Asbury College at the Olympics

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

My apologies that it has been a while since I have written on here. I haven’t had a whole lot of time to sit at a computer the last three days. Saturday, I had the privilege of working at the downhill venue, Sestriere Borgata, where I again assisted commentators. They were mostly the same people from last Tuesday, except this time I had the pleasure of meeting some new folks from the BBC and Polish television (with whom I had a firm but pleasant exchange about why they could not commentate a race in San Secario from Borgata). It was a bit more hectic because we had to keep distributing reports about weather delays (there was a blizzard that delayed the race) and such, but all in all it was not that bad. LauraJo and I mostly sat in one of the commentary booths and watched the Men’s Super-G.

Sunday, I went skiing in the Alps. It would have been a lot more fun, except that it was again blizzard-like conditions, and this time it did not really let up. I will say that the runs are much longer here than where I grew up skiing (shameless shout-out to Perfect North Slopes in Lawrenceburg, IN). I skied for about two hours up in Claviere and then had some authentic Piedmont hot chocolate (meaning that it is literally chocolate in a tea cup) before returning to Cesana. Since it was my one-week anniversary of coming to Cesana, I decided it would only be fitting to return to the restaurant that greeted me with open arms and pizza, La Cabasa: the curious little family-owned-and-operated Italian-Norwegian ristorante. While I was waiting for my pizza al prosciutto, I couldn’t help but start laughing at a talk show that was on the TV in the dining room. Let me take a moment to talk to all my fellow Americans out there about TV in a place like Italy. It is so different. Not only can I of course not understand a word there saying, but their style of production and editing and all those things are often quite, well, comically confusing, if you’re not used to it. So, I just burst out laughing in this dining room, and the family that owns the place, who had themselves just finished eating at an adjacent table next to me, saw me and started laughing themselves. The mother came to my table and started asking me in Italian why I was laughing and what I had been doing that day, and so I carried on in broken Italian and had some help with translation from some of the other workers. So anyway, they love me there now, and I have to say the feeling’s mutual.

Yesterday, wow. Yesterday was the hardest but most rewarding day I’ve had here. Yesterday also includes the story to which the title of this entry is tied. Our call time was six-thirty in the morning, which meant be at the bus by six, which meant wake up around five. It was my day to finally be close to the action: I was going to be in the mixed zone during the running of the Men’s Giant Slalom here at Sestriere Colle. The mixed zone is a large, designated, fenced-off area with so many corridors that it truly is a sort of maze. It lies at the end of a course, and it is where both broadcasters and journalists (two very separate occupations at any Olympics, they have very different rights and resources) can get important footage/photos and interview athletes. My job was to keep the press out of the area where only rights-holding broadcasters could go and directing people to where they were supposed to get interviews with the athletes. This meant getting shouted at by a few Australian journalists and fielding mean looks from others in the press area. The upsides? I got to use my French quite a bit help some people. I exchanged small talk with the reporters from NBC and CBC, both of whom were very kind and professional. I got to help direct athletes to where they were supposed to go as they walked behind me and toward the press. I got to talk with the skier from the Czech Republic. I met an official from the IOC and I’m pretty sure that the second-in-charge, the man under Jacques Rogge, walked right through my gate. And, of course, I had a “front-row seat” (even though I was standing the whole time) to a great race.

And now the story for which you have been waiting so patiently. LauraJo, three other co-workers, and I boarded the bus to go “home” at about 4:00 in the afternoon. I was absolutely exhausted, and I almost immediately fell asleep as I sat down. As the bus pulled out to leave, however, they realized that it was going the opposite direction, to Pragelato, the home of ski-jumping and cross-country. They quickly yelled at the driver and asked him to stop, causing quite a ruckus as they hurried off the bus. As they watched the bus pull away, Fulvio suddenly looked around and asked, “Hey, where is Taylor?”

Oh yeah. Sleepy Taylor was dozing away on the bus. The gentlement seated next to me woke me up when the bus came to a stop. I looked around and said, “Is this Cesana?” I saw that it wasn’t, and I whipped my head around to look for my friends, and they were all gone. I looked at the clock and realized that I had slept for a solid half hour and that they must have realized that this was the wrong bus and gotten off quickly without waking me. Appreciating the time to sleep and realizing that it was probably just an accident that my friends had left me, I waited for the bus to head back to Cesana and pulled in there at about six. They were glad to see me back at the housing complex and laughed when I told them my story.

I got a good ten hours of sleep last night, and I am here early at work which is why I have had all this time to write this huge post. My last day of work is Saturday, and I will begin my journey home Sunday, arriving at my house Monday night. I miss everyone, and I can’t wait to see everybody. Ciao!