion. 

The Olympic Cauldron on the Burrard Inlet waterfront. There was a fence around the cauldron that made everybody quite disappointed but today I heard that they are taking the fence down which made everybody happy.  

This flag is an amazing feat that is situated on Georgia Street south of the celebration zone, Robson Square.

Center ice in Vancouver ( G.M. Place, downtown Vancouver) 

This is are all pop cases that were stacked to make the Olympic rings at a grocery store.

Here are some pictures from downtown Vancouver. The hockey game was great, U.S.A. won 3-1 over Switzerland. I will post some pictures of that later. Post a lot of comments I like to here from you guys 

Snowboard Cross

Yesterday, we found out that our snowboard cross tickets got cancelled because the standing area (where I had tickets) got blocked off because the area was unsafe. That was a huge disappointment. On the bright side, I got some luge tickets ( mens doubles) up at Whistler. I'll put up some pictures later.

Feb. 13: Surrey

Cheeeeese!

 ( I don't know why this horse was doing this to me?)

These are the Lion Dancers.

Yesterday, I went to Surrey to a celebration site there. That's where the RCMP was holding their Musical Ride. It was also chinese day there. The Musical Ride is a horse show. Here are some pictures. 

Feb. 12: Live City

5.

4.  This is a projector that plays videos on a huge tent. this tent is a Coca-Cola museum.

3. 

2. This is the big screen (there's two of them and a stage in the middle for other events) at Live City

1. This lineup was almost 3 blocks long and we had to wait 1 hour and a half to get in.

Happy Valentine's Day! It's so hard to keep the blog up to date because I'm so busy. Here's some pictures of Live City from Friday. I bet everybody has herd of Nodar Kumaritasvili's death on a practice run on the luge course. Of course this a tragic and horrible Olympic event but I think that the IOC over-reacted a bit by bringing the mens starting area lower because it really was a freak accident.     

Yesterday, I went to a big celebration zone called Live City. After waiting in line for almost an hour and a half, we finally got in. Once in, there was a huge T.V. screen was playing the opening ceremony. I will post some pictures later.

Feb. 10 & 11: Bellingham

7. One of the best views of Bellingham, Washington.

6. The second house I ever lived in.

5. A waterfront park on the Bellingham Bay (lots of crab).

4. The best fast food restaurant in the world, Jack In The Box.

3. The inactive Georgia Pacific Pulp Mill where my Dad used to work but it shut down. It will be torn down and turned into a waterfront park. 

2. The first house I ever lived in (it's still got the blue window). 

1. The shores of the Nooksack River (where we went to look for the bald eagles).

Finished my trip in Bellingham and now I am in Vancouver. Here are some pictures. 

I'm Here!

I arrived in Vancouver yesterday and now I am in Bellingham, Washington to visit the city and my grandma. The flight was on time and everything went well. I went to the Nooksack River to spot some eagles feeding on salmon. Unfortunately, there were no salmon. Me and my grandma were very disappointed. I will post some pictures and videos later. I'm heading out to Vancouver tomorrow morning and watch the opening ceremonies tomorrow night.

Dylan,

PS: Sushi tastes awful.

Tommorow, I'm leaving for Toronto and I'm sleeping there because my flight is early in the morning. Toronto is always a fun place to be! For those who don't live around here, the picture in the right corner is the CN Tower, that round dome beside it is the Rogers Center, a multiple sports stadium (baseball and baseball).

Less than 3 days left!

While I'm gone to the Olympics, I will be attending a hockey game at the B.C. Place in Vancouver. It will be U.S.A. versus Switzerland. The american has a number of N.H.L. stars and the Swiss have a few also. The americans have players like Mike Komisarek, Ron Haisney and Ryan Sutter, Patrick Kane, Chris Drury, Phil Kessel, Ryan Kessler, Zach Parise and Mike Modano etc. The goalie for the americans is Ryan Miller and the backup is Jonathan Quick.

The Swiss only have two N.H.L. players who are Jonas Miller who is the swiss backup goaltender and Mark Streit who is one of the defensman, but the starting goalie, Martin Gerber has been successful in the N.H.L. but now plays in the K.H.L. wich is a professional hockey league in Russia.

This game will happen on Ferbruary 16th at 12 o'clock (noon). The picture in the top right corner is Ryan Miller, the N.H.L. star goalie and the starting goalie for team U.S.A. in the 2010 Olympics.

Ceci est un video de moi entrain de tomber en planche a neige a Horshoe Ski Resort a Orillia.

Big White Ski Resort

On February 22nd and 23rd, I will be staying at the second largest ski resort in Canada situated in Kelowna, Big White. Here are the main reasons why this place is so great.

Reason #1: The slogan of Big White is "It's The Snow" because of the amazing snow that they get there. They get up to 750 cm of snow every year!

Reason #2: The second reason why Big White is such an awesome resort is because you get your private hot tub to relax in.

Reason #3: In Kelowna, the temperature is perfect to snowboard with a daytime winter average temperature of -5 celsius.

Reason #4: At Big White, the ski resort is huge! It has 118 runs, 5 alpine bowls, and a big terrain park (Telus Park). This resort is way better than the ski hill that I normally snowboard . It only has about 5 runs.

Reason #5: The 5th reason why Big White is a great resort is because of it's short lineups for lifts. They have 16 lifts that can hold up to 28 000 skiers/snowboarders.

Reason #6: Big White isn't just a place to ski or snowboard, there is a huge outdoor skating rink, a tubing park, a village (this resort has a mini town).

I have been snowboarding for several years now so this will be quite an experience for me. The picture in the top right corner is me getting ready to do a run at Horseshoe Ski Resort In Orillia.

Warning: My blog will have some French writing in it for those who struggle reading French.