The Jetpacker

So… we didn’t get lost on the way to the Great White North (thank you, inventor of GPS).  We didn’t get detained at the border.  And, no, we weren’t asked to replace the losing Team USA Curling team.

Instead, we’ve been without Internet access after being deceived by a very un-Canadian woman.  Here’s what happened…

Everything at the Olympics is exorbitantly priced, especially the accommodations.  Most hotels were sold out years in advance, so people like us had to resort to Craigslist to find an apartment rental.  (Yes, there’s more to Craigslist than just the “casual encounters” section.)

Originally we were scheduled to arrive in Vancouver on the 19th, but at the last minute, we changed plans to arrive in Canada two days earlier in order to attend a Team USA hockey game and experience more of the city during the Olympics.  So we needed a place for two nights.

We ended up finding this place a few miles outside of downtown that was reasonably priced and was described as including internet and parking and all the furnishings you’d expect from a hotel.

The listing said the room included internet.  It didn’t.  So she told us to bum off an unlocked signal from someone in the building.  Even if we wanted to (which we didn’t), they were all locked.

Then we found out we didn’t have a reserved parking spot, rather we had to park in a 2-hour zone that supposedly isn’t checked by parking enforcement.  Next morning, we saw tickets on cars and security patrolling the neighborhood.  Luckily we escaped.

When we entered the barely furnished room (broken futon, old TV with sound that drops out, Ikea lamp in the corner), it appeared as if a garage band had just vacated.  The floor was dirty, half the lights didn’t work, and the sheets didn’t look or smell particularly clean.

The landlord even said she was working her normal full-time job plus bartending at a pavilion downtown for the Olympics so she didn’t have time to fully prepare the room.

I want to paint a nicer picture because the apartment itself is pretty cool: wood floors, great view from the tenth floor, massive windows, plenty of space.  Had this apartment been well cared for, it would be a great place.

Anyway, long story short, that’s why we’ve been M.I.A.  Because, even though we scoured Craigslist to find accommodations with Internet, and even double-checked with the landlord prior to arriving, she deceived us.  As it is now, we’re posting this from a Vancouver Public Library.

Outside of the room debacle, everything in Canada has been absolutely wonderful.

We’re not used to this kind of attention and overt niceness.

We somewhat expected treatment akin to what a Red Sox fan would receive in New York.  USA versus Canada is a big rivalry, but it doesn’t feel that way… Canadians are actually playful about it.  In fact, they even seemed impressed that three Californians would drive that far to attend the Olympics.  It’s as if they feel honored that we’re visiting their country.

The Canadian sense of humor and hospitality emerged from the moment we crossed the border and didn’t let up during our first day in Canada.

After passing through the border patrol, we stopped at the British Columbia Visitors Center.  When they saw us brandishing our Anaheim Ducks gear, half the staff flocked to us and asked us about trip and what we planned to do at the Olympics.

We then took a few pictures at the Peace Arch and had to walk past security again.  After taking a few steps, a guard approached us and said, “Did they give you a hard time back there?”

“No, not at all, they were very nice.”

“Oh.  Because he just radioed me and said ‘get ‘em, they’re Ducks’.”

As big hockey fans, we often watch out-of-market feeds on Center Ice, and we always see commercials for a Canadian fast food chain called Tim Hortons.  I couldn’t wait to try it, so we rushed over to one of their eateries after tossing our bags into our room.

Here’s the great thing about Tim Hortons: when you order a sandwich, you choose a side dish of either soup, salad… or doughnut?  As a doughnut man myself, I couldn’t wait to get my mouth on a “Canada doughnut”– a regular doughnut with a sugar frosting and tiny red maple leaf candies sprinkled on top.

When we were done eating, a man and his wife sitting nearby us asked if we had traveled from Anaheim to the Games.  We wound up talking to this nice couple for 20 minutes about hockey, what to do at the Games, where to eat, things to buy, and why America is too stubborn to adopt the metric system like the rest of the world.  He even joked that when he and his wife travel to L.A., they often get asked, “Do you have Eskimos up in Vancouver?”

At one point he asked if we thought Canadians were arrogant.  We were totally confused by this question, but he said he heard a lot of complaints in the news from foreigners saying that all the Canadian imagery around town and the pro-Canada attitude reeked of cockiness.

Not at all!  It’s been great to see people walking around with Canada gear and all the Canada flags on cars and in windows.  The people of Canada are proud and we love that they express their pride.  It’s refreshing to see people support their country without adopting an attitude of superiority.

They don’t act like their country is better than the rest.  They don’t criticize fellow Canadians for being unpatriotic if they support non-Canadian athletes.  They don’t get offended when outsiders come into their country to support another nation.

In fact, they respect such enthusiasm and such pride.  They openly welcome it.

When we went to a mall called Metrotown to buy those insanely popular red mittens, which are incredibly hard to find by the way, we ventured into the Nike Store to buy some USA paraphernalia.

Again, much of the staff flocked to us, excited to talk hockey, impressed that we drove all the way from California to see the Winter Games.  They also said they often get asked if there are Eskimos in Vancouver.  “Eskimos?” one man said, “We don’t have Eskimos!  We don’t even have snow!  We have rain!”  Again, we ended up talking for a solid 20 minutes before heading over to ring up our purchases.

At the store counter, we saw these bags that were only being given away to people who made purchases of $150 or more, and even though we didn’t spend nearly that much, they still gave all three of us bags and wished us a great time at the Games.

Sure, they jostled us about supporting USA hockey in Canada.  But it was all in good fun.  They said we were the kind of people they would want to go to a bar with and watch a game.

They even joked that I now had credibility because I bought a t-shirt with the Canada logo.  I was looking for a double-XL shirt (hey, I’m 6’4″) and the guys started joking about how it must be shocking for us to go from massive hamburgers in the US to paper thin burgers in Canada.  They said everyone is so skinny in Vancouver because everyone eats green, so they don’t make shirt sizes larger than XL.

And randomly, we ran into a Kings fan in the Nike store.  We were all buying U.S. scarves and shirts, and when I mentioned to him that it looked like his team was going to make the playoffs instead of the Ducks, he said, “doesn’t that sound so freakin’ weird?”

As we walked through the mall, we found that every other store was packed with pro-Canada shirts, scarves, toys, hats… anything you can put a maple leaf on.  People walked through the halls in Canada hockey jerseys, sweatshirts, beanies.  Some people had their faces painted with a red maple leaf.

Golden ice skate at Swavorski inside Metrotown.

Every sports store had turned into an Olympic wardrobe warehouse.  The largest sections contained everything Canada, but there was still a significant amount of stuff from Russia, USA, Sweden, Finland and the Czech Republic.

In one particular sports store that featured mainly hockey collectibles, we noticed a gold Anaheim Ducks Christmas tree ornament.  When the guy at the counter saw that we were wearing Ducks hats, he gave it to us for free.  He said he had been trying to get rid of it for a while and the staff agreed that whenever they saw a Ducks fan, they would give it to them.  Sadly, that ornament had been sitting on the store’s counter since Christmas of 2008!

Last order of business for the day was trying to collect all eight Olympic mascot toys offered in McDonald’s Happy Meals.

The first place we went to only had the bobsledders.  But when we went to a second McDonald’s, we struck gold!

Initially the lady behind the counter said she only had a small assortment, but when we told her about our journey, she graciously clawed through boxes to see if she could find something different.

And what did she find?  The last four hockey toys in the entire store!  It was like winning the lottery.  We thought we’d never get our hands on those, especially in hockey-mad Canada.  I’m convinced they are the last ones in all of Canada.

Now we each have half of the entire set and we haven’t even been downtown yet.  Hopefully we can catch ‘em all before we go home.

Admittedly, we feel apprehensive about going downtown.  We blew a hefty sum of money on Olympic paraphernalia within the first few hours of being in Vancouver.  We’ll probably be paying off our credit card bill until the next time Vancouver hosts the Olympics.  Then we’ll be ready to do it all over again.