Olympic fever - Day 2

On Thursday we heard that our friend, Michael Bu.ble, was going to be carrying the torch downtown ... so, off we headed after work. We decided not to drive right downtown thinking that all the traffic and road closures could make it a nightmare, so we hopped on the skytrain in Surrey and walked through downtown. Granville St. has all these cool statues and things set up and is closed to traffic.

A lot of businesses had signs hanging off their buildings.

There were camera crews everywhere (from all around the world) doing interviews with random people on the street. Bren reminded us to have a good answer ready if we got asked a question. We heard them ask, "Who's your favorite Olympic mascot," "What sport are you most interested in seeing?" etc. Let's just say I'm glad they didn't ask me anything.

Then, the moment we'd been waiting for came. I decided to take video instead of pictures as he ran by us because ... well, mainly because I don't really know how to work my camera yet, but what I do know is that my "sports" setting doesn't allow you to use flash and if I didn't put it on sports setting and used my flash, they would've been blurry. I'm glad I went with video.

As soon as he had run past us, we kind of stood there in awe for a second because we couldn't believe how much security he had with him (a little different then when Mary Jane had run it). Did you notice him high fiving everyone as he ran by? No? Go back and watch it again. I'll wait ......... Isn't he great? Such a nice guy. Anyway, after about 10 seconds, we looked at each other and said, "Should we run to where he's passing it?" Yup! Off we went. There were so many people there that I could barely see anything so I just held up my camera and hoped for the best. We'll just look at the next few pics in silence.

Here they are extinguishing Michael's torch. Sad moment (although I will admit, it wasn't as emotional for me as when Mary Jane ran with it. This was more of a media frenzy and for me, wasn't as focused on the torch itself).

I'm not sure what he was saying to the crowd here, although I do like Kori's guess of "... Fiona, where are you... I know you're here..." hee hee :) He would've remembered me from last summer, right?

After the VanOc dude that he passed the torch to took off, the media swarmed Michael. Couldn't even see him for a bit.

Then he walked right in front of us and this is the picture I got:

Sheesh! See that blur of white in the middle of the picture. Yup, that's him. Awesome, hey? See, that's why I'm glad I took video of the run. Pics wouldn't have turned out. Oh well. I'm glad we went and saw what we saw. Still bummed I didn't get tickets to his concert, but am counting on him announcing a 2nd Vancouver show anytime. He can't announce a 2nd show in Calgary and Toronto but not in his hometown ... can he? No, he wouldn't do it ... and I WILL get tickets.

So, after that excitement was over, we stayed and watched a bit of the party at David Lam Park.

I loved all the patriotism hanging from people's balconies. Very fun.

Then we decided to just walk around and enjoy the feeling of downtown. As we were walking by the Bell party, we stopped to see what was going on. The girls outside told us that Steve Na.sh was inside and that Wayne Gre.tzky had left about 20 minutes ago. Shoot! They said he had walked right out and into a taxi (yes, a taxi). Wish we would've seen that. Oh well. We heard the loud music and they were playing Bare.nake.d Ladies. We started walking away and I saw this Alberta sign so I stopped to take a picture.

All of a sudden I thought, "That music sounds live!" I turned around and went close to the window and sure enough, this is what I saw...

The were right there!!!

We stood outside and watched for awhile and looked through the crowd to see Steve, but didn't see him anywhere.

Might've even tried to get in if the lady with the clipboard of "invite only" names hadn't looked so daunting.

Oh well, it was a great night anyway and I'm SO glad we went.