This morning, I had the chance to take two bloggers out to the Torch Relay, Rebecca, (Miss 604) and John Biehler. Big thanks to my colleague Michael who was in the back seat filming video and taking twitpics for me while I drove.

The excitement was overwhelming! I know both John and Rebecca were touched when we hit the first group of screaming kids. The crowd looked to us with such anticipation and excitement as the torch arrived. People of all ages were waving flags and cheering us on. It was infectious; we couldn’t help waving back and shouting “Go Canada Go!” out the window.

We came across some high school boys who painted “Canada” on their chests. Walking around shirtless in 0 degree Celsius weather is not my idea of a good time, but one thing is for sure, we never saw this in -40 degree Manitoba:

Although my black Silverado is more low-key than the fancy, colourful sponsor vehicles at the head of the relay convoy, every time we waved or honked the crowd erupted in cheers:

This clip gives you a sense of the frantic energy just before the torch arrives:

Rebecca put together this video clip of all the pictures, and it does a great job at capturing the excitement of the relay. I know she had a great time because the torch was in her old neighborhood, and I dropped her off outside her mom’s house.

John was busy snapping pictures and filming video the whole time – he had to swap out the memory card on his camera halfway through he took so many! He has a great Youtube video of all the video footage edited together:

Both Rebecca and John saw people in the crowd they recognized, and I know from experience it’s a great feeling when the Torch is touring your home city. You can read Rebecca’s blog post here and John’s post here.

Art