The Jetpacker

We’re fans of sports and travel.  The Olympics is the nexus of both.  By bringing the world together through athletic competition, we get to experience everything we would via travel.

We discover more about the people, places and cultures of our planet.  We learn about how similar we are through our differences.  And when the world becomes smaller, we realize just how big it really is.

That’s why we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.  It’s the best of both worlds — sports and travel — and it’s within driving range.

When we announced our road trip a couple of weeks ago, we knew what cities we wanted to visit along the way, but we didn’t have a concrete itinerary.  Now everything’s pretty much locked down.

Our itinerary is still fluid depending on weather and how often we fall into a food coma.  So go buy a package of Slim Jims, hang a “New Car” scent Christmas Tree from your computer monitor and put some road trip music on your iPod because you’re coming along for the ride.  Here’s where we’re going and what we’re doing:

February 12th – 15th | San Francisco, CA

The 7-hour drive from Orange County to the Bay Area should end just in time to watch the Opening Ceremonies from any restaurant that will serve us hot soup in a sourdough bread bowl.  If the torrential rain turns San Francisco’s steep hills into a water ride, we’ll forgo the cable car in favor of inner-tubing down Telegraph Hill, past the Transamerica pyramid building and across the Golden Gate Bridge.

February 15th | Eugene, OR

The drive from San Francisco to Seattle is too long to do straight through, so we’ll be stopping in Eugene.  It looks like the only city in Oregon (besides Portland) that doesn’t feature motels that look like something out of the movie “Psycho” or “Vacancy”.  On the long drive, we’ll occupy ourselves with games of “guess that road kill,” dirty Mad Libs, and name-that-crappy-’80′s-song-in-three-seconds-or-less.  The answer will always be “I Wear My Sunglasses At Night”.

February 16th | Seattle, WA

A day should be enough to catch a flying fish at the Pike Place Market, take a ride up the Space Needle and try some coffee.  To avoid the cold, we’ll probably spend as much on hot chocolates at the original Starbucks as we did on our hotel room.

February 17th – 24th | Vancouver, British Columbia

Ah, the filet of our trip… the main course!  Not only we will be going to THREE hockey games (USA vs. Norway on the 18th — can you say insta-win? — Finland vs. Germany on the 19th and a playoff game on the 23rd), we’ll check out the Ice Art World Championship, the parties at Heineken House, the national houses, the pin trading zones (it’s like Comic-Con except the comic nerds are “pinheads”), the Cultural Olympiad, and, of course, the Japanese hotdogs.

February 24th – 27th | Portland, OR

Our stop in Portland happens to serendipitously coincide with the Portland International Film Festival.  If we have time between watching movies and plumping up on maple-bacon doughnuts at Voodoo Doughnut, we’ll check out the city.  The world famous Rose Test Garden is dead right now, so we’re gonna head outside the city to a waterfall that hopefully won’t be overrun with “Twilight” fans.

February 27th | Sacramento…ish

We’ll see how far we can make it from Portland back home, but chances are we’ll be spending the night somewhere near our state capital.  We don’t care where we wind up or how small the TVs are when we get there as long as we get to watch the men’s gold medal hockey game.

We’ll be posting new photos, videos and stories almost every day on our 16-day journey, so keep checking back.  And if you haven’t done so yet, friend us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for fun updates and exclusive pictures.

The Olympic spirit has been lacking locally, so get into the excitement of the Winter Games by checking out some of our recent Olympic posts and sending them to your friends.

Meet the Olympic mascots, check out the 10 Worst Olympic mascots ever, find out what happened when Canada last hosted the Olympics, discover why Vancouver is such a unique host city, find out if the host nation always wins the most Olympic medals, and see one of the strangest Olympic medals ever before they are awarded.