As of yesterday, roads in Richmond are closed. They’ve been closed in downtown Vancouver for about a week now I think. All in preparation for the Olympics!
Apparently, I cannot speak for the majority of metro Vancouver, but I for one am majorly excited! Yes, getting to work is going to be hellerific (I work directly across from the airport and down the road from the Olympic Oval and the south Terminal of the airport which is where all the dignitaries and politicians will be flying into) and everything will be busy all the time, but it’s the Olympics you guys! This is going to put our city on the map for real.
There’s been a lot of articles posted lately about how the games are costing 10x as much as was originally forecasted. And that kind of sucks and I’m not happy about it. But in their defense, nobody saw the economic crisis coming and that definitely was a major factor in that happening. And on the plus side, the Olympics are pretty much a pre-packaged stimulus package! I know a bazillion people who are working the Olympics, not just for the weeks during, but have been gainfully employed by Vanoc for quite some time now. Think of all the jobs that would be missing if we didn’t have the Olympics. I think things would be much worse. Plus, it’s all an investment. Yes the building and renovation of venues cost money, but these will last us for a very long time. Now that we have an Olympics speed skating oval, we can host world championships. Same with everything up in Whistler. It will be bringing people and business to the city for a long time.
In any case, I have my mittens, I have my hockey tickets, I’m good to go! Yay!
