The International Olympic Committee has decided to hold the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver/Whistler BC. I’ve been to both places a few times and it will be a great show after the fix a few things. First, is the Road to Whistler, the Sea to Sky Highway.
The highway has more twists and turns than a Bill Clinton testimony under oath. Some of the turns are blind, 100 kph off-camber drop-away 90 degree corners where you have a choice of nail a 400 foot granite wall, or plummet 400 feet off the edge of the earth into the Pacific Ocean. By the way, that’s just after the level railroad crossing, next to the huge propane tanks, across the highway from the Down’s Syndrome Orphanage.
Tour busses, cars, trucks and vans fill the road day and night. Many of these vehicles are driven by skilled, professional drivers who make the 4 hour run up the Sea and Sky Highway every day. The rest are driven by the insane, the amphetamine crazed, the lame, the halt and those who just got off an airplane after a 16 hour flight, rented a big SUV, signed for the all-perils damage insurance and are now driving on a combination of adrenaline, jet lag, a venti-double caf, and all the skills they have developed piloting an oxcart in their home country. They are in your lane, by the way, trying to read the map and quiet the children.
Whistler itself is post-card pretty. The skiing is remarkable, world class in all respects. The village has other issues though. Whistler has a problem with accommodations. It is very common for those who work in support jobs, as cooks, servers, dishwashers or ski instructors, to live six to a room. A rudimentary three room apartment rents for $2,000 a month in low season and perhaps $3,000 a month in ski season. There are no places for people to live unless you make millions a year.
This will cut into the number of hookers who can work the Olympics, servicing the IOC and their assorted hangers-on, aides, spokespersons and liaison officers. The Vancouver Olympic Committee will have to address the accommodation issue. And please, do something about the cost of simple cup of coffee? $11.00 is a bit much.
Vancouver, being a big destination city probably has enough hotel rooms to handle the onslaught. Much of Vancouver’s seedier areas were rehabilitated for Expo86 and are now home to leaky, unrepairable, overpriced condos, constructed on landfill and toxic waste dumps from the bad old days.
There are, let’s call them what they are, tenderloin areas left. As best I can understand, the 14-year old crack whores are looking forward to the Olympics coming to Vancouver, as they can then be 21-year old heroin whores servicing the visitors. Assuming they live through the next month or two without being killed by their pimp, or invited to a pig farm party by a serial killer, the next crop of service sector people are ready.
Gift shops? There are too many to count. Traffic in Vancouver has always been screwed up, so the application of the Olympics shouldn’t really matter. Expect endless globs of confused people rambling around on Robson Street day and night. Sort of like today, only more of them.
The airport, finally, has been fixed. Vancouver International used to be a 1963 vintage shithole with airplanes. It is now actually very well designed and very attractive. Considering the number of Vancouver Airport Improvement Fees I’ve paid, you owe me a “Thanks Dave”. Enjoy my airport.
The rest of the city will be fine, as long as there isn’t an earthquake or another eruption of any of the dormant volcanoes in the area. The Olympics in Vancouver? Sounds like a fun time for me!
RoadDave 