a few olympic moments

last friday, not yesterday, i met up with my bestbud fatimiaji, her cuz, her sister-in-law erin, and her niece and nephew, maya and elijah.  we met up on the patriotic streets downtown.  the streets full of euphoria and random cheering/anthem singing.  they had a double wide stroller that we used to plow through the crowds.  here are a few shots of our afternoon/day.

we met at seymour and robson.  cuz was pushing the stroller and he was definitely a newby to the stroller manueverings so he was often behind us.  we made our way through the fun madness, occasionally stopping for erin or fats to take some clicks.  i almost lost them by the art gallery, aka 'bc house' when they darted off to the side without a word.  i turned just to see their two black hoods disappearing over  to the curb (the streets are for walking during the olympics).  eventually we made it to red robin on thurlow and robson.  we pushed through the crowds with the double wide stroller to find out that there was a 25 minute wait.  so fatima and i took the double wide and it's occupents for a little walk while we waited.  so we took some lookiloos into lululemon.  they had some cool not quite olympic gear.  we especially liked one of the 108 dollar hoodies.  the thing i liked there was the swedish coloured toques.  i wanted one but not enough to spend thirty odd dollars on one.  we also looked in aritzia.  aritzia, along with the hudson bay company is also one of official olympic vendors.  they make the victory outfits is what my best bud tells me.  best bud and i found some maple leaf mitts on sale and we each bought some.  they are light gray with the red leaf of canada.  when fatima was turning the double wide around a bunch of girls budded in front of her.  that's also when she found ten dollars and like the goody two shoes we all know she is, she tried to hand it in but the girl wouldn't take it.  she was all "woohoo ten dollars for you!"  fatima was all "i don't want it."  there's no pleasing some customers, thought the girl.  doesn't anybody care about honesty anymore?, wondered fatima.

we went back to the restaurant only to find erin and cuz seated in a place that no double wide could reach.  so thanks to the double wide we got seated against the window where we could see all the shenanigans going on below.  like the 4 guys dressed in skin tight red body suites with hoods running through the streets.

here is maya reading her stories to us.  note the double wide beside her.

this is my bud pondering on the ethics of today's modern salesgirl.  note the rockarocka rock on her finger.  yah.  she's getting married.

below is a glimpse of an olympic city.

after eating we made our way down to the mad streets below but not before giving maya her trusty bottle.

hey!  my favourite cute olympian was larger than life on the side of the sears building.  hello shaaaaaaaaaaaaaarl!!! (ahem...charles)  i love him.  he's so cute and last night he got two golds.  his girlfriend is so cute too.  they're so cute together.  cute little medal winning speed skaters.

iginla doesn't mess around.  that's what his face tells you.

erin and her daughter, maya angelou, in the madness that was granville street and specifically in the middle of a hackysack ....game?  do they call them hackysack games?  maybe.  maybe not.  anyways you know what i'm saying and you know what those hackysackers do when hackysacking.

after walking down granville for a while we met up with daman and we decided to walk through yaletown to the water and walk along false creek to sochi world and see the other pavillions and houses along the way.  this pic is proof that we were actually in the famed neighbourhood of yuppies and puppies--yaletown.  (this was on the sidewalk.  do you think it will stay there after the olympics? apparently dad works and yaletown live!  who knew!  not me because i rarely know anything.

some of the canadian flagmanship that one sees all over these days.  my favourite flagmanship is actually down the road and around the corner from me.  someone stuck a hockey stick with the flag hanging from it from their lamp post.  it's awesome.  they were the first on their road, but since then their road as sprouted flags in almost every single house.  i like driving by and noting all the new additions.  i wish we had a flag to flourish but it wouldn't matter if we did because no one from the road can see our patriotisim from behind the wall of dark green shrub that surrounds us.  anyways i digress.

i thought this boat was groovy.  it wasn't as pink as this picture thinks it was, but that's ok.

there's sochi world! (nee science world)  it was closed once we got there.  but we did see some russians.  i like the russian outfits.  shnazzy.

we passed through a little place we like to call plaza of nations.  true to it's name it was filled with a white tented market full of crazy nick knacks and yummy ethnic foods.  there was also a stage and a band from manitoba playing.  

i liked these chinese paper lanterns.  they were bejings thing. their way of saying we pass the olympics on to you.  have fun.

shortly after this my camera died and so i have no other documentations to show you.  but i can tell you that we did pass ontario house which is supposed to be really good, quebec house which looks really cool at night.  it's this huge box lit up purple with a huge q on it.  apparently it's not so great inside.  we also passed saskatchewan house which was a globe with what else but wheat fields on it.  we made it to sochi world and it was closed as i said but we did get to go down a super fast slide (not me!) and saw a tent city protest.  we met up with fatima's brother who gave me a hug.  we said goodbye to them (thus the hug) and we had already lost cuz, which i neglected to say, but it did happen just so you know.  and so we made our way back to yaletown for the fireworks and water show.  at this point i was very cold in the arms and hands area and both fatima and i had very very sore feet.  it was late at night and we had been on our feet all day.  daman took over fatima's new mittens and loved them so much that fatima knew she had lost her mittens.  she said she would go back and buy another pair.  maybe use her illegal 10.00.  anways we wanted daman to carry us but he wouldn't.  we walked arm in arm in arm--that's the way things were.  i'm glad that my best friend's true love likes me (or seems to anyways).  it's the way it oughtta be.

when we got to our spot for the fireworks my feet were burning pain.  fatima's hurt too.  so we sat on the cement and leaned against the railing until the show started.  the show was great.  the water was awesome.  it was fun.  after we joined the huge mass of people leaving.  to my horror, it seemed as though they were all heading for the skytrain station.  and they were.  i waited out the rush at fatima and daman's for half an hour and then i went home.

next morning was saturday and the day of my olympic event--swiss/norway hockey!  it was soooo fun!  pure delight.  and i loved cheering for norway!  well this brings me to the end of this post.

i'm leaving you with a little piece i call "water bottle's accusation"

bethany and ben--the lost files

i think this one below is my favourite.

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.