Things I learned from World Cup speedskating this weekend--
*If you scream at skaters and jump around a lot, you WILL lose your voice. Take it from me--you will.
*If you don't layer clothing, your extremities will become cold and kinda frozen and that's so not attractive.
*Male speedskaters are HOT.
*Along those lines...famous speedskaters (*ahem*coughApoloOhno*cough) are complete jackasses who think the world revolves around them.
*I love accents more than ever now.
*If you have a cool pass thing, spectators are going to envy you and nearly attack you.
*Bitchy volunteers make the world go round. I say this because karma does work wonders and work in your favor if you're a good person--like me! *grin*
*Umm...if you scream at hottie skaters while they're warming up, they can hear you and they will look at you. (And don't ever EVER scream "FabiOOO! I want to have your children!!!" even if you mean it.)
*Speedskaters are vicious when you hold the results from a previous race in your hand and all they want to know is who they're competing against. This is especially fun when they're all foreign and are yelling at you in languages you can't even begin to understand.
*Asian speedskaters like to run and run fast. This rings true only when walking down a narrow hallway when you're not paying attention and half asleep. You wake up real fast when you look up and see a tiny Korean man running full-speed towards you and you think he's going to scream "bonzaaiii" and kill you due to the sheer speed of his running. It sounds funny, but really, your life will flash before your eyes.
Volunteering this weekend was a hell of a lot of fun. It was hella tiring but was so much fun.
Erin and I were supposed to be doing ticketing and merchandising this entire weekend, but due to an old bitchy lady with bad hair, we got kicked out of our ticketing area. Because she "called that spot". Riiiight. I thought old people were supposed to be mature, yet there this woman was, channeling her inner kindergartener. Charming. She had me on the verge of tears, while Erin wanted to rip her hair from her head. We did the only thing we could think of--we tattled on her to a USOEC person. Mwahaha.
We didn't end up doing ticketing, though.
This worked out for the best, though. We got the official title of runners.
Runners.
That even just sounds cooler than ticketing. Heh heh.
This meant that we got to run results and race stats to all the official all over the arena. This also meant that we got to have pretty much an all-access view of what goes on behind-the-scenes at an international sporting event.
It was pretty amazing.
I did almost get run over multiple times by overzealous athletes. I did have female skaters attack me to get to the race list. And they did holler at me in multiple languages. I got to speak with the officials. And I was thrilled to realize that they were completely down-to-earth and super nice. I feared that they'd look down on the volunteers and boss us around, but it was exactly the opposite--they were incredibly grateful for our efforts and always smiled and thanked us. That is really refreshing after working with pompous managers for concerts.
Apolo Ohno--he's an ass. He knows he's good. He knows he's famous. He sucks it all up and loves the attention the fans gave him during the races. But he didn't sign any autographs or take any pictures or anything. At least I got to see him sans racing spandex as he warmed up on Saturday morning. Mwahaha--I know he had underwear or shorts on, but I didn't see them. I just saw him streeeeetching. It was glorious. Too bad his attitude didn't measure up to seeing him looking cute. Oh well. I had at least a dozen Apolo sightings in the past couple of days, and was a mere six inches from him, which is more than a lot of people can say. I'm pretty satisfied with that fact.
All the other skaters were really nice. They smiled and said hi if you smiled at them and they were thrilled to sign autographs. My friends that worked in the food lounge got a bunch of them to sign a poster for me, so I'm pretty pumped about that.
AND (mwahahaaa) a Canadian speedskater kept checking me out before he raced. That thrilled me to no end. And amused me, because he was cute, but in the dorky way. I got to watch all the races from by the finish line and the races yesterday started by where they finished, so I was chilling with Em and Erin by the ice, just laughing and being dumb. (It was just a happy blissful weekend now that I truly reflect on it.) So I'm just smiling and watching the skaters and the Canadian happened to see me looking at them. There was some major eye contact and he got the biggest dopiest grin on his face, which made me laugh even more. And made me kinda thrilled, too. I cheered for him.
He looked at me again, too, before the start of the relay races. Hehe.
Overall, it was a fabulous weekend. I loved every minute of it. Well...except for when I was dealing with bitchy volunteer woman. But Erin and I got her back the next day. We were delivering stuff around and we saw her go into the volunteer lounge, so we stopped in there to get something to snack on. We chatted it up with a friend for a few seconds and mentioned how we loved being official runners, that it was a fabulous job. Then I said "we gotta go--we have offical important stuff to take care of." And we left. It was a perfect movie moment. Mwahaha
Ciao dahling!
~*Krissy*~
Livin' Out My RockStar Fantasy To: Mandy Moore's "Coverage" album
Crush du Jour: Fabiooooo and the intense Italian skater...and the Canadian skating team
Happy Thought of the Moment: cool passes, once-in-a-lifetime moments, getting into speedskating, cute speedskaters, being called "adorable", playing pool, all access (mwahahaha), making fun of skanktacular girls, quality Joe time, Rexy getting fixed, starting my story