Olympics Wrapup

Today, Sunday March 21, is the first day of spring. It's also the date of the closing ceremonies of the 10th Paralympic Winter Games, and marks the end of a long journey for Vancouver (and for us as well -- the first round of tickets we bought were on October 31, 2008!).

I've always enjoyed by-the-numbers summaries, so that's what I'll do here. Because I went to a Paralympic event on March 20th, the world "Olympics" will include the Paralympics as well.

10,429 - photos taken during the Olympics. This ranged from 196 curling photos to 2,067 short track speed skating photos.
2,285 - photos deleted for blurriness or other problems (22%). This ranged from 54 Paralympic super combined photos to 472 Olympic ski jump and skeleton photos.
270 - number of minutes it generally took to get to Whistler from Seattle during the Olympics, including a drive to Squamish and a bus from there to Whistler (about 30 miles further North).
240 - distance, in miles, between Seattle and Whistler.
188 - photos from the Olympics which I thought best represented the experience. See them here.
48 - the number of tickets I originally ordered in the Phase 1 ticket lottery to 24 different events (the maximum allowed). It took me 14 days to plan this order, which sought to gain tickets to at least one of each different sport discipline and see at least one event in every Olympic venue.
16 - the number of tickets I received from my initial Phase 1 lottery order (for 8 different events) or just 25% of my request.
15 - the number of different sports disciplines appearing in the Olympics.
11 - the number of competitions I attended.
10 - the number of days I was in Canada during the Olympics.
10 - the number of lanes open at Canadian customers.
9 - the number of different venues hosting Olympic competitions
9 - the number of different sports disciplines I attended (60%).
8 - the number of round-trips to Canada which I made during the Olympics.
6 - the number of venues in which I saw competitions held. I did not visit the Richmond Olympic Oval (venue for speed skating), Canada Hockey Place (venue for men's ice hockey and ice hockey finals), nor Cypress Mountain (venue for snowboard and freestyle skiing events). However, I did volunteer in February 2009 for the freestyle skiing world cup events at Cypress Mountain, so I think I have a pretty good idea what it would have been like.
6 - the number of tickets I ordered in Phase 2 (which wasn't a lottery) to augment my initial purchase, for a total of 3 more events.
5 - different people, including Sarah, who attended at least one event with me. (7 if you count people who independently bought tickets to events we attended; 9 if you also count people who used my tickets to see an event we were not able to attend because we were at another event at the same time; 13 if you could people who used my tickets to see events).
3 - nights spent in Canada, all of which were in the trailer. 2 people around us turned around and wanted to know where we found such cheap lodging when a survey-taker in Whistler asked us how much we were paying to spend the night ($100).
2 - the number of medals I could touch (both bronze).
1 - pair general admission tickets that I had were canceled due to lack of snow (at Cypress Mountain). Not coincidentally, CoSport has yet to refund the purchase price of the same 1 pair of tickets. (Boo CoSport, boo!)
1 - ticket on which I lost money (I did not recoup fees as I had to sell last-minute at face value)
1 - event on which I made money by selling the pair of tickets (biathlon on February 14th) for about twice what I had paid. I would have love to have gone, but the schedule just didn't work out.
1 - new world records I personally witnessed (possibly more, but I just wasn't paying attention to the scoreboards all the time!)
0 - tickets that I had which went to waste. If I couldn't go to an event or if I had extra tickets, I was always able to sell the ticket or find a friend to go with me.

See a set of the best photos from the Olympics, along with descriptive captions.