Men's Journal

All week, Men’s Journal editor GORDY MEGROZ will provide an inside look at the events, athletes, and parties that make up the Winter Games. In this dispatch, he puts his tourist hat on and trades pins, watches a team Canada hockey game among Canadians, and puts forth a question about Olympic uniforms.

Today I took to the streets of Vancouver, sucking in every Olympic experience I could along the way. If you’ve never been to the Games, one of the popular things to do is trade pins. I’d always heard about this tradition and written it off as a geeky thing that I wouldn’t be interested in doing. But some of the pins are really beautifully designed and make for a nice souvenir, so I decided to give trading a try. First I needed some pins to barter with, so I hooked up with some of my friends from Oakley and took a trip over to their “safe house” to grab a handful of the limited edition (they only made a couple hundred) Oakley Olympic pins.

The safe house is something the people from Oakley have set up to give the more than 360 athletes they sponsor an escape from the madness of all the activity outside. While there, they can relax, check e-mail, drink coffee, and eat lots of healthy food. And they don’t have to worry about being bothered by the press or crazy fans: The head of security is Nelson Mandela’s former body guard. The safe house also has a “sunglass bar,” where the athletes can put together a pair of their own custom shades. I was invited to make some, so I designed a slick looking blue and white pair of Flak Jacket glasses. After that, I took five pins and headed to the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Store.

The line just to get into the store wrapped around the block, but I was inside in about 30 minutes and headed straight to the rack of red mittens. If you don’t know by now, the red mittens are the most coveted souvenir of these Games. They’re only $10 so I snatched up 12 pairs for friends and family (or to sell on eBay; we’ll have to see how much cash I need to shell out for roaming charges on this trip), then headed to the pin-trading booth to test my bartering skills. The one pin that really stood out to me was a video camera that lights up made by NBC. The guy told me he doesn’t trade too many of them because they’re so valuable, but he’d never seen the Oakley pin so he was willing to make a deal: All my pins for the NBC pin. The camera seemed so unique that I accepted the offer. Later on, another big time dealer told me it’s the only Olympic pin that lights up and that I shouldn’t even think about trading it for others. It felt like I’d just won a gold medal in pin trading. Now who’s the geek?

Later in the day, I watched Julia Mancuso win another silver medal (she and Bode Miller are now the only American ski racers to have won three Olympic medals) in the super combined. Note to NBC: I love watching sports on Canadian T.V.; they show the entire event. Afterward, I brushed up on my “soories,” “aboots,” and “ehs,” and headed into Yaletown to watch the Canada versus Switzerland hockey game. I’ve watched some tense sporting events among some diehard fans before, but watching the Canadian team playing their national pastime, on home ice, in the Olympics, in overtime is as tense as it gets. I had no doubt the people in the bar would riot if Canada lost—which is saying a lot for this mild-mannered culture. Thankfully they won in a shootout, and I left to go check out the Olympic flame. Good news: They cut a hole in the chain-link fence so people can get a clear photo of the cauldron. I hope you all enjoy my shot.

One final question tonight: Why is it that every other athlete at the Olympics is forced to wear a national team uniform, while the figure skaters are allowed to wear costumes with snakes sewn onto them?