On Pins and Needles

Hello all. Greetings from rainy Vancouver. This morning, we made our way on the super-sleek skytrain to the Waterfront where all the action is. There are thousands of people all dressed in the red Canada clothing -- it's really incredible to see. We visited the Olympic Cauldron in the rain - I will attempt to upload photos a little later this evening.

There are visitors and tourists, athletes and media people from all over. In a Tim Horton's, we bumped into American media personality Al Roker . He was easy to recognize as he had "Al Roker" written on his cellphone. (Why he was getting his own coffee I don't know)

We are now in the International Media Centre (actually UBC downtown Campus converted to computer rooms and wine tasting)where there are big screen TVs showing the latest events. Actually there are TVs all over (in shopping centres etc) playing the games all the time. It's like one big living room here. We are resting up for the semi-final hockety game between Canada and Slovakia. The USA has already secured a place in the gold medal game. We will be watching the game in the Molson Hockey House, a tent full of drunken, screaming fans dressed in red and white (or sometimes not dressed). It should be quite an event.

Perhaps you are aware of the phenomenon of pin collecting and trading. Apparently, there are fanatics who travel to the various Olympics all around the world (and to other sporting events) to collect, buy, sell and trade all kinds of pins. There are even clubs (on facebook and elsewhere) for people to discuss their collections. All along the streets here, you see people wearing anywhere from a dozen to hundreds of pins. I even met the "king of the pins" and did a video interview of him. I will try to upload that later (am unable to do that here at the IBC); I traded my 3M Olympic pin for several rare (I hope) Soviet-era pins. I will try to photograph them and upload them later as well.

Well, that's all for now. If I am in any shape to do so, I will send photos and videos after the hockey game.

More later.