Rich Roszel

With apologies to the late author Douglas Adams for my title to this post, here is an introductory glance at life in Whistler and around the Sliding Center compound.

Whistler, British Columbia, is a beautiful alpine village at the base of Whistler and Blackcomb Mountains. It’s a ski resort and snowboarder’s paradise. Having said that, Whistler is not for the faint of heart nor the faint of bank account. It’s extremely expensive to live here. Many of the locals I’ve talked to work two of three jobs — many of them connected to the slopes — so they can play hard on the slopes on their one or two days off.

I have no idea what rent is here, but a room at my hotel (any other year) is about $350/night. During the Olympics, my room costs over $800/night.   Apparently, this is what the lap of luxury looks like:

Now, I’ll admit that this is a nice room. Don’t get me wrong. No complaints here. But I’ve stayed in plenty of hotels with rooms this nice and the price is usually closer to $80.00 than $800.00. Probably just a typo, don’tcha know.  Unfortunately, this town lives on typos.  Dinner this evening consisted of a MasterCard commercial (with apologies to Visa - the official card of the Olympics):

Tuna-Melt Sandwich:  $13.95.

Diet Coke:  $2.75.

Canadian Taxes:  $73.14

Knowing that your Per Diem won’t cover this:  Priceless.

And I hear that the town of Whistler is bankrupt and facing foreclosure.  Not sure what that’s going to mean to the Olympics.  Perhaps I’ll be coming home sooner than expected :-).  Meanwhile, back to the tour.

Whistler is a family friendly town.  I love seeing the kids in the snow.  Even at the venue, there are little kids finding ways to have fun sliding down mini slopes they’ve made.  My friends, Dave, Glenn and I had dinner at The Spaghetti Factory the other night and sitting at the table next to us was a snow family like the one at left.  The youngest member looked to be about 10 years old and he had a cast on his leg. 
I asked how it had happened and he said it was a skiing accident.  Nonetheless, he was laughing and playing and full of energy — not the least bit down about having to be on crutches during the family vacation.  Turns out he is also a Pin Collector — a young man after my own heart.

A lot of companies, teams, and organizations tied to the Olympics have pins. They either give them away as a promotional item, or they sell them as a collectors item. Well, as was the case with everything from Beanie Babies to Pet Rocks, a sub-culture has developed of which I am a proud member. A lot of pin collectors working at the games wear their pins on their accreditation lanyards. This makes the pins visible to other collectors. It also creates two problems. First, you rattle when you walk. Second, after a while you weight several pounds more than you used to and you stoop a little.  Nonetheless, when one collector finds another, we always compare collections and try to find pins we can trade.  It’s part of the game.

I should point out here that I did not buy all these pins. There are lots of shops in town that sell them, including the Whistler Trading Post, home of my favorite moose. However, some of the merchants have pins that they give out for free courtesy of Visa and Coca-Cola. I’ve made it a point to locate these stores and become friends with the cashiers. They’ve been known to be extra generous with their flair and that feeds my hobby for free. My friend, Ed, overheard one of my conversations with another collector while I was trading pins and he said I would have a great future as a crack dealer. Maybe I’ve been doing this a little too long.

One reason many of us on the crew trade pins is that life here can get a little mundane after awhile. No offense to the sports of bobsled, luge and skeleton, but after you’ve seen the practice runs and twenty or thirty races, they all start looking the same. At least in figure skating, you get to see some individuality in the performances. Here, the only thing that mixes things up a little is a wreck and we had one too many of those before we even got started.

To help pass our time, some in our midst have taken up sculpting. Note Exhibit A. This was made by a member of our security team right in front of my building. The red circle in the picture indicates where I work.

Speaking of our security team, many of them have to stand for hours.  One guy, whose post is at an underpass, carved out a sofa in the snow so he’d have a place to sit.  (Thank goodness for ski bibs.  I didn’t have my camera with me or I would have gotten a picture.  He was really getting into his snow furniture, though.  I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a dining room suite and a flat screen TV made by morning.

A final observation for this post regards the spiritual climate in Whistler.  Everyone is very nice here and, yes, the spirits flow freely.  I was almost dragged into a drunken snowboarder wrestling match a dinner the other night.  However, there are no apparent signs of churches or other places of worship in the Village.  I haven’t checked the phone book.  In fact, there isn’t one in my $800/night room.  But I did look in the hotel directory.  In my travels in the past, hotels often list local places to worship.  Not so in Whistler.  In the southern United States, you’ll see signs in towns saying “The First United Methodist Church Welcomes You.”  Not so in Whistler.
The only sign I’ve seen of anything involving the spiritual or supernatural was at a storefront in the village offering psychic readings, etc.  On a positive note, though, I was walking past a tent at the broadcast compound several days ago and heard someone playing the guitar and several people singing.  It took me a minute to recognize it because they weren’t singing in English, but it was a praise song from my church.  I wish I hadn’t been working at the time.  I would have joined them in the tent.  Nonetheless, I sang along to myself and to God as I walked up the course to install more cables.

– Rich