Visited Vancouver in 1986 on a 2 week break from an overseas assignment in mainland China. For tax purposes one could only be stateside 35 days in a calendar year to maintain tax exempt status. With a girlfriend in Texas we had to try and limit my trips home on breaks in order to maximize the benefit. One idea that worked was that I would fly from Bejing to Seattle, meet her there, and we'd duck into Canada. It was right in the middle of Canada hosting Expo '86. One highlight was seeing Kenny Loggins perform the mainstage there. I felt like I was home. It was one of the most beautiful cities and scenery I had ever seen. We spent 10 days touring Canada from Vancouver to Banff and back. Gorgeous!
There's good news and bads news coming next. The good news is Philadelphia will get the next Winter Olympics. Not really, but you get the idea what we're dealing with here in terms of snow and cold. The bad news is that besides it seeming to be an oddly warm time in Vancouver for the Winter Games I heard they were postponing the Downhill Skiing events today because of too much rain up there. On a truly sad and somewhat shameful note there's the tragedy on the men's luge where an athlete lost his life almost instantly in a crash on Friday. The talk is that the track in all it's high tech glory is simply too fast for the event. Canada has so much riding on gettting the Winter Games right it's really kind of sad to see the games have this shadow hanging over them from the start. Here's more on the story from news reports on the scene.
Fast Track Tragedy: Shame on Olympics
Opening ceremony starts in a few minutes. I'm psyched....and content to be looking at snow from inside a warm house! 