#VancouvIgnorance

To say that I should have done this sooner would be an enormous understatement. You could also say that writing this 11 months after it actually happened means that I’m living in the past. At times, I am and I won’t deny it.

BUT, since it was one of my favorite memories of 2012, it most definitely deserves a recap. After all, I want to remember this when I’m old. I also promised Jackie that I would write this forever ago and I haven’t yet so this is definitely overdue.

This little jaunt to Vancouver was created as a supplement to our graduate education at good old Ithaca College and probably the best class I took for various reasons. We met cool people, went to fun places, learned valuable lessons, did once-in-lifetime things and did minimal school work. I think there were 12 of us total – mostly graduate students, but we allowed three super lucky, very privileged undergrads to join us and I know for a fact that they are still suffering from our corruption. Here are the grads ...

and the undergrads ...

As part of the education piece, we met with a lot of Olympic personnel, a few Vancouver Canucks Executives, the CEO of the Vancouver Whitecaps and a few others for informational interview sessions. It was super fun connecting with them and hearing stories about events I had watched on television. I am actually still in contact with a few of them which is super cool.

We went to a Vancouver Canucks game and it was such a different experience than watching NHL in the U.S. The fans were crazy attentive to the game and didn’t really take the loss to well. Being a Bruins fan I was obviously fine with it. Here are all the girls during the game:

While in BC, we also gave our best effort at a few Winter Olympic sports. When in Rome, right? First we learned curling which is much more difficult than it looks and a whole lot of fun! Here I am on my first, very shaky attempt at it:

Once we arrived at Whistler, we literally sped to the skeleton place. (At least the lead van did.) I did not partake in the actual skeletoning, but thoroughly enjoyed watching my peers go 50+ mph face-first down a sheet of ice with Liberty and Kyle.

The next day at Whistler we tried biathlon – a combination of cross country skiing and rifle shooting. It was the first time Daan and I shot guns so that in itself was super exciting! The cross country skiing left something to be desired though, I fell my share of times, as did Tony (look at him in this picture, he is covered in snow). Haha.

That pretty much summed up the scheduled portion of our trip. It snowed about four inches in Seattle and our flight home got delayed for over 36 hours. Here we are entertaining ourselves in SeaTac.

So, we booked a couple hotel rooms and made the best of it. The following day just so happened to be both Kyle and Tony’s birthday, so Sam and I went to the weirdest grocery store I think I have ever been in and threw the guys a nice little birthday celebration.

A few plane rides later we made it home, took the best showers of our lives and began our final semester of grad school ... 

Oh and you know those valuable lessons I mentioned? Well just to name a few: Always wear appropriate clothing when you are consuming adult beverages with college kids (that’s for you, nice couple we met at the airport). Don’t get in a car when your super-triathlete-Canadian-easily-distracted professor is behind the wheel. The correct way to ‘hohoho’ and when it’s best applicable … all day, every day.

This was legitimately one of my favorite memories of grad school and the most fun 10 days I’ve had to date. I made new friends, got so much closer with some others and got to explore some of the Northwest. This post doesn’t really do it justice, but thankfully Sam and I took a combined 800 pictures while we were there. Easily a top moment of 2012.

Happy now, Jackie?