I spent much of last week on the West Coast for work, attending a conference in Vancouver. I didn’t have a ton of free time – I was busy 8 to 5 pretty much each day – but I did get some opportunities to explore the host city for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Here are a few general observations:
- Vancouver has hot bartenders and waitresses. I went to eat at three pubs and was blown away by the women working at two of them. The ones at the third were very pretty as well.
- I managed to never have a beer I had tasted before the trip. I had Granville Island’s Pale Ale a couple of times, the India Pale Ale from Alexander Keith’s Brewery, some kind I can’t remember (it had a year in the name like 1619 or 1693) and a couple of selections from the Yaletown Brewery brewpub. Not a dud in the lot.
- Pacific time stinks. Well, going from Eastern to Pacific in Vancouver just after the end of daylight savings time ends and it rains much of the time stinks.
- The first leg of my trip home took me from Vancouver to Salt Lake. I shared a plane with a few dozen luge, skeleton and bobsled athletes in training for the Olympics. My seatmate was a semi-burly Latvian bobsledder (not sure if he was Orthodox or not). He didn’t seem to want to engage in conversation, but I know they are one of the best teams in the world. Across the aisle was a skeleton racer from New Zealand who was 10th in the 2006 Games. It was pretty cool.
- ESPN360 is now one of my favorite web sites because you can watch sports anywhere you go if you have the login information for your main internet provider. Hulu blocks everything in Canada so I am mad at them.
- I know see the genius that is “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” I watched all of Season 1 and most of Season 2 on the plane so have become fully converted. I just need to watch the rest of the seasons now.