Friday, September 25, 2009

Nice To Know We Are Safe

From terrorists that is. We live on the Inside Passage of Vancouver Island, looking out over the water towards Powell River which is on the mainland. Whistler is a hundred KM's or so south of Powell River. Whistler, as you know, is where the 2010 Winter Olympics will be held in February.

Recently there have been more and more "training" exercises held by the Canadian Armed Forces who are preparing for I don't know what. There are screaming overflights of jet fighters and huge helicopters throbbing past almost every day. They usually fly along the beach which is only a hundred feet from our house, causing the house to shake in the process. Yesterday a huge bomber made several circuits over the water out front. I can only hope it did not have bombs aboard!

I guess an international event like the Olympics is a perfect excuse for our armed forces to spend millions of taxpayers cash to show their antiquated equipment off to the world but enough already! Pick up your toys and go play somewhere else. Spend my tax money on trying to figure out how to ensure a little snow falls for the occasion. Downhill ski racing in a rainstorm on gravel will look good on TV and will really sell our Province as a winter destination!

The Olympics will be here. It will cost us millions (maybe with a "B") and it will take decades to pay it off, if ever. I voted "no" for having the damn things here in the first place but as usual I voted with the minority. Either that or they borrowed the "George Bush" software to count the vote. "One for you, two for me ......."

I am happy that we will be in Mexico when they are on. We will watch them on StarChoice from somewhere on the Yucatan while enjoying the tropical sunshine. No one I know would be able to afford a ticket to go and see it in person anyway. It will be a good time to be away from Canada!

3 comments:

  1. Hey Croft, Kelly from Whistler here. Looks like we'll be staying for the Olympics unless we can rent our place out for an entire month. It doesn't make sense to rent for 3-4 days a couple of times.
    Speaking of the security thing, last Sunday night around 8:45 there was a huge flood lamp hovering around the back yard of our small condo complex 1 km north of the village, as it turns it was the military doing a night time land, thankfully they landed near the village. I wish they'd let us know when this type of stuff is happening but, that's just a pie in the sky hope since we can't figure out what what's happening with transportation let alone the military. Let's hope for snow and no use to use the military and get this overwith, it's tough on us locals who really just want things back to normal. The new motto here, "can't wait till 2011" when it's over.
    Maybe we'll rent our place and travel to Mexico which would be interesting.

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  2. Sorry to hear that Kelly. I do not have very good feelings over the entire thing. My granddaughters, bot figure skaters, inquired about volunteering at the rink. They were told they had to provide their own accommodations and were not allowed to be at the rink or even observe unless they were actually on shift. So much for that experience!

    I don't know who could afford to buy tickets for any of the events. It will be a very chaotic time for everyone in whistler and it sure would have been nice if you could have rented your place out. That would have gone a long way to make up for the inconvenience.

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  3. Okay, now you are making your place LESS desirable. ;)

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