Can We Talk About Anything But Hockey?

	It was a sad day for our hockey team. After dominating play for two periods, they fell to a fluke deflection with seconds left in the game. A bad finish to a few of our players’ national team career. The audience was full of VIPs – the Prime Minister, the Liberal leader Michael Ignatief, BC’s Premier Gordon Campbell and Rick Hansen. We all felt sad for the team that has worked so hard but fell on hard luck in their last two games. I actually started the day unexpectedly being awakened by a call that CBC needed a live interview in 45 minutes…Splashed some water on my face and shaved, brushed my teeth and out I was off . I ended up doing an interview without an interviewer to look at. I stared at a camera while the interviewer in Toronto posed questions through an earpiece connected to a cell phone. Then a live interviewer showed up and wanted to ask a few more questions to which I am asked to answer in both English and French although she doesn’t herself speak French. Surprisingly, I gather from the e-mails I received that this might be the best viewed interview I did to date. I had the morning off and skied with my daughter who had  recovered from her cliff hanging adventure. She really wanted to try the Peak to Peak lift, a wonder of engineering connecting Whistler and Blackcomb peaks. We ended up getting lucky and got one of two gondolas with a glass floor so we g o t the full impression of how high the gondola is off the valley. As we drove back, a call came in that I had  a press conference Sunday AM with a Federal Minister and I’m expected to speak for three minutes. However, we didn’t  know what the press release was all about and might not get the details until minutes before I go on. Funny that it almost feels normal to do this now – this last minute rush. I generally prefer to prepare carefully for important activities rather than improvise. That being said, I often get better feedback from my “improvisations” because they feel less scripted and more natural. We stopped at Squamish for lunch and saw  a horse pull up to the Tim Horton’s drive-through window. I snapped  a quick photo with the camera on my phone. The day finished with a late meeting to discuss the closing ceremonies which will be televised live nationally. However, they were to be held outside in Whistler and the weather forecast is atrocious so we needed  to set contingency plans in case anyone got  hypothermic. At this point we’re still in third place by Gold medal ranking and 4th on total medals – still our best result to date with another day at alpine and two at Nordic. Curling semis and finals go on tomorrow PM as well. The games are drawing to an end just as we start feeling comfortable with the place – as is always the case. Pictures today of my daughter at Blackcomb peak (hiding behind goggles), the view from the gondola, the picture a colleague took of me, my daughter and Brian McKeever – and the first Canadian Paralympic Gold Medal at home games. And – why not, Stephen Harper signing autographs between periods at the hockey game.

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