Vancouver--Day 4

Rain, rain, and more rain. It was quite possibly the ugliest day since we have been here. Cold and rainy all day. I dont think it ever stopped raining for even 10 minutes.

So we decided to get ourselves some candy and watch some events on TV...indoors. The candy here is not the usual names, but the familiar companies. All the candies below are made by Nestle, Hersheys, Cadbury, or Mars (all recognizable companies), but only the snickers bar has a recognizable name (and even that has the Canadian flag and a hockey puck on it). The snickers tastes the same, the Aero bar is a combo between a York peppermint patty and wafers, and the Cadbury Flake is like cardboard dipped in fudge (we threw half of it out). We have not eaten the other 3 yet....we'll get back to you on those.

Then we headed to our live event....Speed Skating. It had 3 final games; Men's 500m, Women's 1000m, and Men's 5000m relay. Technically we watched 9 events because they each had 2 semifinal races to determine who went to the finals.

The arena is very old, but decorated very cool for the Olympics. Even though we were only about 10 rows from the top, we didnt feel that far away because the venue isn't that large. We had Canadians in front of us, Americans behind us, Canadians on the left, and Dutch on the right.

We wanted to get there early to get through the security line early, so we got there 2 hours ahead. We were probably in the first 100 people to get into the arena...it was fantastic! The great thing about watching each race, is it is like a new event. Each player starts all over again and has just as good of a chance as their opponents. The whole "set of events" lasts 2 hours, and you basically have a new race every ten minutes. It is awesome!

Katherine Reutter (U.S.A) won the silver medal for the women's 1000m. It was a close race. She is one of just nine US athletes to win multiple medals in the winter olympics.

The U.S. Mens relay team won the bronze for the 5000m race. This is a gut-wrenching race because it lasts like 5 minutes (most races last less than 2), so this was an eternity. There are 5 teams that compete at this with 4 players each. This means there are 20 skaters on the ice at the same time. You constantly feel like there is going to be a crash between a bunch of them. Surprisingly, there were no crashes at this particular race.

ps.....our friend the Canadian body painter (from the curling event), he was at the speed skating tonight as well. Yes...covered in paint again. He did not have his "Marry Me" sign though. The best sign of the evening, however, goes to the Brits. It read "Skate Fast, Go Left". They are so smart.