Paralympic torch relay

I noticed that Smithe St. outside our place was blocked to traffic around 4:30pm. The Paralympic opening ceremonies aren't until Friday, so I couldn't figure out why.

A few minutes later as I was preparing dinner, I heard on the radio that some roads downtown were closed for the Paralympic torch relay. Cool--right in front of our building!

Better yet--a minute of googling led me to the fact that this relay goes until 2pm on Friday--they are running a loop through downtown continuously overnight!


Harriet was disappointed we didn't go down to ground level when the torch first went past. I told her we'd go down after dinner. She was very excited. Rowan didn't really want to go, but he agreed to come if he could just look another way and not at the torch. (He promptly forgot this, of course, once we hit the street!)

It was raining very hard, so we had our umbrellas with us while we waited.



Finally, the torch came. Horns honked and we cheered!


After we saw the torch on the street, we watched it go by from upstairs a couple more times before bed. The circuit seems to take them about 30 minutes.

Having the torch go by your house is kind of fun--but having it go by 50 times is pretty unique, I think!

Here is a video of us cheering from the apartment.