I think I might have mentioned here before that Mandy and I have, through what luck I do not know, tickets to the Vancouver Winter Olympics coming up here in only a couple of months. Specifically, we’re going to the luge, an event to which neither of us have any particular connection, and which doesn’t present itself as an ideal spectator sport, considering that the sleds and their riders pass through a very limited field of view on the track at speeds approaching 90 miles per hour. But I’ve always like watching the luge events and the bids were correspondingly low for the tickets, so that’s what we got, and the point isn’t really so much the event itself as, hey, we’re going to the Olympics!
As anyone else with tickets, or ticket aspirations, already knows, getting the tickets is the smaller part of the battle to attend the games. The larger part is accomodations. Vancouver will be filled to the point of bursting with athletes, officials, spectators, and their families.
If you didn’t already know you were going, if you are among those who only got your tickets in the most recent lottery and have been beaten to the punch by everyone who got lucky a little bit earlier, you have a real challenge working out some place to stay at this point (disclaimer: I am not one of those people; we found out that we got our tickets months ago and I have only my own procrastination to blame and deserve no sympathy in this matter). This is the case even before you might try to take minor details such as budgets and travel dates into account… places to stay are just hard to find up there this February.
I knew that this would be the case, of course, as it has been at nearly every modern Olympic games, but I also figured we had an ace up our sleeve: accomodations that float. Vancouver has vast amounts of waterfront loaded with marinas and at least one pretty decent anchorage right in the middle of town. And how many other ticket-holders also happen to have boats?
Not that many, it seems, but enough to make things troublesome, perhaps.
Finding a reasonable slip at a marina is our first choice. We only plan to be in town about four or five days, making it a pretty affordable option if we can find an opening, even with inflated rates. We’ve had some oddly schizophrenic responses to our inquiries of availability, however. Some marinas we call cluck mildly, as if they are bored by silly, slow Americans calling so late in the day and tell us they have been booked up for months… don’t we know the Olympics are on, eh? Others don’t seem to realize the games are happening at all… it’s business as usual, the off-season, and regulars are probably going to be in their slips, there’s probably no room but leave your number and they’ll get back to you. We have a couple of vague, “Yeah, we think we have something open, let me call you back” answers hanging out there, but no one has actually called back. I can’t figure out if they are in the second group and don’t care about the money to be made, or if they are in the first, and don’t want to waste time on anyone not booking up for the full two weeks.
Because there is that second group, I still have some hopes of getting a slip, but I’m focusing more now on Plan B, anchoring out. Here, however, there is also some uncertainty. False Creek, the primary anchorage in downtown Vancouver, nicely protected and at the center of the city, also happens to be hosting on its shores the Olympic Village, where the athletes will stay. Needless to say, in the wake of Munich and Atlanta, this creates a security concern, and the latest word is that the Creek will be blocked off at the Cambie Street Bridge to all vessel traffic. That still leaves quite a lot of usable anchorage, but not the copious amounts I had recalled from prior visits. Also, the security situation there leaves the question of whether all traffic or anchorage may be prohibited as of some later date up in the air.
All this uncertainty has left me scheming and coming up with alternatives to such extent that I am now fully capable of getting down as far as “Plan F” without scratching uncomfortably for risky or unlikely alternatives. Still, I’m holding out some hope for Plans A (a slip in False Creek), B (anchoring in False Creek), or D (a slip in North Vancouver). Don’t ask what happened to Plan C.
While this degree of confusion over the final plans would normally leave me something of a nervous wreck, I am actually having a little fun this time around. It has forced me to look harder and see that there really are a lot of options. Having to work through them and consider how we can still get to our event and have a berth to sleep in the same night is giving me additional confidence that the whole trip is going to be exciting and memorable.
Of course, it could get a little too exciting; we have two notoriously rough straits to cross at a dodgy time of year. But I trust too that I have built enough time into our plans to make the crossings during what weather windows may be available. Even if not, if we somehow get stuck in the Gulf Islands somewhere, if it’s cold and blowing crazy, at least we’ll have tried it… and anyway, I can probably scalp the tickets for twice what I paid for them!