My Surprise Valentine

Look who came to visit me in Vancouver!

Tom was so sweet to surprise me on Valentine’s Day. I had a crazy busy day on Feb. 14. We had four U.S. medalists we were guiding through Managing Victory and a lot of kinks in the system to work through. It made for a stressful day, and going into Monday, I still had yet to make it out of the Main Press Center to see any Olympic competition or even just walk through the packed, festive streets.

I was just going to bed Sunday night when Tom called and told me my Valentine was in the lobby. I went down in my PJs… and it was him! What a treat!

It was so fun to have him here at the Olympics. Suddenly it was a great day!

Plus, on Monday we had things smoothed out for Managing Victory, so I was able to plug people into the system and then get away for some fun with Tom!

Thanks to my friends at Visa, we got Tom a ticket to men’s snowboardcross (SBX) up at Cyprus Mountain. After some fast and furious work in the morning, we took off with my coworker Maureen and made it to the course just in time for the quarterfinals.

Maureen and I have media passes, which get us into standing areas right at the base of the course, in front of the bleachers. Tom had a bleachers ticket, but we successfully fooled the VANOC security folks by giving him an extra pass we have for the International Broadcast Center (nothing to do with SBX), which looks similar to our media badges. So, they let him on through with us!

Snowboardcross is FUN! It’s a super exciting sport to watch live. Two Americans, Seth Wescott and Nate Holland, were in the same heat, so they had to both finish 1-2 in the quarterfinal and the semifinal, which they did, to make it into the final.

The crowd was rowdy with their cowbells and Canadian flags. It came down to Seth, Nate, a Canadian and a Frenchman in the final. Seth is a Visa-sponsored athlete (hence Tom’s ticket), and he won the gold medal at the 2006 Olympic Games, so there was a lot of hope riding on him.

The race was super exciting! The Canadian led the whole way, so the crowd was going crazy, and Seth came from behind to win it at the very end. His board crossed the finish line just inches ahead of the Canadian’s. We were jumping up and down!

Doesn’t the Canadian (on the left) look like Hugh Grant?

After the event, we hustled back down the mountain, because I had a sponsor event at USA House. The event was to announce BP as a new USOC sponsor at a press conference and media reception.

I had all of the message points ready for our two USOC execs and there were two BP speakers. In addition, our marketing division had secured Picabo Street, and as the event approached... there was no Picabo!

Perhaps I jinxed good old Picabo, because she was a no show! So with the event starting in 3 minutes, I ran through the house looking for another athlete to speak and found women’s curler Debbie McCormick, who was relaxing with her teammates on their last day prior to competition. She’s a three-time Olympian, and she agreed to say a few words. So as the first execs were speaking, I was scribbling down notes for Debbie, and she came through big-time. You know, the whole: “On behalf of the entire U.S. Olympic Team, we want to say thank you to BP for their generous support and for helping us make our Olympic dreams come true.” She was great.

So BP was thrilled, we got some good media hits, including CNBC, and the event went off well.

Then I was back to Tom! We wandered through the streets looking for a good place for dinner, and realized quickly that every single restaurant had waiting lines. The streets were just packed with Canadians in red everywhere, wandering, hooping and hollering, watching street performers, filing in and out of bars.

We were a little stumped on what to do, and we started talking with a Columbian-Canadian guy outside of an Irish pub. He was super helpful and nice – a local – and he brought us up past the line and straight inside, and even got us a dinner table where we could watch the crowds outside and the pairs figure skating final on TV. It was so ideal!

So amidst the Olympic backdrop, we had a great date night. After dinner we joined our new Canadian friends for some drinks and had the perfect finish to our Olympic day.

Tom had to leave this morning, but his visit was such a pick-me-up and we had such a wonderful time. He’s coming out for a longer visit at the end of the Games, and I can’t wait! Back to work in the meantime :)