with glowing hearts in richmond--an olympic city!

the torch came to richmond on february 9th and i wanted to be a part of it.  i was going to go alone if i had to, but luckily theresa, my co-worker wanted to go too.  we decided to paint our faces with some left over face paint we had at the clubhouse from halloween.  i went for a classic half red half white face with a maple leaf on the white cheek.  theresa went for a circled maple leaf.

we met in the bathroom to do our painting.  theresa was super confident in her maple leafing skills so i turned the make-up pen over to her.  imagine my horror, then when i looked in the mirror to see a red chyrsanthumum on my cheek.  ironically, in the end my maple leaf was great, and her's was very sketchy.

after we decorated our faces appropriately, we drove to our respective homes to get things we needed.  i needed my camera.  theresa needed to change into some more patriotic clothes.

my work isn't too far from the ozone so we parked there and walked through the park to get to the ozone.  just as we were entering the back gate we saw a chinese husband and wife walking in front of us.  the wife was asking the gate people if it was free.  "it's free?  it's free?"  her husband was already a few steps away from her continuing on his way through the park.  "oh!  it's free!"  she exclaimed, grabbed her husband and in they went.  the volunteers at the gate were feeling quite jovial.  one commented on my face saying i couldn't get in because i had the red and the white on the wrong sides.  another asked theresa if she had a knife in her purse while i was questioned if i had food or drink.

once through 'security' we made our way to the food booth.  i got chili and theresa got corn chowder. we each got a bun.  we headed over to the stand  

this is our first view.

theresa and her chowder.

there was a family in front of us who clearly didn't get a bag search.  out of their bag they pulled the world's largest  bag of ruffle potato chips and a quiznos sub for each person.  we found this quite amusing.

the ozone from the perspective of the chowder bowl.

after theresa was finally done eating (she takes a loooooooooong time.), we wandered around checking out the ozone.  below is the coke monument.

we stood in line to get free olympic cokes and i caught the glowy coke in the crowd of cut throats going for the bottles.  i gave it to theresa who is a coke fanatic.

out on the field were people on stilts and a flowy dragon.  these three had their back to us for the longest time but finally they turned around .

they were letting out these hilarous yips and trills--the kind with no enthusiasm.  they unenthusiastically did a lot of them.

this lady liked our olympic spirit and we liked hers.

i don't know this guy and i don't know what flag that is.

eventually we made our way to the stage to take our spot.  we were on the left side close to the front about 3-4 people away from the fence.

while we waited we spent our time amusing ourselves with taking pics.  theresa with her olympic coke.

this guy who i named 'tall torchie' had this glowing torch that he was quite proud of.   he was in front of us when we arrived but by the end of the night we were in front of him.  at one point theresa and he were jumping in unison and his torch kept bonking her on the head.  at one point i touched the bum of the girl beside me.  "sorry," i said, "i think i just touched your bum."  she laughed embarrassedly and said it was alright.  i think if you touch someone's bum by accident you should appologize rather than pretend you didn't.  that's my crowd bum touching philosophy.

there were some shows.  some hip hopping dancers and a guy who painted something really cool while his canvas was spinning.  our host made a big blunder to start by saying "....SURREY BC!!!"  surrey was the day before.  he realized after a while and made a big point of saying richmond over and over throughout the rest of the night.  

there were also some coke drummers and rythem dancers and a band that combined bhangra and celtic dancing and sound.  it was interesting.  there was an old guy who was really into it.

the climax came at 8 when man in motion, rick hansen came and lit the torch.  this was the best pic i got of him.  i'm actually really surprised i got this.  it felt like i had to hold my camera way over my head to get above the other cameras.  see all the ones in front of me?  rick is from richmond.  i didn't know that.  theresa said that her husband's cousins lived by them and had crushes on his model daughter.  anywho, rick got to light the torch twice. that aint fair.  :)

we left after the boring polital speaches.  we were too cold to wait for the fireworks.