When I snapped these pics of Canadian women's hockey players celebrating their gold medal, I had no idea I was documenting an international controversy.

I thought it was kind of cool, actually. A bunch of the players returned to the ice in an arena that had emptied out of fans. They drank champagne and beer and lit a couple cigars. OK, so scoring heroine Marie-Philip Poulin isn't of legal drinking age -- it's not like they were chugging tequila out there.

But the IOC is stuffy enough to give an official tsk-tsk and the Canadian Hockey Federation apologized.

No one complained when skeleton gold medalist Jon Montgomery walked through Whistler Village chugging beer from a pitcher. Funny, eh?

 The Vancouver organizers had a nice security thing going. They'd figured out  a way to avoid the mandatory full-body, full-bag searches that always have resulted in long lines at Olympic venue entrances. Here, you got the bar code on your credential scanned whenever you entered a venue. The computerized system then randomly determined whether you needed a throurough search or could pass, unmolested, into the event.

 The first week or so, I was on a roll. I'd say nine of ten times I'd get to bypass the body search, the laptop extraction, the coat, coin and credential removal.

 Until I got to Whistler late one night.

 After a two-hour bus trip, and with a ten-minute walk ahead of me before I reached our condo, I decided I'd better use the rest room at the media center. I had not only my computer bag with me, but a fully loaded suitcase as well.  This time, my luck ran out. Even though it was 1 a.m., I was selected for a random search.

 Not wanting to endure all that at that hour, and in my condition, I told the female guard who'd scanned my credential, "You know what, I was just going to use the rest room. I don't think I'm going inside after all."

 BEEP! HONK! WHIRRRR!

 "Sorry, sir, you cannot leave. You MUST go through the scan now."

 "But I only wanted to use the rest room. And now I'm not even going inside."

 "Sorry, sir, those are our rules."

 Sometime later, but only after I'd had to open my suitcase and explain to them what a razor was, I got through, did a U-turn and left the building.

 Anyway, my maneuver must have red-flagged me in the system. I'm now hit with a "random" search nine out of ten times I enter a building.

 To make matters worse, I later learned there was a rest room on the bus.     

1. Try the chocolate-coated fruit parfait at Mink's chocolate cafe.

2. Take a leisurely drive along the spectacular coasrtline northwest of here.

3. Dine on some of the scrumptious seafood at a restaurant with an ocean view.

4. Explore the downtown on foot.

5. Take some photos of the city from the Lion's Gate Bridge.  

 Those journalists who got to make the bus trip back and forth from Whistler to Vancouver had the best seat at the Olympics. Even if it's a two-hour ride each way.

 The scenery along what the locals call the Sunshine Coast is breathtaking. Once you get a few miles above Vancouver, it begins. Fjord after fjord slice through the piney mountains, creating a series of stunning mountain lakes and mountain vistas.

 Vancouverites insist the best the way to see the coast and get in close to the comely coves is by seaplane. There are several pilots who will take you. Buses work well too. The other day, on a gorgeous morning, I saw a pod of whales from my window.

 This couldn't have happened at Squaw Valley.

 A New York sports writer was busy cranking out a deadlin ice-dancing  story on Saturday night. When he was finished and his computer's filing system requested the story's name, he typed in the name he thought he had given it, "Icedancing". Sounds logical enough, right? Well, our harried New York friend had forgotten that he'd actually named this story "Icedance". 

 Unfortunately dfor him, there was a story named "Icedancing" in his computer. And that's the one that got sent to to his offices in New York.

 Alas, the story he filed was one he had written about the ice-dancing competition at the 2006 Olympics in Turin. His editors didn't notice. They simply assumed he had typed the wrong dateline on the story, changed Turin to Vancouver and published the story.

 The four-year-old story ran in the paper's entire final edition. Only two readers bothered to complain -- and one was a fellow sportswriter. That says something not only about the dangers of technology but also about the sports-reading habits of New York sports fans.    

You learn something about yourself -- not necessarily something you're proud of -- when your feet are suddenly straight out in front of you and calamity beckons.

In my case, I saved the cellphone.

Here's how I became an inadvertent luger: I had lined up for a ferry back to downtown Vancouver after a visit to Granville Island. With the huge Olympic crowds, attendants were carefully monitoring the flow of traffic down onto the docks. I happened to be stopped at the top of a long, steep ramp.

My phone rang. It was the office. I took the call just as the very nice woman in the blue vest gestured for me to start down the ramp. There was a railing along the right -- which is my phone hand.

Instantly, I was on my back, sliding down the deceptively slick ramp. The rubber mat was as slippery as Bernie Madoff. My backpack, including my computer and all manner of important items, bounced along with me. But it was the BlackBerry -- my link to the entire universe -- that I noticed bouncing toward the side of the ramp.

Below: False Creek.

Somehow, with a lucky swipe, I pulled the phone back from the brink. Then I got up and told my editor I'd call back.

Fortunately, there were only about a thousand witnesses from the queue I'd just been in myself.

 Here's hoping U.S. men's hockey coach Ron Wilson is good with nicknames. If not, and he's instead one of those formal coaches who uses players' first names, there's likely to be a lot of confusion at these Winter Olympics.

 That's because of the 25 players on the U.S. squad here in Vancouver, there are six whose first names are Ryan, one whose last name is Ryan and one Brian.

 You've got goalie Ryan Miller, defenseman Ryan Suter and Ryan Whitney, and forwards Ryan Kesler, Ryan Malone and Ryan Callahna. Then there's Cherry Hill-born forward Bobb Ryan. And, finally, defenseman Brian Rafelski.

 It's an audible nightmare.

 "Yo, Ryan. Over here! I'm open. No, not that Ryan, me! Not that one either. It's me, Ryan. Pass me the damn puck, Ryan!."

1. What are those blue lines on the ski courses? They do look jarring, don't they? Actually, it's just dye that has been placed there to aid the skiers. They're not required to stay within them.

 2.Is Johnny Weir really that bizarre? Hey, they don't call him Johnny Weird for nothing. If they awarded medals for outrageousness or interesting answers, the Coatesville native would be these Games' Michael Phelps.

3. You really get to see all these events for free? When you consider the thousands of dollars the Inquirer is contributing to the Olympic movement through our lodging, meal, transportation and communication costs, it'shardly free. Phil Sheridan alone has spent $576 in McDonalds in little more than a week.

4. Have you been to curling yet? Shhhh! My editor might hear you -- assuming the noise in whateverrestaurant he's in at the moment isn't too distracting.

5. What's Vancouver like? Wet.

 6. What did you think of the opening ceremonies? Not sure. Given our tight deadlines and Vancouver's time zone, I was typing through most of them. I heard Joni Mitchell's voice, which was worth the trip here, but never looked up to notice she wasn't actually in the stadium. There's no way she's 66. That would make me .... yikes!

7. Who's the most beautiful women you've seen so far? Well, since my wife didn't accompany me, I'd have to say it was this Japanese TV personality who was covering men's figure skating the other night. Banzai! As for the competitors, Tanith Belbin ain't chopped liver.

8. What's the best meal you've had? Well if you eliminate all the takeout fare from the Fogg 'n Suds, it was probably the rigationi and lamb shanks at the Italian Kitchen in downtown Vancouver.

9. What's been your favorite Olympic moment so far? Actually, there's been a paucity of them so far at these Games. It might have been the meal I had with an old friend from Cardinal O'Hara whom I hadn't seen in 43 years. He got old-looking.

10. What events are you most looking forward to? Canada-U.S. hockey. Canada-Russia in hockey, if it comes to that.  The men's four-man bobsled. And my flight home. 

 Finally, a sunny day. At last, through soggy eyes, I see Vancouver's natural beauty. Snow-capped mountains rim downtown. Sun glistening on the bay. Crisp, clean air. Smiling people. I feel like I'm in a Coors commercial.

 Perhaps the change in weather will improve the general outlook on these Games. They've been cursed by rain, warmth, ticket refunds, the tragic death of a competitor, a technical malfunction at the opening ceremonies, criticism from the Quebecois and the British, outrage over the ratty chain-link fence surrounding the waterfront cauldron, ice-making machine breakdowns, and curling. It doesn't take much for journalists to sniff a trend story and the overwhelming theme so far is that these Vancouver Games have been troubled from the start.

 The truth of the matter is that it's impossible to manage an enterprise as massive as an Olympic Games without foul-ups, faux pas and fickle weather -- though fatalities ought to be avoided at all costs.

 Imagine if Philly had won its serio-comic bid to host the 2016 Games? Think there might have been traffic woes on the Schuylkill? Muggings? Bureaucratic nightmares. Rowdy fans? Stale pretzels? Do you think the internatioanl media would have made fun of our accents? Our airport? Our parochialism?

 I think Vancouver is doing just fine. And I'll continue to feel that way until the moment the bus taking me to an alpine event is late.