Monday, March 22, 2010

Radio Interview

I just wanted to let everyone know that a good friend of mine Jewels that I know from culinary school interviewed me for her monthly radio show about my olympic experience.. The show will air on March 26th. The station is WNTI 91.9 and it served Northern New Jersey. If you do not live in that area you can go on their website http://www.wnti.org/ and listen live. The show is on at 8:00 am. Also if you do not want to get up that early or forget they archive the shows so you can go online anytime after the 26th and listen.

Hope you tune in

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Monday, March 1, 2010

At the airport

Well I guess this is time for a retrospective of the last month.

It seems like yesterday I was kissing my family goodbye and heading for an adventure, not knowing what exactly the job I would be doing entailed, not knowing who I would be rooming with or if we would all get along, not knowing how a 42 year old American would be greeted by our Canadian neighbors, and just generally wondering about the whole situation.

Well I can say with 200% certainty that, next to having children and getting married this has been the single most exciting, enjoyable and awe inspiring experience of my life. I am flying back to the USA and New Jersey with a new view on life and the world, this experience has changed me both inside and out. I never would have thought, back in December when I said to my wife "I have an idea" and she responded like she usually does when I make such a statement saying "uh oh", that this would make such an impact on me, especially considering the fact that the idea was originally only to earn some extra money during our slow winter months.

There is nothing about this experience that I can say was negative, even when things sometimes became frustrating, I thought to myself, who cares I am at the Olympics. From day one when I arrived and picked up my Olympic Credentials ( I thought I was soooo cool walking around with them around my neck, until I realized every other person had them), to meeting my room mates, to my first day working, to my first Olympic event, to the first athlete I saw walking around the village, to the first 3:00 am night of partying with the 20 year olds ( there were many of those), to watching the USA hockey team play and win, to watching Americans such as Bode Miller and many others accepting their medals live, to just walking around the village and looking at people.

On My first day of work the owner of Whistler Cooks who I worked for said to all 450 of us employees, at some point during the next 4 weeks you are all going to have your "Olympic moment" and when you do you will know it. Well it seemed I was having those moments every 5 minutes.

I am so, so glad my wife was able to come out and share the experience with me. It was only for 3 days and was definatly not easy to get there and get back for her. In the end though we shared something very special that I do not know will ever be duplicated.

At my job in the end, working out of trailers, we served the ticketholders, press, media, volunteers, Vanoc, Kings, Queens and other dignitaries over 500,000 meals in 3 weeks, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, quite an accomplishment.

I know in reality the 3 weeks of the Olympics is not real life, in real life Isreal would not walk into an arena next to Iran, and other countries that have waged war against each other in the past and present would not be drinking in the same bar, but this is what happens for 3 or 4 weeks during the Olympics. It would be great if this was real life.

I want to thank everyone at home, Reg for taking care of the business stuff, my wonderful children for just being, my mother for helping out with the girls and entertaining my wife, my inlaws for the financial support, Krystal and Wendi for holding down the fort at work. Without you guys this trip never would have been a reality. I thank you and love you all.

I have a few more pictures I will post when I get home, until then thank you for listening the last month.

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