My view of the win from Robson Square…a perfect close to an amazing Winter Olympic Games for me.

The BC Media Centre hosts a lot of press conferences. One highlight of many of them is long time Vancouver favorite, Nardwuar the Human Serviette asking questions of various people on stage.

First he asked Governor Arnold Swartzenegger about his previous vinyl efforts:

then today, he asked Canadian Ice Dance Gold Medalists Scott Moir & Tessa Virture about Scott’s previous aspirations of becoming a SWAT team leader:

(make sure you watch til the end to hear Tessa finish Nardwuar’s famous jingle)

He even stopped in when the Stanley Cup was here to find his great uncle’s name who won the cup with Chicago in 1961:

Thanks for being awesome, Nardwuar!

(this post originally appeared on 2010.johnbiehler.com)

This morning, I went from shooting photos of cute, excited kids and tall ships:

to shooting photos of Police and SWAT teams dispersing crowds during a protest march that turned violent.

I missed the window smashing and crowd control (I was taking photos of the ship in North Vancouver at the time) but suffice to say, these Olympics have been anything but boring.

View my Flickr sets for the Tall Ship and the Robson Street Protests for more photos.

This morning I had a chance to be one of the first to ride the new Zipline that goes over Robson Street.

Needless to say, it was amazing!

Thanks to ZipTrek EcoTours for putting this on. It opens to the general public FOR FREE on Friday, February 12th. You can watch people ride it on their webcam.

Update: I’ve added another video I shot as well as some photos from the Zipline

So. Much. Fun!

Wow…I’m still beaming from what happened early this morning. I never expected to get ‘into it’ like a lot of people have been but I now ‘get it’ after witnessing first hand what the Olympic Torch relay means to people.

This morning I had the privilege of doing a ride along in a GM support vehicle for the relay.

These guys have the tough job of keeping all the relay vehicles going as they drive across the country and back. This morning, our driver was Art and he has the enviable job of driving in the ‘parade’ of vehicles and coordinates repairs along the trip. This can include finding the nearest dealership to source parts or a repair bay to doing simple fixes on the road. Art seemed to love every minute of it though. You’ll see why in my photos – so many excited people of all ages cheering and smiling as we drove by.

We were behind the Coca Cola ‘float’ trucks that had music blasting while dancers handed out drinks to the crowd:

Our vehicle was nondescript – it had no official markings other than a sign on the windshield. As we drove past the cheering crowd we heard them shout all kinds of things including “Rockstars!” and “Hey look it’s the CSIS truck” and my favorite “who are those guys?”.

We still felt compelled to wave back as the energy from the crowds was incredibly infectious.

So many kids were possibly more excited than on Christmas morning had braved the cold and waited for the Torch to come by.

and finally, what the crowds were waiting for:

I made a little video to give you an idea of what it was like to drive in this crazyiness:

A HUGE thank you to Art, Alex, Jim, Michael and everyone at GM for allowing me to be a part of this….it was pretty special.

Here’s a slideshow of all the photos I took during the relay ride: