Thursday, February 4, 2010
Well, I finally made it... and so did everyone else. In just a day and a half of time there have been so many small “things” that have happened between all of us here... a forgotten passport, a fun time at immigration, learning a whole new city and dealing with a boat-load of camera gear! (BTW... none of the above besides the gear was me!)
We flew into Seattle and met up on Wednesday to drive up to Vancouver. One of us for got our passport to get into Canada! I won’t say who it was... but in this department when you “limp” you get jumped on! This was a big “limp”! It all worked out in the end but it won’t be forgotten for a long time! ;-)
So, you know I was worried about the border crossing, right? Well, it was like a ghost town! Very weird! I just drove up to an empty border crossing booth and had absolutely no wait. I did have to play 20+ questions with the Canadian agents, however. They just couldn’t understand what three cars of people were doing at the Olympics and why those jobs weren’t done by Canadians. Well, they were done with Canadians but there aren’t enough people in Nikon Canada to handle the whole thing! So, after a few minutes of back and forth we got through. Others that flew in today got pulled aside by immigration and had to deal with 200 questions instead! Once you are in and have an Olympic credential there’s no problem. Except if the Olympic accreditation department messes up your birthday and you are denied your credential. That has happened to three so far! But, it all got fixed and we are all good now! These sort of situations really make you think on your toes!
For those who thought that I was going to photograph the games... here’s what I’ve been doing. Not quite as glamorous. We started in Seattle at 5am yesterday morning and after getting 23 skids of gear in last night we finished at 2am. That’s a long day. Today we got there at 9am and unloaded it all. Here are some pictures from the day. Like I said... not so glamorous! :-)
This is what the Main Press Center (MPC) looks like inside... it’s a big place
Comments Widget
Here are the skids that got brought to our service depot area. They were in these bolted together cases that needed to be taken apart and then put back together for storage. And, they were pretty heavy, too.
Mark Suban set up a camera to do a time-lapse of the set up. Maybe I’ll have that for you tomorrow.
Our Japanese counterparts gave us Americans a small gift... Japanese rice cookies that are really good. It was very nice of them to do that...
As we started getting to the end of the day the cabinets were getting very full of loaner gear. Here’s a picture of my boss, Bill Pekala in front of a lot of cameras!
It’s a very cool city so far. I’ve been starting to figure out the train and bus schedules and routes. I have a lot of time to shoot here and hope to have some good stuff for you from various places around town. Right now just think I need some sleep.
I headed over to where some of my friends are staying and they have a great pub/restaurant a stones throw away from their house! I jut love a place that has 24 microbrews on tap, a beer menu, knowledgeable servers and beer samplers! And, the food was really good, too! I’ll get the name later because I know I’ll be back there!
Right now it’s pretty quiet here in Vancouver. It’ll be a week until the really good Olympic stuff happens. But, in the meantime I’ll do my best to keep you up to date on the preparations. Thanks for joining me and now it’s time to get some sleep!
