Day 12 - Happy Birthday Kaia!

Early shift again today.

Today I was posted to Team Dining which is a really great post I have now learned. At this job you rotate between three positions.

First position is in the bag check area. When the athletes enter the dining hall they are not allowed to bring their backpacks, skis, snowboards etc with them as the hall gets crowded and they want to maximize space. The one exception I have learned are speed skaters skates. Apparently they are very superstitious about their speed skates so they are allowed to take those into the hall with them. Not to mention the fact that they are custom moulded to their feet and probably cost a lot of money and if they lose them they are done for the olympics as you cant simply run down to Sportcheck and grab a pair of Bauer Supertacks off the shelf and set a world record at the Richmond Oval!!!

So it is fun at the bag check area as in the morning a lot of athletes are up early to have breakfast then catch their buses to their specific venues. All we do at the job is we have these carribeaners (sp?) that each have a matching number on them. You click one of the carribeaners onto the bag and give the other to the athlete then shelve the bag on the metal racks behind us by the corresponding number. When the athlete returns he/she gives you the tag you and find the bag and take off the carribeaner, clip the two carribeaners back together and wait for the next person to help. We stayed really busy for about 2 hours with 5 of us running back and forth.

Next posting was into the dining hall with a click click counter in my hand. All I had to do was stand and smile and everytime a person walked through the door to eat breakfast I clicked the counter and made sure my count corresponded with the food services person's count. I also had to watch that people didnt leave the hall with food (other than fruit or packaged stuff) as the athletes arent allowed to take food back to their rooms because they dont have refrigerators in their rooms and the IOC is worried about food poisoning. I honestly dont know who would want to take a Big Mac back to their room and then eat it 4 days later!!

Third posting was just to stand outside and as the athletes approach you ask them to flash their accreditation to see that they have a fork and knife symbol beside their name which means they are entitled to eat at the dining hall.

So it was a really fun job for the morning but unfortunately there were so many of us blue jackets around today that when I came back from my break at 11am there was no job for me to do so I volunteered to go home a little early.

I actually took the opportunity to head over to the event ticketing office located inside the village. This is where the athletes pick up their comp tickets and buy family tickets for their events. As volunteers we can access this ticketing office too and have access to event tickets on a list called 'obstructed view' seats which are seats that may be close to the boards or close to TV cameras but are still good seats and they are slightly discounted.

I really want to try to see some event(s) but I cant afford to pay $400 for a figure skating ticket! Today on a hand written piece of paper beside the ticket availability list was a list of curling tickets for sale from a Swiss curler who purchased the tickets for family members but no longer needs them. There are some tickets for Canada vs China womens curling on Sunday that I have requested so I am waiting for a text message from the Swiss athlete to see if I can still buy them. The nice ticket selling lady is helping me to secure them. They are affordable at face value $65 each. I think that China will be Canada's stiffest competition for Womens Curling so this should be a pretty good draw to try and see. I'm keeping my fingers crossed but now that I know how/where to find tickets I will keep checking every morning as apparently VANOC releases tickets every day for events as sponsors decline tickets or they release some reserved seats for VIPs or guests.

So I have come home a couple hours early and hope to catch a 1/2 hour snooze before calling Kaia and wishing my little girl a very happy 9th birthday. I wish I was home today to celebrate with her but we'll celebrate in a couple weeks when we head to Mexico.

Happy Birthday Beanzo! - Love Daddy