As with most trips, the planning starts a long time beforehand. For us, when we could see the potential that Melissa might be an athlete at the 2018 Winter games, we started staying home from our typical holidays and saving for it. The very first thing we purchased for our possible Olympic holiday was event tickets. In May 2016, 21 months before the competition, and without any guarantee that Melissa would be participating, Bobsleigh Canada sent us an email to order any Olympic event tickets we wanted before they went on sale to the general public. This purchase, along with looking at the price of the opening ceremonies, which was out of our budget, was our first hint that travelling to an Olympic games far from home could be an expensive ordeal.
While Melissa was busy training, competing and qualifying, we were trying to make travel arrangements. The factor to remember about Olympic games is that they are always in a new place so everything is new to everyone, including travel agents. Flights are relatively simple and was booked through our local travel agency. But where to stay? No one knew what would be the correct location for our circumstances. To make a long story short, we finally found an agency that has experience helping luge athletes’ families that we coordinated with for our accommodations. Lodging prices are extremely inflated (over four times regular rates) for the Olympic period so this was our determining factor to only be away from home for 10 days. Our travel plans were eventually made and we would just have to wait to see if we would actually be going. On Jan. 24, 2018, Melissa was officially named to the Bobsleigh Olympic team as a participating athlete and we knew that we were going to South Korea.
On the evening of Feb. 9 we watched the Opening Ceremonies from the comfort of our sofa. It was exciting to see Team Canada march in and we even caught a glimpse or two of Melissa. Some athletes limit themselves from social media, if it is a problem for their training, but Melissa was fortunate not to have to do this so we and others were able to communicate with her. This communication was key in supporting Melissa and wishing her the best from family, friends and Barrhead fans when she was going through the typical sports politics and the publicized drama of “who will be in Kaillie Humphries sled going for gold?”. Thank you so much to everyone for your loyalty and support!
On Saturday, Feb. 17, our group of four, Randy, Wendy, daughter Rebecca and her husband Landon, were off to South Korea. Or so we thought. The plane we should have taken from Edmonton to Vancouver was grounded due to a bird strike on it’s way to Edmonton and our flight was cancelled. There was no way to make our connecting 11 hour flight to South Korea. After spending the whole afternoon at the Edmonton airport, we were rerouted to Toronto for an overnight stay and we caught a 14 hour flight, which went back northwest over Canada, to Seoul, South Korea the next day. We arrived one day later than planned on Monday evening (their time). (Note that we had lost a day that we would regain later when travelling back.)
We travelled from the Incheon airport, on the West coast of South Korea, by high speed train, through the huge, never ending city of Soeul and as daylight went away we fell asleep. I managed somehow to be awakened about five minutes before our stop at Jinbu station (237 km from the airport) and rouse my fellow travellers into action. There we caught a taxi and attempted by GPS to find our lodging (15 km away) and were met by the owners and a young Korean man that knew English. This young man communicated to us what the owner wanted us to know and we never saw him again. The owners, a married man and woman, probably in their 50’s, didn’t know any English at all but they were very friendly. We stayed in a mountain chalet in the resort village of Alpensia where the sliding center/bobsleigh takes place. Randy and I walked into town and back (five km) for bottled water and breakfast food. We were able to sleep well even after having slept on the train.
The next day, Tuesday, Feb. 20, was the first day of the women’s bobsleigh competition. Due to an error of our own, we had to make our way to the coastal city of Gangneung to pick up some reissued event tickets to be able to attend our daughter’s race. We walked three km to the free bus shuttle terminal. After figuring out this inconvenient, but free bus travel we caught a bus to Heonggye five km away. Then we took a bus to Jinbu train station, 18 km away. The high speed train took us east, 41 km to the coastal city. Here some helpful English speaking volunteers directed us to another bus station where we took a round about way close to where we needed to be. After walking a couple of blocks we had arrived at our destination, the event ticket center for Canadians. What a relief…we actually were able to go to the events we had come all the way to Korea for. This ticketing agent is located at Canada House.
Canada House is a wonderful concept. This is a secure place to feel at home with other Canadians, consume Canadian food and beverages, watch Olympic sports in English and have free internet, and also where athletes come to celebrate. This particular Canada House was a temporary structure set up in the city of Gangneung. The main sponsor is Canadian Tire so their furniture and logos are predominate. The largest area is open to the general public who had to purchase tickets and line up to get in. This area has a very large screen TV and plenty of seating with the bleachers built in the shape of a maple leaf. Pre-registered family and friends of athletes are allowed access to another area with free snacks and more comfortable, intimate seating and several smaller screens. There is also an athletes only area and an Air Canada flight deck where you can sit outside and get free poutine in the afternoon. On our first visit to Canada House we watched with other Canadians as Cassie Sharp won Gold in Halfpipe followed by Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir winning gold in figure skating. You could have heard a pin drop waiting for the judges score. Then there was loud cheering and a standing ovation in Canada House. We had goosebumps and it finally dawned on us that we were actually at the Olympic Winter Games in South Korea. We had a wonderful afternoon at Canada House!
We walked back to the train station through a beautiful park on a hill with pine trees and lookout points. The train took us back 41 km to Jinbu train station. We caught a bus 18 km to Heonggye where we had an “English” supper. We then caught a bus to a transfer station to catch another bus to go a total of eight km to the Alpensia sliding center. This bus was hot and we were dressed for winter. (In general taxis, buses and trains were uncomfortably hot.) We joined the thousands of other spectators making their way up the mountain on foot to the Women’s bobsleigh event starting at 8:50 pm. My package of gum, needed for my ears for airplane takeoffs and landings, was confiscated at the security check point. As pre-planned, a CBC news crew was meeting us about a quarter of the way up to follow/film us for the evening. I pretended being interested in taking pictures of things just to catch a rest every so often in case they showed the footage. As we have learned over the last year, film crews take hours of footage just to air maybe a minute of material. But you never know what they will show so at first you act like how you want to be viewed on TV but eventually you just act normal, or not normal, and forget they are there…that is what they show everyone. We watched both races from corner 14 of the bobsleigh track. The first run we stayed in our purchased seats but for the second run we moved down into the standing area because it was cold in the higher bleachers due to the wind. The humidity and wind chill is high and freezes a person right into your bones. It is different than our cold here in Alberta. We watched as the sleds went zipping past us and hoped that Melissa had a good start and safe ride down the track. Melissa’s pilot, and friend, Christine deBruin, drove great and at the end of the first day they were in eighth place out of 20 competitors. We had done our part, waving our flags, cheering for Canada and Melissa in particular. Now we had to join the throngs of spectators trudging back down the bobsleigh venue and then 3 km to our chalet (the last km is uphill). We never saw any taxis for hire in Alpensia. After this long day and lots of travel days we were exhausted and slept well.
See next week’s Barrhead Leader for Part 2.
