2012 BC Winter Games

Since most of this week was spent volunteering for the games, I'm going to have a blog full of pictures.  My job as host at Sovereign Lake Nordic Centre consisted of long stretches of boredom punctuated by short periods of action, excitement and chaos.  I could write volumes about the personalities of my fellow volunteers, but I won't.  The kids were the real kick.  I'd almost forgotten why I loved teaching.  Kids can be irritating and moody, but their often just self conscious, and when they're up, their vitality is contagious; although it's also exhausting.  My main jobs were distributing lunches and medals.  I was impressed by how volunteers can pull together such a huge show.  Nothing ever went exactly as our reams of written instructions suggested it should, but there were no major gaffs and I was impressed by how everyone concentrated on the main event.  The presentation of medals always went off with a solemnity worthy of the impressive efforts the athletes had made in the races.  When I took pictures, I concentrated on one girl from the Okanagan Zone because I met her on the first day and was curious to see how she would do.  She has a fairly minor handicap and was the first person to enter the BC Winter Games on a sit-ski.  She did so well that she even entered the final day of team relays as the only handicapped skier.

Emily and some of the other members of the Okanagan girls' team early Friday morning.  They were talking and texting when I asked them if I could take this picture.

Emily waiting for her turn in the Sunday relay

Waiting for the hand off

Coming in to hand off the baton to the third member of the team

Poling off the course

Biathlon was also at Sovereign Lake

Some of the colourful biathlon crew

The winner of the Sunday relay crosses the finish line

Jumping off the podium after the medals presentation.   The Okanagan team won the silver medal, but they were third in this event.

The widow with one wing

A few good things have come from last Sunday’s accident.  First, it has given me another practical application of the theory of relativity.  After a dislocation, all other physical pain seems easily bearable.  And after a few weeks of work with the people at SSASS, a handicap such as a temporarily useless arm seems minor.  Second, it has lead to an exchange of e-mails with Jay and a conversation with Barb Clegg and Elizabeth and Ross Murray in Thunder Bay that I would not have had otherwise.  Third, it has probably been the cause of my getting an MRI, which I was waiting for anyway, a bit earlier than I otherwise would have.  And last but not least, it has given me another reason to be thankful, as I have been so often in the last few years, for the love and help of family and friends, old and new.

This has been, perforce, a quiet week, no more skiing or working with SSASS.  By Tuesday, I had made an appointment for an MRI in Kelowna on March 11, exactly 2 years since Jim died, and another with an orthopedic surgeon on March 19.  I can drive, so was able to tutor and meet with Mi-Sun.  I’ve walked around Vernon quite a bit and had my haircut.  I usually can’t resist cutting a little here and there, the way you might slice a strip off a piece of cake, just to even it, and then have to cut a bit more.  Now that I can’t raise my right arm, all that has to stop.  And unfortunately, I got injured at a time when I’d clipped my hair into a real mess.  It’s been professionally fixed up now, but as usual I’m not completely happy with it.  It’s too manicured looking, and I long to snip it but can’t.  My mother used to say, “Our hair is not our crowning glory, Jan.”  She was right about that; although, of course, I didn’t agree with her at the time.

Me in more active times, with Marie on our last ski at Sovereign Lake

The new activity centre.  It's a pain management device that I sit down and put around my body.  It involves some kind of magnetic realignment of something or other.  I was lent it by an enthusiastic ski instructor and salesman who also volunteers with SSASS.  His wife has MS and uses it when she's in pain.  It apparently works for her.  I find it cumbersome and have not felt any benefit so far, but it was kind of him to lend it to me.

A joke about BC that was in the 'Globe and Mail' this Sat.  Click on the picture and it will enlarge.  The suggestion was taken more seriously in BC than it seems to have been by the Globe cartoonist.  I really like his take on it, though.

Another joke in this Saturday's Globe

A mating pair of mallards in Polson Park today

The same pair taken without the telephoto

Two odd mallards in Pollson Park.  The near one is the mate of the male next to her.  He stuck by her the whole time I was taking pictures, and when I got too close, they swam off together.  The albino didn't seem to have a mate, although there were two albinos.

Ogopogo in Polson Park.  He's all over the Okanagan.

  

You are old father William

The inversion lasted for about a week, and I drove up and out of it into the sun to ski every day but one.  Even though I hardly cook, never bake and make very little mess, I still have to do laundry once in a while and sweep the kitchen and hallway every week or so.  And then there’s grocery shopping and a few other chores that have to be done sometime.  The patterns of many years are slowly changing, and it’s not all bad. 

Seung A and Jun Yung, my Korean students are fun to teach.  I have each of them for an hour a week; of course the class goes overtime.  At $20.00 an hour, which Mela informs me is what her cleaning lady makes, I won’t get rich doing it.  But I do love teaching, and these kids are ideal.  They’re serious students, but looking for fun too.  Their mom is lovely.  She is having a difficult time at the moment recovering from eye surgery and living in a strange land alone with her children.  Her husband stayed in Korea to work.  She’s beautiful and looks delicate, but is actually very strong, I think.  They are only here for six months, and she wants to make the most of it.  She does a lot to get the kids into situations where they will speak English.  My friend Mi-Sun and I were laughing about it because she is just the opposite.  Working at the car wash, she is constantly forced to deal in English with people who speak only English and are often not too understanding of a person who doesn’t immediately understand them and satisfy their needs.  She can’t believe how they stare at her and don’t seem to know what on earth she’s saying when she knows she’s speaking English.  But her pronunciation is often just enough off to make her incomprehensible to people who are not used to accents other than their own.  Every Friday, she brings me lists of words and expressions dealing with everyday car wash matters and we struggle to improve her pronunciation and knowledge of idioms.  Consequently, when she has time off she rushes to places where she will be with her Korean friends, many of which involve church, which I can’t get her to stop calling ‘churchy’.

Rees and Shae were good this week.  Rees skied better; although, he hardly stopped talking about his new favorite movie, ‘Cars Two’.  He gave a DVD of ‘Cars One’ to Jenny, my fellow teacher and me.  Now we have to watch it and report back, especially our comments on Mater, the tow truck.  Shae arrived in her pajamas with her mother who was clearly close to cracking.  Shae had been crying on and off for no clear reason all morning.  The mom wisely left, and we distracted Shae into her ski boots and actually got her skiing; although, she was much more interested in looking at the snow sculptures, of which there are many in the village now.  When we returned to the SSASS room 2 hours later, her mother appeared rested and ready to tackle the rest of the day.  We may not teach Shae to ski, but I think we will play a small part in saving her mother’s sanity.

I have just returned from a Sunday SSASS training session that started at 8:30am on a warm sunny morning.  The morning went well.  The instructors who offered the class are fun and full of helpful techniques.  The conditions were a bit icy, but things seemed to be softening in the sun by noon, so I decided to carry on to the afternoon class.  That was a mistake.  On the first run I was involved in a crash that threw me into the air and down on my right shoulder.  The pain was so intense that I knew I’d dislocated it, but I had to endure the lengthy procedures that the Ski Patrols are obliged to go through.  They are especially concerned about broken necks, backs and concussions.   Then it took ages to get me wrapped up in the meat wagon and down to the patrol shack for more tests.  Fortunately there was an emergency ward doctor on the hill who came down, identified the problem and gave me a shot of morphine and some other drug.  As the patrols had already given me ‘laughing gas’, I was feeling light headed and dizzy but the pain was still intense.  Finally Mo, who had stayed with me the whole time and is an angel, was able to get me ready to get into her car for the ride to Vernon Hospital.  It was so much like the time Jim drove me from Liz and Ross’s camp to the Thunder Bay Hospital, dripping wet with a dislocated shoulder after diving into Loon Lake.  I’m accident prone, and Jim had resigned himself to being the one to get me out of scrapes or if possible prevent them from happening in the first place.  I miss him daily for this and many other reasons.  His earthy, dry wit often put things into perspective for me.  But my new friends were very helpful.  And after going through the same procedure that I had experienced in TBay, the anesthetic and the goon squad, I awoke almost pain free, Mo drove me home and now I am resting in the haze of painkillers.  If I’m smart, I’ll ‘process’ this information and modify some of my more reckless behavior.

Sorry, no pictures this week. 

Temperature inversion

This weekend I experienced the wonder of the weather inversion that members of the outdoors club had told me about.  On Saturday, Mo and John picked me up at 7:45 am to drive to Silver Star for the Carter Classic.  It’s the big team race/fundraiser for the adaptive ski program.  It was a damp, grey morning in Vernon, but as we drove into the mountains we rose above the blanket of fog into bright sun and blue sky.  It was a warm sunny day of spring skiing, perfect for the race.  The peaks of the Monashees were brilliant white in the distance.  I had a few good runs before and after the race.

 The SSASS room was swarming with racers and workers when we arrived.  Andy, the wonderful, generous but completely spacey man who presides over the whole thing was in his usual state of semi stammering dither.  Pete and Noreen and a few of the other very competent organizers were going about their tasks.  I was given two jobs before I finally settled into my role as screamer.  I stood at the bottom of the racecourse between the timer and the people who told the racers their times and yelled the bib number and time from the former to the latter.  And if you think that’s not an important job, you’re wrong.  It was vital.  The Carter Classic is a team race, four members on each team, one of whom must be a student in the adaptive ski program or a graduate who may or may not be on the SSASS race team.  Each person gets two runs down the course.  After they hear their first time, they have to estimate what their second time will be and the winner is the racer who comes closest in their second run to the time they estimated.  So you can see how important it was that the person yelling the time after the first runs had a good voice, which I do.  Many people complemented me on it after the race.  To add to the confusion, there were prizes for best team costume as well.  The winners were three women dressed as Super Chicks, with flowing caps with chicks painted on them.  Their man, whose well into his eighties, wore a cape that had a softie chick stitched on it and the words ‘Chick Magnet’ painted in bold letters underneath.  All this mayhem was followed by lunch and prizes.  Everyone was given a free ticket for the draws, so by the end almost everyone had won at least one of the many prizes that had been donated by Vernon businesses, except me.  It made me think very seriously about ever buying another 649 ticket.  

Today I awoke to the same damp, grey day in Vernon.  I enjoyed the usual slow breakfast, read and coffee and then got ready to go cross-country skiing at Sovereign.  Again I drove through the low-lying fog into brilliant sun.  This time I had the camera with me and took some pictures.

Tomorrow I will meet the first of the two Korean kids I’m going to tutor in English for the next few months, until I go to Korea in May.

Some of the runs at Sovereign Lake Nordic Centre

The run I was skiing on

The view from the road to Sovereign Lake looking down on what should be Lake Okanagan, Kalamalka Lake and the town of Vernon but what appears to be one frozen lake with Ogopogo, the Loc  Ness Monster of Lake Okanagan, trapped in it while rising

Another view of the fogged in valley from Marie's deck

The magical hoar frost that crystallized on everything at the fringe of the fog.  There was some in my yard, but nothing like this. 

Grass transformed into lace by the frost