LAST DAYS

I'm downtown early so go back to Live City to see Christopher. As I line up, I see that there's a couple of Mounties on horses and snap a picture. Don't get to see that too often around here.

It's a big hassle to get through the security yet again. The metal zipper heads on my jacket seem to completely confound them.

On the ride in on SkyTrain, there were some people taking an impromptu trip up from Washington State. Overhearing their conversation, they had decided that it would be a regret they would have if they didn't take the time to visit Vancouver during the games. They have picked a gorgeous day to come. It's clear and sunny out and they exclaim about the scenery over and over. When we come to False Creek, they have their backs to the Athletes Village so I speak up and point it out to them. They quickly turn around and take photos, exclaiming how great it is. Then they thank me profusely for speaking up.


I am hungry so I give Christopher $10 so he can buy me a small tray of poutine and a bottle of Coke. He gets a discount because he works there. There's no change. Whoah Nellie.

We chat mostly about how this job has opened a lot of doors for him and that he now knows about five times as many people in the sound business than he did three weeks ago. I am excited for him. He is so talented with sound - most all the performers he works with are very impressed and some now use him exclusively when they have a gig. But they are just small players and it would be great if he could work for some bigger acts. I am sure it will happen.

We have spent so much time talking, I really have to hustle my butt to get to the salon on time. I needn't have hurried as it takes about twenty minutes for Izzy to help a lady find a jacket to buy in the racks of down coats they have brought in to sell for the games. I love one of the jackets; it has rhinestones dotted along the cuffs and down the front. That would be fun to wear on set instead of my huge, black, sleeping bag (as Kim Miles calls it) of a coat that I usually wear on a cold day.

Soon I am walking out of the salon with hair a bit darker in shade, and some bouncy curls. I make a quick call to Lec, a friend from jPod - a camera assistant. We have made arrangements to meet for a drink somewhere and now I just need to know where. I would like to eat where Izzy recommended, right next door to the salon. It has great satay, she says, and it's very reasonably priced. But Lec wants to meet at a Japanese place a few blocks away so I walk up there and wait for her to arrive.

We catch up over a beer for her, a martini for me, and some sushi. She's such a fun person and I love her take on life. So it's a pleasant couple of hours spent laughing and yakking. All too soon we have to take our leave; we were told we could have the table only until 6:30. Not sure who they are expecting to flood the place in a couple of minutes but there's no sight of them yet. But it's okay because I have to be at work tomorrow so should be in bed right about now. We hug and go in different directions. I head down to the SkyTrain but I can't remember where the station is that I arrived on. I took the King George Line from Surrey to the Waterfront, and then the Canada Line to The Roundhouse, Yaletown. But I can't for the life of me remember where that came out. I decide to go by the salon and see if Izzy is still there. Not only is she there, she is outside, dressed in one of the down jackets in the midst of fake snow drifting down, selling Vankerchiefs (that's Izzy on the right) to passers by. I ask her where the station is and she points down the street. It's just a block away on this very road. Why couldn't I remember that? I scare myself sometimes.

Today at work, I am not the supervisor. I am in on an extra day to help out with the problem of short staff. So I get the easy job of taking a clipboard and getting driver information and passenger numbers for workforce. It's freezing cold out and raining so the chance to sit on each bus as it arrives until it's time to depart is much appreciated. Once the last bus departs at noon, we get to go home early. That also is much appreciated.

At one point in the day, I make a trip along the parked spectator buses and pause to chat with one or two of my favourite drivers. One of them, another French-Canadian named Guy, has been flirting outrageously with me. Today he tells me that he might not see me tomorrow, the last day we will have spectators, and so wants me to come on board and give him something to remember me by. I look puzzled. So he enlightens me by saying he wants a hug and a kiss. "I tink about you all da time." he says, "I have tought about you all dese days you haven't been here." "So then," I say, "you shouldn't have any trouble remembering me without the kiss." He laughs. "Ahh, but I want to kiss dose lovely lips." he says. "Well, seeing how you have a girlfriend, that's not going to happen." I say with a grin. "And I am sure you will be back tomorrow." He acts all sad and I move along the line. I don't see him again because he won't return tomorrow; he will be pushed to a late run back from Whistler. When I realize that I am sad. But I won't find out until tomorrow when it's too late. I would like to have given him a hug good-bye.

On our last day with spectators, I am back in charge but Shawn does such a great job of organizing everything up top, I let him take over and I keep the job with the clip board. There have been a couple of guys in particular that have been nothing short of stellar workers and I plan to pass their names along to Assistant Location Managers who need hard working and intelligent PA's. Shawn is one. Dan is the other. Outstanding workers both, and each with a great sense of humour. They'd be an asset to any film crew.

We take a few photos. One with another favourite bus driver, Ed from Vernon. One with Mamud, a doctor from Nigeria, and one of the lovely lady (who's name I can't recall) who was in charge of taking bus tickets from spectators. For almost everyone, today is their last day. Tomorrow there will just be a skeleton crew on to take care of the workforce buses.

The WOP hub has planned a BBQ for all of us so we head over there after the last bus has left and partake of some delicious hamburgers, veggie burgers, and bags of chips. It's a fun way to wind up the last full day of work. On Monday our hub has planned a 'wrap party' at the local casino. Hopefully most of us will be able to attend that. It will be nice to see everyone in clothes other than their 'blueberry' jackets. That is what we have been calling workforce for the past three weeks. Right before a bus is to leave, one of us gets on the radio and asks, "Any blueberries in sight?" I've heard that elsewhere, we are called 'Smurfs'. I prefer blueberries.

IT'S A MIRACLE

Two drivers that work for the same bus company, Premier Pacific, are in the trailer to get coffee and are talking about an Olympic network bus they saw pulled over on the highway surrounded by four fire trucks and an ambulance. There was a stretcher out on the side of the road. They speculate about what could have happened.

Today I read in the paper that a 71 year old bus driver died at the wheel of heart attack and that one of the other 5 drivers aboard jumped up and steered the bus off to the side of the highway and managed to pull it to a stop without incident. It was a shuttle bus picking up other drivers from their hotels and taking them to the depot. I see three or four of those buses on the highway on my drive in to work every morning.

The five drivers aboard got the day off. One of my regular drivers didn't show up yesterday, instead there was a driver I hadn't ever had replacing him. Makes me wonder if he was on that bus.

It's a miracle no one was hurt.

QUEBEC MEN ARE GREAT

When I get up for work I feel woozy. I just feel so off. My stomach has been hurting again. Every time I eat something it seems to hit my stomach like a lead ball so I haven't been eating much the past couple of days. I won't be eating any more of the sandwiches they have for us at work. When I use the flat iron on my hair to straighten out the kinks that somehow show up in the night, I drop it and go to catch it and as I feel the heat on my hand I let go and it hits the floor. That's never happened to me before. My equilibrium is definitely off.

When I get to work, I discover that I have no energy at all. Everything I do takes extra concentration and effort. By the end of the shift, I am completely wiped out and I find it hard to stay awake on the drive home. I recall feeling this way only a couple of times in my life; where I am so exhausted I feel like I will completely break down and lose it if I can't get into bed right away. I pray that Denise's dad isn't at the house doing repairs so that I can sleep. As I pull up to the house, I see his car in the drive. I go in and tell him I am exhausted and will be going to bed. I peel off my work clothes and get into my pajamas and literally fall into bed. Denise's dad is working at the other end of the house and I don't hear a thing as I immediately fall to sleep. I wake four hours later to an empty house and darkness outside. I make myself a bowl of soup and as soon as I eat it I go back to bed and sleep right through to the alarm at 2:30 a.m.

When the alarm goes off, I don't want to get up at all. It's freezing out, I know, due to the clear weather we're having right now. I nearly froze yesterday and I don't want to feel like that again today. But I force myself up and, although I still feel off, I dress for work and push myself out the door by 3:15.

One of the guys at work is a doctor from Nigeria and he asks me how I am doing. He basically gives me an hours free consult about not only my food poisoning but also the arthritis in my spine and how my doctor should be doing a follow up x-ray to the one done a couple of years ago to see if it's progressed. I will be making an appointment.

Honestly, if I want to be married again, I need to move to Quebec. The bus drivers we have from there are so into me. I can't get over it. I never, and I mean NEVER, get this sort of attention from any men around here. But the French! Ooo-la-la! They are so complimentary; they tell me I am beautiful; they can't believe I haven't been snatched up; and more than a few of them want to snatch me up. Too bad that a couple of those few are married or have girlfriends, or are way too old or too short for me. And too bad George Cloony's twin isn't one of the ones showing an interest!! (One of the guys told me he's married, so it's just as well.) But I seriously think that if I moved to Quebec, I could be married in a year. Something to think about.

I find that, tomorrow, we have an overlap with WOP and so will have their buses and ours coming into our lot at the same time. Oh joy. Not. AND, I only have two crew scheduled to work with me instead of five, and it may as well be one for all the use one of them is. He doesn't understand anything I say and so never follows through with a direction. When dealing with moving buses and trying to place them, that's not a good thing. I am not happy at all that more help has not been found for tomorrow. The loading people have nine scheduled, so I work it out with Olga to take two or three of her people for my crew. I sit down and figure out what positions everyone is the most capable of filling so that I can just give them their posts tomorrow when they arrive. I also work out everyone's break times and how they will be replaced while gone. I then figure out how we will place the buses so that we don't run into the issues we've had on other days when both centers schedules have overlapped. I am feeling like I have a handle on it all. Let's hope that bears out tomorrow.

I am so glad it's only 6 more days of work. If this was my new career I'd have to kill myself.

JUST SAY NO TO MICROMANAGEMENT

When I get home, I am so stiff from standing on concrete all day and now sitting in my car for an hour, that I can barely walk up the path to the house. My back is hurting and so is my right knee and hip. Even my ankle on the right keeps getting a stabbing pang. I might look only 43, as Guy claims, but I feel about 73 at the moment. Getting old sucks.

When I get inside, there are three women and Denise sitting at the table, scrapbooking. They ask about my day and I tell them about the George Clooney look-alike. They want to see the photo so I get my camera and show them. Their jaws drop. "George Clooney with a French accent," one sighs, "it doesn't get any better than that." I have to agree.

After a hot shower and a meal, I am exhausted so turn in by 7. I wake through the night a couple of times with a bad stomach ache and think to myself that it feels like flu and I might have to call in sick. But each time, I get up to use the bathroom and as soon as I am vertical, the pain is gone. Did I just dream it? One of the times I go back to sleep I do dream that I faint at work from the pain. When the alarm goes off, I roll over and turn it off and feel the pain again and I feel dreadful. But when I get up, I feel not so bad. I have no idea what's going on.

On my way into work I think about all of the changes in instructions I am getting all of the time. Yesterday, we had three WOP buses that were to be diverted to another location. When they pulled out, Jessica went into panic about something and needed to call one of the drivers. She asked me for his phone number. I told her that I don't have it. Her eyes widen and she yells, "Why not?!" "Because you told us just to get the bus number." "Oh no! You shouldn't listen to me." she says, realizing what she is saying so her voice trails off at the end. As I think about this and other scenarios that have taken place, I decide it's time to go into movie set mode. I am done with going along with whatever changes come down, seemingly on a whim. I am done with dithering about. I am done with feeling like I am making mistakes constantly. I am going to start to assert myself and call someone out when told conflicting things.

It's pissing rain again, really coming down hard. So I put a cheap plastic poncho over my reflective vest and other gear. It doesn't breathe so right away I start to heat up. I want to get outside but Jessica says we need to have a meeting before we go. I tell her I need to get outside and place some cones I requested from parking yesterday to mark a path for the buses to follow up at the top of the road into the loading bays because I don't have the crew to place someone there today. "Fine, take your crew and go do that and then get back here right away." I do and within fifteen minutes we are back in the office. She isn't there. I try to radio her but am told she has gone to WOP and isn't wearing a radio yet. Fabulous. So we go back outside and get ready for the first workforce bus to pull in. But before I do, I spy a pair of those reflective gloves. They have the 2010 logo on them. They're so nice. I pick them up and say, "We were supposed to get some of these." A parking guy tells me that there's boxes of them in the office. We're not supposed to go in there but I am done with the nonsense, as I said, so I knock on the door and when there's no reply I walk in and find the boxes. They are all marked XL. I grab three pair out of the top box and hand one pair to each of my crew and put the other pair on my hands. Done.

No sooner does Guy arrive with our 4:50 departure bus than we start getting waves of WOP buses again. I am down at the bottom of the road directing them all. At some point Jessica radios me for something. I respond and then say, "...and I came back in to have that meeting but you weren't there." "I know I wasn't there," she says with sarcasm, "I had to go to WOP about blah blah blah..." she goes on and on and I wait for her to finish. "I know you know you weren't there," I respond finally, "I just wanted you to know that I didn't forget, and that I came back for the meeting." She doesn't respond.

Later, during a lull with our workforce buses, Jessica calls us all back in for that meeting. When we get there, someone closes the door behind us. I go and open it and say "Let's leave this open during the meeting, shall we? We're all dressed for the cold and we will quickly overheat in here." Jessica shoots me a dirty look and I just hold the look with a blank gaze. Shall we continue? She starts by telling us how she was sent twenty workers yesterday afternoon from another agency and she was supposed to train them and had no idea what they were doing there so she sent them home. I don't know why we need this information but I am about to respond 'Really? When we are short staffed and I am trying to work with just two crew today - you actually sent people home without scheduling them in?' but right then a bus arrives. Jessica sees it. "OH SH**, a bus!" she cries, and then jumps up and runs outside. So we all stand inside and wait, fully geared up for the elements, as she runs out alone and dressed in just a tee-shirt and polar fleece vest to do our job. I look at Olga and we shake our heads. This is starting to border on the insane. After what feels like ten minutes but is probably just five, I tell everyone to go outside and lets do our jobs. We're all too hot to be waiting indoors any more.

I am kept hopping all day at the bottom of the road, directing buses and keeping in touch with my guy up top. Olga came in on her day off to help me or I'd just have one crew today. I give her the clipboard and get her to take all the driver information and the WOP bus numbers. Once the spectators start to arrive, Jessica puts her back in charge of supervising the loading crew as the woman who was supposed to show up for that today didn't arrive. Olga puts one of her crew on to taking driver info but no one tells me the switch has taken place. Jessica tries calling Olga's alternate but there's no answer at 5 a.m., predictably. She gets hold of her later in the day and asks why she didn't show up. I hear her say, "But you had your four days off. You are four on and four off. You were supposed to be here today." Later I realize that Olga and I started out with the same schedule. Four on four off, so we were always working together. But today she was supposed to be off on the new schedule. She booked in for an extra day of work because we needed more workers. How is it that she was off today? Turns out when Jessica made up the new schedule, she screwed up and gave Olga only three days this shift. So that woman was right in not coming in today as she had only had three days off, not four. She originally wasn't scheduled to come in - Olga was. When I try to explain this to Jessica, it takes me several attempts to get her to understand. When she finally gets it, she admits she made a major mistake. Olga and I want to work together. We work well as a team. So Jessica says she will fix the schedule to put us on the same four days again. This is a typical example of what goes on in every area every single day. Jessica always blames the higher ups for changing things but I have my doubts. She seems to make a lot of it up on the fly. You know, she seems like a really nice person and in other circumstances I am sure I'd like her, but she is just not up to the task of manager. In fact, I hear later that she was lamenting to someone that she has never managed anything in her life before. What... WHAT exactly was the criteria for people getting the jobs they got around here? Because I am seeing nothing but people doing nothing they are qualified to do every time I turn around.

Take another incident today, for example. Our last bus to Whistler Sliding Center has departed over an hour ago and we have six Americans show up with tickets to the luge today but no bus tickets. When we were in training (and I use that term loosely) for our roles here, we were told in no uncertain terms that if spectators showed up too late for the bus, it was too bad. There was nothing we could do to help them. Even if we put them on a workforce bus, which we were NEVER to do, they wouldn't make it in time for the event anyway, by the time they drove up, went through the security line up, and then walked the 20 minutes from there to the venue. These guys protest vehemently that there was no information when they purchased their tickets online that they needed to buy a bus ticket. I have no idea how almost one thousand five hundred other people managed to figure it out then. Granted, we have about 20 per event that have to go to the ticket kiosk down at the trailer and buy their bus tickets because they also failed to read that a ticket was required so didn't purchase it ahead of time on line. But the vast majority manage to see that just fine. Jessica is called outside to give them the bad news. But instead, she tells them she will see what she can do. She goes back inside to get an information booklet that each ticket buyer gets. These guys say they never got one. Meanwhile, two other Chinese guys join the group. Turns out not only do they not have a bus ticket, they don't even have an event ticket and they want to hop one of our buses to Whistler. This is a definite breach of security and in no way is allowed. But as Jessica comes out and decides to let the Americans ride up with work crew, and without buying a ticket, she also decides she has to let the other two guys ride up as well as they heard her allow the Americans. Today after work, we do have a meeting to work out any wrinkles and this issue comes up. I say that none of those people should have been allowed on the bus, if we were to go by our training. And they should have had to buy tickets to get on the workforce bus because that is not fair to all those who had to pay $50 a head to ride up. I say, "What if they tell their friends, just show up late and you can catch a ride with the worker bus and you won't have to pay?" She shrugs that off as something that will never happen. I tell her that I can see letting the Americans go up with workforce, but they should have paid and there is no way the Chinese guys should have been allowed on the bus as they can't get into the luge. She says there is a place in Whistler where tickets can be purchased. I tell her that can't be the case as all tickets were sold months ago and the only way to get any now is on the fan-to-fan website. She disagrees with me. I am appalled at her lack of knowledge and her flaunting of rules that are in place for security. If Richard found out about this, I think she would be fired on the spot. He fired the head of parking yesterday just for not being strict enough with his crew. He'd blow his stack over this.

At some point in the day, Jessica starts to rag on me about some information I didn't get that I should have gotten. (I can't recall what.) This is news to me. She does it in front of three bus drivers so I pull her to one side. "I am not stupid." I start. "I know you're not." she interrupts. "I am not stupid." I say again, "If you want something, ask for it and I will do it. If you don't ask, do not come at me because I don't have it." I am angry and she knows it. "I was not coming at you." she says. "I am sick of things changing from moment to moment and having no consistency in what is required. When you decide what it is you want, you let me know, and I will do it. Alright?" She starts yammering on about how everything is changing for her as well and she can't do anything about it. "Well until whoever decides how it's going to go, I will keep on doing what I am doing and you can let me know." I say and then walk away.

And speaking of changes and of Richard; at one point I am part way up the road, signaling to a bus just arriving to come up and park. But he continues to drive straight ahead instead of coming towards me. Then I see someone kick cones out of his way so he can drive into the gravel lot. What the.....?? I run down the road and see Richard waving the bus into the lot. Once the bus, and the five behind him, are parked in the lot, I ask what's going on. Because now I have two of my buses trapped behind WOP buses. I am less than thrilled, to put it mildly. But this is the big kahuna so I have to be diplomatic. He says that there's no point in clogging up the road with all of the drivers, it's almost full. And they can't be circling around the block. Really? I had just sent four of them to circle. I ask why, then, were we told that they could and would, when we were in training. He says it's changed and they won't be circling. Man. I am so sick of the constant changes. He goes on about how he once, back in the States, had 20 buses lined up like this and how he just pointed and gestured when they needed to move and it was fine. Huh? What has that to do with this situation? I am done to the death with being micro managed. If you want to do my job, have at it and I will go sit in the trailer out of the rain where it's warm and I can give my back and legs a break. But if I am supposed to be doing this, then let me do it. And if you wanted things to work your way, then where the H, E, double hockey sticks were you on my first day here to train me properly instead of my being handed a clipboard and radio and told to get out there and do it? I have spent hours both on and off the job trying to figure out how to make this all work. I finally have a system that seems to be doing alright and then it gets kicked aside. Just like that. I am so done.

I never get to speak to a bus driver all day, other than Guy in the morning when I give him my phone number and days off so I can play tour guide for him AND the other bus driver who showed up right after him. Safety in numbers. Then he won't get the idea that I am caving on my 'no married men' rule. Oh, I did manage to talk to 'George Clooney' as he was parked in the lower line-up. I told him that I showed his photo to my friends and all of their jaws dropped. He laughed. I told him about the comment - George Clooney with an accent and he throws his head back and laughs... he loves it.

I only manage to grab one 15 minute break all day. By the time the last bus leaves, I am in agony. My back is killing me, and not in the usual place. It's right across my upper back and extends into my rib cage. This is a pain I only get when hunched over my binder all day at work (in film), thus I now use a music stand to hold it higher. When I head inside to take off my gear, I get the overwhelming urge to vomit. I run around to the back of the trailer to do it away from where anyone walks, and then fight it back. I will do anything not to vomit and I manage to fight back the bile and not throw up.

When I get home, I try to eat a little dinner but feel nauseated again and can't eat. I call Shawn to fill him in on some changes we have made to how we stage the buses to avoid the shmoz we had yesterday. From now on WOP buses go to the left only, and we will park them in two rows at the top. Our buses, to WSC, will go to the right and into the bays, snaking down the right side of the road. The workforce buses will go straight into the gravel parking lot. He says I sound tired. I tell him I think I am coming down with the flu. He gives me the recipe for a concoction he learned about while teaching in China. You take a can of coke, and bring it to the boil on the stove with a golf ball sized piece of ginger finely ground into it. Then you pour it into a mug and add the juice of a lemon and a tablespoon of honey. Drink it down half an hour before going to bed.

I find all of the ingredients in the house and cook it up. At first it doesn't taste too bad, it just has a bit of a bite. But as I get farther and farther down the mug, it starts to taste awful. I guess the ginger is getting stronger. I am worried I will just bring it all back up, and I almost do but fight it down. I fall into bed, completely exhausted and feeling like I've been hit by a bus; no pun intended. I sleep like a log and wake up feeling much better. I think it must have been food poisoning from the horrible half of an egg sandwich I ate at work yesterday. We are provided with a sandwich a day made by the same caterers that make food for Air Canada. It is the most dreadful food I have ever had and have stopped eating it. Except for yesterday. I was so hungry and the egg salad didn't look so bad, even though there was no butter - as usual - on the bread and no mayo. It was a bit dry, and when I kept coming across chewy bits the consistency of cooked chicken breast, I threw out what was left. I should never have touched it.

(I found the picture of the tee-shirt after I came up with the title of this post and was searching the internet for a photo to use as I had no time to take pictures today!)

WHAT A DAY!!!!

I got four hours sleep last night. And we have our first group of spectators to load today, meaning 40 buses more than usual. Not a good combo, I am thinking.

My van gives me a lot of trouble on the drive in today and I ponder how the resulting rise in my pulse, and blood pressure - I am sure, and the tightening in my chest along with the current of stress I feel run through my body can't be good for me. Usually if I feel all of that together once a month, that's a lot. Now I am feeling it almost daily. If this van dies on me on the freeway at 3:30 a.m. I will be beside myself. I do have BCAA now, so that is some comfort. But to be late for work is a dreadful thought. To be without a car means I will probably have to quit as there is no public transportation at this hour.

I make it there and get suited up in the usual reflective vest. I grab two flashlight wands along with my clipboard and walkie. Jessica suggests I take two walkies so I can monitor what is going on over at WOP and hear when they are sending us their overflow buses. I hope I can keep the two straight and not talk on their frequency when meaning to talk to my crew. I find out that they have two events they are loading for today and so will have over 70 buses go through. It doesn't occur to me at that moment that, again, I have been given misinformation. I will find out in a few hours that their buses will not be long gone by the time ours arrive, and the result will be a massive cluster. Blissfully unaware of this fact, I head out to greet our first bus driver.

It's Guy. The French Canadian one who is sweet on me. He tries to kiss me on the lips instead of the cheeks this morning and so I pull away and tell him no. He tries to grab me back into a hug and says he will just kiss my cheeks but I tell him "Too bad. You blew it." He pouts.

All too soon, the droves of buses from WOP start to pull into our lot and I get busy getting them parked up in the top lot and down the roadway to the right, to leave the left side for our workforce buses. I am supposed to start having five crew as of today. I have three. And only one, Shawn, is a self-starter. Soon I won't even have him as he is going to be the alternate supervisor so will work on my days off (the one Angus One hired barely speaks English and didn't show up for her first day of work. Awesome job A-One. Yet again). That's good and bad. Good because we have worked out a system together and now he will be able to maintain that on my days off so that the bus drivers and workforce will have some continuity and won't get confused. Or at least that's how it is supposed to work out, but with changes and misinformation happening constantly it is difficult to ensure any sort of consistency. Bad because I have no idea who I will put in his position. He is down on the roadway determining whether the bus coming at him next is our workforce bus, WOP overflow bus, or our spectator bus and then place it in the correct lane. It's dark out. It's raining hard. When the bus turns in, it's lights blind you so you can't read the small sign in the window - when they have a sign. They ran out down at the ever incompetent depot, so not all have them. It's a difficult job but he handles it without a hitch and so I can focus my attention elsewhere. I put one guy at the entrance to direct buses up the road, and the other at the top parking lot to park them. I have the driver log clipboard and gather information from each of our bus drivers. I don't have to bother getting info from WOP's and that's a good thing. Until I get a radio call from Jessica telling me I need to get it. I radio back and ask why I need to do that, it's WOP's job. She changes her mind and tells me just to get the bus number. It's one more thing to add to my list but at least it's just the number I need.

It's raining hard and my paper is disintegrating, despite the plastic sheet over it, and it's difficult to write. My jacket is proving not to be waterproof as I am starting to feel damp on my arms. My polar fleece gloves are soaked through. I spied some pretty skookum gloves on Doug, Richard (the big boss from Florida), and a few others the other day. They are black and bright orange with reflective strips on the backs. Why are people who are indoors at a desk job wearing those gloves while those of us outside, in the dark, directing traffic haven't been given them? Next time I see Doug, I ask him just that. He seems embarrassed a bit and says he has more in his office and will see that we get a pair each. As it should be. So far I haven't seen any come our way.

Buses for workforce have a set schedule that won't change for the entire time we are here. They arrive, or should, at half past the hour but they often arrive way too early and sometimes three hours worth at once. This is a dispatch issue. We have one that departs at 4:50, four at 5:50 (but we only ever send one to Whistler and the other three go back to the depot as we don't have that many passengers), one at 6:50, 8:50, 10:50 and 11:50. On the schedule it shows that we should be moving anywhere from 150 to 450 workforce daily. I think the most we have moved in a day is 50. We have sent buses up with one person aboard. And these Olympics are supposed to be green. Right.

I send Shawn on his break. With a Oh Henry Easter egg. I bought one for each of my team for doing such a great job yesterday.

The spectators who like to be super early have started to arrive and are waiting up top. I am still parking WOP overflow buses when our buses for the spectators start to arrive. I pull them over into the gravel parking lot as they are an hour early and the lanes up to the loading zone is blocked with WOP buses. I radio Jessica and tell her that we are starting to get WSC buses and so need to stop taking WOP's. She radios back that we have to take them. I ask her what happened to the 'circle them around the block' plan if we don't have room. She tells me that we need to bring them in and park them. They are coming in by the droves. I now have them in both lanes going up to the top, meaning that if I can't clear them before my next workforce bus arrives, I have nowhere to put him. I am super frustrated. This was not supposed to happen. I radio over to WOP and tell them I have no more room for their buses. We have over 30 of them parked here. It's a nightmare that was never. supposed. to. happen.

I am working on getting the right hand lane cleared so that I can bring up our buses when I hear a bus start up behind me. I turn around and it's one of our spectator coaches and he's starting to pull forward. I stop him and walk over to his window to ask what he's doing. He ignores me. I knock on the window and motion for him to roll it down. He does. "It's time for me to go load." he says. "I don't have the way clear for you yet. I need you to wait here." He rolls up his window and pulls out. I am pissed. I radio Jessica, who is up top with the loading crew, getting prepared. "I have a sliding center bus who is getting in the line. I tried to hold him back but he thinks he knows best." I say. As I watch him go up the road to get stuck behind WOP buses I hear more buses start up. The other sliding center drivers try to follow him but I stop them and put cones down in their path. That should hold them until I figure out what to do next. After a few moments of deep pondering, I decide to let them go and get my guy to clear the WOP buses to the right up top first. That way we can start to get our buses into position for spectators.

I then radio my guy at the entrance and tell him to direct any WOP buses to the left and ours right from now on. He radios back that he 'copies' and then lets the very next bus, which is WSC, into the left lane. God help me. He's a doctor from Nigeria, here three months. Very smart - can't comprehend English so well. I get the bus backed up and moved to the right lane and then realize that, yes it's our bus but it's an accessible bus (can take wheelchairs) and it needs to go up on the left and park off to the side up top for when we need it. Mamud was right after all. So I get the driver to back up again and put him in the WOP line up. Once he's stopped, I go up to him and apologize profusely and beg his understanding that it's our first day with all of these buses. He is really nice and is very understanding.

Eventually I get the right lane cleared so that my buses can get through. We pull our workforce buses into the gravel parking lot until I can get the left lane clear for them. It's semi-organized mayhem for the next few hours until we finally stop getting WOP buses. Then all goes like clockwork. I hate, hate, HATE that we have to take their overflow. They should have to deal with it themselves as it screws us up something terrible. And so much for our schedule never overlapping with theirs. I have to work out a solution to this before it happens again.

Shawn comes back from break and I go up top to start taking information from the spectator drivers. Buses are parked and the drivers are out, socializing. It makes it murder to get all of their information as I have to locate each driver in the order in which they are lined up. They are each on a 15 minute schedule of four buses at a time. I am supposed to make sure they are parked in the order they are scheduled but that is about the last thing I care about at the moment. They show up when they show up. If they can't keep to their schedule and show up at the right time, that's not my problem - I figure. And with only three crew instead of five, I think we are doing a pretty damn good job of this.

Most of these drivers are French Canadian. A few are from Alberta and others from various parts of the states. It's amazing to observe how the drivers in each group have similar traits and the differences between the groups. The guys from Alberta are very cordial and polite. The guys from the states are loud, brash, and either very cranky or very funny. The French Canadians are flirty and very happy. I am having such fun with them all. And I make it my mission to get a smile out of the cranky Yanks whenever I can and most of the time I succeed. I walk up to one bus and the driver opens the door. I am shocked when I see his face. He is the image of George Clooney, or what George will look like in about 15 years. I start my spiel and can't help myself. "Bonjour! Ca va?" He replies, "Bonjour! Ca va bein!" "I just need to take some information from you. I will need to get it every day and I hope you won't mind having to repeat it all of the time as I won't be able to remember everyone's info. And do you know you look just like George Clooney? Do you mind if I take a look at your accreditation tag?" He looks confused. "George Clooney" I say slowly, "you look just like him. Don't you get told that all of the time?" His face lights up. "Ahhhh. Oui. George Clooney. Yes, yes. All of the time." "I thought so." I say and then proceed to get all the info I need.

Later, when I have a bit of a breather, I see him with some other drivers jabbering away in rapid-fire French and having a laugh. I walk up to them and ask him if I can take his photo. The other drivers want to know why I want only his photo. "Because he looks like George Clooney and my friends won't believe me unless I have this picture." I say. So he poses as the other guys rib him and I get a great shot. I thank him and he smiles. He has his hands in his pockets and I reach out and take his left one out and point to his empty ring finger. "Ahhhh!" I say, "No ring. So you are a free man?" He laughs and grabs my gloved hand and feels for a ring on my wedding finger. "Ah! No ring!" he says. "Nope." I reply and walk away as they all laugh.

The rest of the day goes well and we manage to get one thousand five hundred spectators loaded and on their way to watch the luge. We still have a couple of workforce buses to load. One is in position and Patrick, the driver I went to Whistler with, comes over and asks me to speak to a passenger. Apparently she is very upset and he wants me to hear her complaint and try to calm her down. I head over with him and we board the bus. There's about 15 people on board and they all look at me. No one says anything so I say "I hear someone's not happy. Who is that?" A blond woman, about 48, to my left pipes up. "That would be me." She explains that she was turned away from the usual gate she enters in and was sent way down to the other end of the campus. When she tried to park in the workforce parking lot, the attendant wouldn't let her down the road to it and was very rude to her. She ended up parking far away and now is concerned about having to walk all that way back in the dark when she returns tonight. Another woman pipes up and says that her husband dropped her off but that he wasn't allowed into the workforce parking area either and now he has no idea where he is to pick her up tonight. Another woman says pretty much the same thing and a guy in the back is ready to quit over having to park so far away that he had to run to make the bus. The first woman wants to know why the bus at night drops them off all the way up in the top lot anyway, when all of their cars are in the gravel lot at the bottom and the bus drives right past it and then they have to walk down in the dark. I tell them that I will do everything I can to resolve this issue. That I will try to make sure that from now on they get dropped off in the workforce lot, that they can park there tomorrow, and that the rude Impark attendant is reprimanded. I sympathize with them and say that there has been so much confusion and trial and error, but that everyone is doing their best to get it worked out to everyone's satisfaction. This seems to mollify them all and they thank me.

When that bus departs, I walk down to the trailer to speak with Maq, the head of the Impark crew. It's a totally different department and company running it than ours. Jessica intercepts me on the way and asks me why I need to talk to Maq. I tell her and she says to leave it to her to deal with. I reluctantly do so, not knowing if she will remember or if the information will get passed along accurately. I guess I will have to wait until tomorrow to find out.

Once all of our buses depart, including the workforce buses, I would love to have a meeting to talk about how the day went and issues we had and come up with some resolutions but that doesn't happen. Jessica does inform me that WOP was sending us all of their buses instead of using the space they have to stage them (they can load five and hold ten) because they were just too lazy to bring them in to hold them. I am ticked of to hear this and tell her that it is totally unacceptable and that it can't happen anymore. She assures me that she will talk to Doug about it and that it will be dealt with. I hope so because I don't know if I can deal with a day like today over and over again. I am not getting paid enough for that level of stress.

I go to sign out and return all of my equipment, and I check tomorrows schedule. I have two people scheduled to come in and one of them isn't Shawn. I have no idea how I am supposed to manage all those buses with just two crew. I feel like quitting.

HOLD THAT BUS!

Back at work today. The torch relay is due to pass right by us at noon.

The Impark guys had a great chance to practice parking masses of people last Sunday as the big church up the road, Willingdon Community Church, uses the BCIT lot as overflow parking. There were three waves of cars as they have three morning services, and the ensuing hundreds of cars were parked without a hitch. We even managed to keep them from going up and down the roadway we use to stage the buses on. Well done kids!

One of the French Canadian bus drivers has taken a shine to me. I joke and flirt with all of the drivers; they are mostly over 60 so I figure it's safe and they seem to eat it up. This one has taken me seriously and today when he arrives, he kisses me on both cheeks and tells me I am beautiful. Is he kidding me? I am wearing a toque, and my kids will tell you I look horrendous in any hat but especially a toque. I have no makeup on. What hair is showing is straggly and wet. I am bundled up in five thick layers so resemble a toffee apple in shape. I laugh him off but he is serious. A bit later he pulls me aside and tells me he would like to ask me out on a date. I smile and tell him "Sure. That would be nice." He is happy. Then I think to ask him if he is married. You never know with the French - even the if he is just French Canadian. He hems and haws. Oh-oh. Either he's married or he is struggling to find the English word for 'divorced'. I am betting it isn't the latter. "I am not married." he says. So it is the divorced word that's giving him trouble. Or not. "I live with a woman." He adds. "Oh! So you are married then, or as well as." I say. He shrugs. "Yes. But it's ok." I laugh. "No, it's not ok." "Oh.. come on," he says in his lovely accent, "you only live once." "Yes, I know." I reply, "and that is why I live this one life with integrity." He shakes his head and looks forlorn. "Cheer up," I say, "you'll get over it." He smiles at me. I am called on the radio and have to walk away to do my job. A bit later he pulls me aside again. "So, I would like to see Vancouver on my days off. I would like you to be my tour guide." I shake my head and grin. Persistent if nothing else. "I will show you around Vancouver if you like," I reply, "but that is all. Just as your tour guide." This mollifies him and he drives away a happy man, waving goodbye. I might have to rethink this decision.

The crowds begin to gather for the torch relay. The Whistler volunteers start arriving for the 11:50 bus and gather on the street to watch. They want us to hold the bus until it goes past. I talk to Jessica, the manager, and she makes a phone call. The result; the bus must leave on time. I think that's just mean. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for these guys. They're volunteers. We should be able to do this for them. We go up to the street to watch as well. Eventually we are joined by Doug, the overseer for both our departure point, Whistler Sliding Center, and the one across campus that goes to Whistler Olympic Park. I go talk to him and tell him that the volunteers should be able to stay and watch this. He thinks for a minute and then says, "Let them stay." Good!!!

There is a high school across the street and the powers that be let all of the kids out of class to watch the torch go by. It's a huge crowd. As they wait, they motion to trucks that go by to honk, and most oblige. At each honk a loud cheer goes up. It's fabulous.

Eventually the torch relay trucks appear and the kids go wild. Then the torch bearers appear and the flame is passed from one to another. It continues on it's way and the crowd cheers and claps. I get a bit teary. It's great to see that we have as much national pride as the USA has. We just keep it under wraps to let it go at times like these.

As soon as it's over, we gather up our volunteers and get them loaded on the bus. It departs twenty five minutes late, but who cares. It was well worth it.

(Photos by Jessica - my camera was in my car)

ON THE BUSES

In bed by 6 p.m. with the alarm set for 2:30 a.m.  I have a hard time falling off to sleep but finally manage it with the aid of a humidifier and my Ocean Wave sounds on my iPod.  I wake up every hour or two though until the alarm finally goes off.

I dress in my Olympic togs and am out the door right on time at 3:15 a.m.  There's no traffic at all on the roads and all of the lights are green for me.  I zip down the freeway and pull into the parking lot for the workers right on time at 3:45.  That gives me 15 minutes before my shift starts to find out exactly what it is I am supposed to do.  I head inside the new-looking construction trailer that will be the transportation hub for the Whistler Sliding Center (WSC) office for the next three weeks.

The girl that is my manager introduces herself as Jessica.  She seems very upbeat and jolly and I am guessing in her late 20's or very early 30's.  She tells us right away that she is from the states and that her husband travels all over the world in a rock band.  She then attempts to give us some instructions but it becomes apparent almost right away that she has no idea what she is talking about and it seems that I might know more than she does.  I can't figure out how that can be but it turns out, she just got here yesterday - from the states - and hasn't had any training.  She did, however, get an orientation bus ride yesterday.... up to Whistler!  Why she would need to go up there when she, nor any of us,  will ever have to go there for the job is beyond me.  So as she stumbles around in her thought patterns, guessing at answers to our questions and seeming to make most of it up as she goes along, I try to make sense of it.  And this will prove to be the case as the day progresses and we keep getting conflicting directions and answers.  The one thing that is clear, is that one of my team's responsibilities is to get information from each bus and driver as they arrive and line up.  Stuff like the VANOC bus number, driver name and cell phone number, time scheduled to arrive and the time it actually arrived.

The other supervisor, who I will work closely with, is Olga, a Russian woman in her early 30's who's title is 'Systems Supervisor' - meaning she is in charge of loading the buses.  She has to check that each workforce member has his or her accreditation (the giant tag around the neck) and is at the correct bus hub.  There is another hub across campus that goes to Whistler Olympic Park (WOP) and we must be sure that is not where they should be.  It ends up that we get buses that belong over there, not just people.  Everyone is a bit confused, to say the least, on this first day.  It's a good thing we are transporting workforce only for the first week and a half so that we can get used to this before we have to deal with hundreds of spectators a day on top of workforce.  

I have three crew to supervise this morning; Nicole, George and Teck.  Nicole and George are young.  George is fresh from Germany.  Teck is a bit older and is Asian.  They suit up in the traffic vests and I grab two flashlight wands for Teck and two for George.  I hand the clipboard to Nicole and we head outside into the drizzling rain.  I give the three of them a quick lesson on the way to signal with the wands and then get a chance to show them as the first bus arrives.  I wave the driver in and then to the right with the wands and send Teck running up the road to help get him parked.   I leave George at the entrance to bring in other buses scheduled to arrive soon and take Nicole up to the bus to collect the information we need.   Nicole watches as I do this first bus and then I hand off the clipboard to her to continue with the task as the other buses arrive.

There's a constant flurry of instructions coming over the radio for Olga and me from Jessica back in the trailer.  A lot of it contradicts something she has said previously and I am finding it very frustrating.  It seems that nothing has been planned out thoroughly; it's more a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of thing and a lot of it is left up to us supervisors to figure out.  And there's a lot of logistical things to figure out.  But it's fun and the bus drivers are great.  They are very flirty and I will get a proposal before the day is out.  From a seventy-one year old driver who just celebrated his 50th wedding anniversary and lives in Atlanta, Georgia.  When I remind him that he's been married for fifty years, he laughs and tells me, in his southern drawl, that she's three thousand miles away so it's okay.  He's a hoot.

The first four or five drivers that come in are locals whose regular route is to Whistler so they are old hats and very confident of their jobs.  Unfortunately, we find out at the end of our shift that they thought they only had to go to one stop and so blew by about three others that they had workforce to let off at.  WOP only drops off at WOP.  Our hub, however, not only drops of at the Sliding Center, but at several others as well.  No one bothered to tell the drivers that.  When the passengers tried to tell them they should have stopped to let them off, they said "Oh no.  We just go to WSC." we find out the next morning from one of the workers.  We are not sure if Olivia should have told the drivers where they were dropping off but she makes a note to do that from now on.  It's that sort of thing that we are figuring out as we go along for not only today but for the next two days as well.

Dispatch has sent us all of our mornings buses by 5 a.m.  But they go out at 4:50, 5:50, 6:50, 8:50, 10:50 and 11:50.  The last two guys are not happy at all.  They have a long time to sit around and they got up at 2 a.m. to be here.  Also, they were thoroughly trained on the Lonsdale Key to Cypress Bowl run.  So they know exactly how to get from point A to point B over there.  They have NO idea how to get to Whistler from here, as they're from Altlanta.  Chalk up the first big blunder of many, in the next three days, by Dispatch.

The games purport to be green.  Our first bus (and they are all tour buses that seat 55 passengers) leaves with one passenger.  The second bus leaves with two.  The third leaves with six.  The fourth with four.  The fifth with eight.  The sixth with two.  Yep.  That's right.  In fact, the numbers on the schedule show that only a couple of buses were to leave with that few.  We actually have three buses that are scheduled to leave at 5:50 and there should be 130 passengers between them.  But for some reason we just aren't getting those numbers.  Most of these workers are volunteer.  I am wondering if, now they have their pretty uniforms, they have what they signed up for and don't plan to show up at all. 

It's really cold outside at night so we take turns going into the trailer to warm up.  But that's almost worse than just staying outside because once you get toasty warm and come back outside, it feels twice as cold.  I decide to stay outside unless I have to go in for a work related issue.

Nicole goes to use the bathroom.  One of three port-a-potties.  She comes back complaining that it's too dark in their to see where anything is.  We need lights inside or something to light it up until the sun rises.  Which it eventually does and is nice and sunny and warm as soon as it rises above the trees.

We are released at noon to go home, even though my hours are until 2 p.m. because there's just nothing to do now the last bus has left.  We still get paid for a full 10 hours so I am happy to leave if that's what they want.

On day two, it's rainig a lot in the morning but I stay pretty dry in my skookum jacket and snow pants.  Even my polar fleece gloves seem to repel the rain.  I am with one less crew member today as Teck was told not to come in as we really don't need four of us with so few buses coming in.  My big issue today is that there is BCIT traffic using the road we are staging the buses on, to get from the upper area to the lower area of the campus.  Even though I have signaled for them to slow down, they rarely do.  I go into the trailer and talk to the parking supervisor, Dave, about how we can make this road safer for my crew and the passengers and he radios his guys stationed at the top and bottom of the road to make sure to signal for the cars to slow.  It doesn't help.  When one guy speeds up after being signaled by a parking attendant, I step out and signal for him to stop.  He does for a second or two, and I signal with large gestures for him to slow.  He floors it around me and up the hill past my crew and some passengers.   I am furious.  I guess Jessica saw me because she calls me on my walkie and tells me that in no way shape or form am I to stop the cars.  I radio back and tell her I understand the rule but if I feel my crew or myself is in danger I WILL stop the cars.  She tells me I can't.  I repeat what I said.   About an hour later I am standing at the side of the road, watching for a bus to arrive.  I have my hood up because of the rain.  Suddenly there is a truck passing me from behind.  I never heard him until he was right beside me and it made me jump almost out of my skin.  Not two minutes later, one of my crew and one of Olga's is coming down the hill, hoods up, and a truck comes right up behind them and they don't hear it.  They continue to stroll down the road until I yell, "Watch your backs, a truck." and they jump off to the side.  They are both a bit rattled and tell me they never heard a thing.  That's it.  I have had enough of this and so I go into the trailer and tell Dave that we have to do something about the safety issue of this road.   He decides that, although we are not supposed to, he is going to cone off the road at the top and bottom, and his guys will turn cars back.  Once that is done, the stress goes right out of my day and I can concentrate on other issues.

The rain tapers off but there's no sunshine today as the clouds are thick overhead, so we stay cold pretty much the whole day.

We have more passengers today, but still nothing like the numbers we have on our schedule.    And I get to go home early again.  I could get used to this.

On morning three I get there at 3:45 to see two buses in the parking lot beside the trailer.  It's meant for workforce vehicles.  I go into the trailer and find out that one bus was here overnight and the driver slept in his bus.   Strange.  Olga and I are also told that the schedule has been changed.  Instead of leaving at 50 minutes past the hour, they will now leave at half-past.  So 20 minutes early.  We soon find out that it seems no one bothered to pass this information on to the workforce members and they are not arriving in time for the change so the bus leaves without them.  They are unhappy, to say the least.  This is typical of everything I have experienced so far with these games.  The left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing most of the time.

Shawn and Mamud have replaced Nicole and George today.  So I have to train them with the light wands and the radio.  They are super smart and get it right away.  Turns out Shawn is some CEO of a company and Mamud is a doctor from Nigeria.  They are here just for the experience of working at the Olympics.  It's not the first time I have felt that the people who have applied to work at these games are not being utilized to their full abilities.  Olga speaks fluent Russian, for petes sakes.  Why is she moving passengers onto buses?  Shouldn't she be the guest services for the Russian delegation, at the very least?  Or maybe translator?  I just shake my head.  I know I should be doing something more than moving buses about, that's for sure.

We have a lot more passengers today.  Still not the numbers on the schedule but a lot more than either of the days before.  It turns out that most of them showed up the other two days but had no idea where to go because there is no signage, waited around where they thought the bus would be, and then went home when it didn't show.  I don't know if there is supposed to be signs and they just haven't arrived yet.  None of the signs I know we need for the spectator boarding areas have arrived.  So maybe there's more that points the way to us for the workers that are coming as well.  I don't know.   But we have a lot of very frustrated people arriving out of breath, after having run over from some distant point, just to discover that their bus departed 20 minutes early today.  

Olivia gets the directive to keep the old scheduled time for the 10:50 and 11:50 buses.  It seems that the order to leave early was another screw up by Dispatch and should never have happened.  So all those people who left on the other buses plan to show up 20 minutes early tomorrow.  I am glad I am not working tomorrow because they are going to be furious.  I am sure of it.

I spend some time today writing out everything I have worked out for my crew.  I have numbered each position, written down a description of that position's duties, and worked out a solution to a huge problem of how to park buses that may need to get out before the others ahead of them, including an 'accessible' bus - for wheelchair bound people.   We only get a couple of those a day, once the spectators start to arrive, and so I had to come up with a way to set it aside while dealing with our other buses  AND overflow buses from WOP which are supposed to park in our area.  This has been a nightmare for me to try to figure out and today I tell Jessica that I don't believe we can accommodate them.  They will have to stick with the original plan, which was for them to circle the block until there IS room over there.  Otherwise it's a logistical nightmare.  I have no idea, when the bus pulls into the lot, whether he is ours or theirs and thus where to put him.  Once he's parked in a line, others will come up behind and then he can't be moved.  If we have two lines, one ours and one theirs,  and take up the whole narrow road, I can't get the accessible bus through.  And how do I know which line to put which bus in anyway because, as I said, I can't tell when they pull in, who's they are.  So I don't want WOP buses in our lot.  I hope she can work that out.

It was very cold this morning when I got out to my car; I had to scrape a thin layer of ice off of the windows.  It is by far the coldest morning we've had of the three.  Despite having added a turtle neck sweater to my three layers of Olympic togs, I am freezing cold.  I spend a lot more time in the trailer today.  But eventually the sun comes up and it gets nice and warm again.

Olga and I let our crew go early again but we stay behind to get into a golf cart with Jessica and tour the top lot where we will load spectators and suss out the area and potential issues.  We come up with positions for each of Olga's crew and work through a few other kinks.  We sign out at just after 2:00 p.m. and I am ready for my four days off.

As I write this blog, my phone rings.  It's Jessica.  Tomorrow's staging supervisor, who hasn't worked yet, just called to say she won't be coming in.  Can I come in?  I say yes.  So no day off for me just yet.  And tomorrow is going to be 'fun'.  The parking lot is used by a church for overflow parking and hundreds of cars will be using the road we blocked off for the past couple of days.  Oh joy!!  But the parking lot attendants will use it as practice for the flood of vehicles we expect to get once spectators arrive and I am glad for the extra hours.  It turns out that with my new schedule of four days on and four off, all but one week I will only get 30 hours.  That coupled with the pay reduction, I won't be making anywhere near what I first thought I would when I was hired by the agency back in October.

Olga With Dan, One of Her Crew

Post Script: Can I just say how much I HATE the new Blogger and how it totally screws up where I want to place the pictures? I have fiddled around with this post for over an hour to try to get them right and I can't do it. I must leave it as is as I have to get to bed for my early rise tomorrow.

TRAINING DAY

I got an email from the manager of transport for Cypress Mountain.  Apparently he is still under the impression I am working up there.   Included in the email is my schedule for working on the mountain for the next three weeks.  I send a reply telling him I am not working on the mountain anymore.  Then I take a good look at the schedule.  Krikey!  He has me down for seven - twelve hour days in a row, one day off, and then eight days.  But that's not what has me shaking my head - I do work in film after all so that's not such a big deal.  A couple of times he has me working from 10:30 am to 10:30 pm and then starting the next day at 6am.  What??  Is he kidding?  Another sheet tells me to allow an hour to get from downtown Vancouver to Cypress on the buses provided.  And it's a 20 minute walk from the drop off to where I will be working.  And I am to show up for work 20 minutes early.  So that's an hour and forty minutes already and I haven't accounted for the drive into Vancouver.  Add an hour and a half for that, at least.  So that means three hours and ten minutes to get to work.  Say two hours to get home, and that's being conservative.   That leaves me three and a bit hours to sleep and get ready to go back - so basically two hours sleep, as I would need time to shower etc. and make and eat breakfast as they said today that we should arrive with a full tummy (and well rested?!?).  Really?  Has this guy ever heard of the term 'turn around'?  Or don't labour laws apply to the Olympics.  And if not, is it really a good idea to expect someone who is working around really big moving vehicles all day to be safe with that little sleep?

I can't TELL you how glad I am to not be working on that mountain.

I went out last night into Vancouver to go hear Prairie Dance Club with a friend from film.  They are such a good band.  I really hope that the right person hears them soon and gets them the exposure they need to become as famous as they deserve to be.

I don't get home and into bed until around 1 a.m. and the alarm is set for 7:45.  I have to be out of the door by 9 to be at training by 10.

I leave right on time and it takes me about 40 minutes to get to BCIT.  It takes me another 10 to figure out where on the huge campus I am supposed to be.  I finally spot a couple of security guys and they point me in the right direction.

When I get parked, and follow some people, I end up in a portable construction trailer that is empty of any furnishings but has about 40 people inside.  Apparently the desks, equipment, and a couple of large screen TV's will show up in a day or two.

People arrive late throughout the first hour of this training session.  How is that okay?  It doesn't bode well, I think, for them arriving on time for work.

We stand for the next two hours as a woman goes over what exactly happens at this location.  There are two separate areas; one for Whistler Olympic Park and the other for Whistler Sliding Center.  I have no idea yet which area I will be working at or exactly what I will be doing.  At each area there are three separate teams.  One is parking.  They will direct people coming to catch the buses as to where to park.  The other two teams are in charge of the buses.  One team, called the 'Staging Crew' will work with the buses lined up waiting for their turn to move ahead to the loading area staffed by the 'Spectator Systems Crew' - the third team.  On the giant accreditation placard I am wearing around my neck, it says I am a 'Staging Supervisor'.  The email I received to tell me to show up for training today said I am a 'Spectator Systems Supervisor'.  So who knows.

All I know is, by the time I have stood for two hours listening to the instructions from the parking manager, half of which don't apply to those of us with the buses, then walk around the parking lot in the drizzling rain for another hour to where the Sliding Center area is, and back again, and then listen to the manager for us bus bunch talk for another half an hour (out in the elements) about what parts we should ignore from earlier and, instead, what we need to know - I am feeling a bit underwhelmed.

When the agency informed me that the job I was initially hired for, RA Supervisor, was no longer being staffed by them and that I would be working at a 'Staging Area', I had some questions.  Namely, what would my job description be?  I was told that I would be overseeing a crew and mostly be doing scheduling and be responsible for keeping their spirits up.  Not exactly accurate information.  Scheduling is being done by the agency.   I am outside the whole 12 hours of my shift, working alongside the crew.  There's a long list I was given as to what my responsibilities are (if I end up being a 'Staging Supervisor').  None of it says 'keep up the spirits of the crew'.  Rather it says stuff like: sign out equipment; check in drivers that have to go directly to staging area - complete drivers log with name, bus number, mobile number, spot time and start time;  confirm assigned bus route with driver; brief driver of competition schedule, peak population movements, special movements, and possible break window; make sure route signs are properly placed in bus windows; communicate via walkie with System Supervisor to advance buses from staging to loading areas.   And this puzzling missive: Help coordinate Driver Seat Slide when it occurs in staging area.  Alrighty then.

If I work on the staging side of things, I will start my shift at 4 am, which is great because I will miss rush hour going in.  If I work on the loading side, I will start at 6 am which isn't so great because rush hour will have just started when I leave the house.  Or I will leave later in the day (better) for the unloading stage of the day - when everyone gets back from Whistler tired and cranky and can't find their car.   It's all a big mystery at this point as to what exactly I will be doing but I could be starting to do it as early as Thursday because we also bus staff up to the venues and they start going up this week to start their training.

I learned that I should have been at a classroom session that dealt with how to do most of my job, but I never got that memo from the agency so not only did I miss out on a whole bunch of important stuff I should know, I missed out on getting paid for it as well.  Speaking of which....

I was told that my rate would be $15 an hour as a supervisor, with one dollar of that being held back until I completed the contract.  If I was a manager (this is back when I thought I would be the RA Supervisor or Manage the Supervisors) it would be one dollar more.  Now I am informed that my rate is $12.44 an hour.  HUH?  Can they do that? 

And they told me that I would be working for two months, through the Paralympics.  Well that's not true.  I was told today that this 'Staging Area' is only operating for the Olympics and after February 28th, I am out of a job.

I am beginning to think that the people at the agency are all either super incompetent or way out of their league here.

IT'S OVER (THIS TIME IT'S A GOOD 'OVER')

I manage to get through all of the sorting and packing and take the last load of boxes up to my friends to store in her crawlspace. My landlord loads them into my van and then goes with me to unload them at the other end. There is no way I can pick up anything more than a couple of pounds in weight. My back is really dodgy.

Moving day arrives and I get up early and put my sheets in the wash. Then I set about packing up the rest of my bedding into big Rubbermaid containers. I pack the last of the bathroom stuff into a small suitcase. I carry a couple of lighter things out to my van and when I come around the corner back to my door, the young fellow who is going to help me move today is there. We introduce ourselves. He is alone. I ask him if he has help and he says yes, that his father-in-law is supposed to be here with the truck but he can't get an answer when he calls home. I don't know where he has come from but apparently not home. He tries calling again and leaves another message. We decide to load up all the stuff I am taking with me to my new place into my van while we wait. He gets stuck in. He's a really nice guy and we get along great, chatting away about all sorts of stuff.

An hour or so later he calls again and finally gets his wife. Soon his father-in-law arrives and they load my mattress and a couple of small pieces of furniture that is coming with me into the truck. We head over to Fort Langley to where I will be living and we unload everything. My friend thought we were coming in the afternoon and it's just after ten so she is scrambling to get painting stuff out of my bedroom. She spent the last two days painting it a pretty blue to cover up the dark green walls with the graffiti that her daughter had 'decorated' the room with.

We head back to the house, and the young guy tells me they have to go back to his place, for some reason. They take one load of the stuff I plan to garage sale to the barn and then leave saying they will be back in half an hour. I potter about, cleaning the place and putting my box-spring into a large mattress bag for storing. An hour or more goes by and they aren't back. I pop out to throw away some garbage and run into my landlady with another woman. This is the wife of the young guy who is helping me move. She has come to do some cleaning before they move their things in. I decide to go get some lunch as I am really hungry, having had nothing to eat so far today.

When I get back she is still cleaning and we get to chatting. She says her husband really likes me and that I remind him of a friend of theirs. We talk about what it's like living here; she wants to know if the road is noisy (yep) and where I put stuff in the kitchen. I tell her and she likes my way of organizing things so plans to copy it.

Time is going by, the guys are not returning and I am anxious to get to my new place and unpack, get my bed made, and settle in. I decide to leave. All that's left to move is the stuff in the little storage shed, a bookshelf, and my bed and dresser. Just as I am leaving, they arrive. I ask if he minds if I go, as there isn't much for me to do and he says he's fine with it. He tells me that, if my bookcase is for sale, he would like to buy it. I tell him it is. That means both big items are gone now as I wrote to the woman who came to see the red bookcase and told her she could have it for $130. Her husband came and got it last night.

I head back to my new place. It doesn't take too long to get my clothes unpacked and my bed made up. My friend pops her head in after an hour or so and is shocked to see how settled in I am already.

I put my mattress on top of the boxspring and mattress already in the room as I don't want to store it in the barn again. It got very damp when it was stored there over the spring and summer and I am afraid of it getting ruined. When I climb into bed, exhausted at the end of the day, I sink deep into the mattress. I guess the support the boxspring normally gives it is not there and that's why it's so soft. But it feels great and I sleep like a log.

It's now Friday and I just got back from a 'Mom's' group meeting. It was a nice way to spend the morning and as I sit here, I am where I couldn't wait to be a few days ago. It's over. The move is done. My stuff is sorted. I can relax for a few months without worrying about where to live. I can stay here at least until the beginning of August if I want to. Maybe longer. Maybe shorter if I decide to sail the Caribbean. I am seriously thinking about it.

But meanwhile, I got a call today from the agency. I am off the mountain and have been assigned to the Staging Area at BCIT, a local college in Burnaby.  There is no staging area in Surrey.  The woman who told me that didn't know what she was talking about.  And I go for my training, finally, on Sunday.