Thursday, December 17, 2009

You Guys! The 'Lympics!

I love the Olympics. Love love love them. Even the winter ones. Even the politically contentious ones. And they're going to be in Canada (again) and REALLY soon!
Which meant that the Olympic Torch came to the T.O.!
One of the super awesome things about living in the heart of the city is that things happen RIGHT HERE. So, they're easy to get to (or even look out of the window at).

The Torch relay route was right down Yonge st, not 100 meters from us and would be culminating a few blocks away in Nathan Phillips Sq. So when our chums Tracy and Andrew asked if we wanted to go see it with them I was all "HELLS YES!"
Lovely, kind and generous Tracy knocked on the door this afternoon with gifties. She had hunted down pairs of the official Olympics mittens for my sweetie, Teddy and me. They are red and toasty and they have a maple leaf on them and they are LOVELY. And did I mention red? I like red.

Teddy yelled "MITT" and jammed his daddy's pair on. They come up to his armpits; he strutted around patting things with his giant and hilarious man-hands."mittmittmitt".

There's a chance I have too much time and too much crazy on my hands.
Watching my bear telling T-bone "mitt mitt miiiiiiitt" made me think
"Hey you know who has hands? And who also, I bet, totally loves the 'lypmics? T-BONE that's WHO."
So I made t-bone some red mittens out of some of the felt I compulsively bought yesterday (see I knew there was a reason I needed it).

And lookit, here's those two waiting for the torch.

and here's ANOTHER one of them:

and here's a close up of T-bone's mittens:
So, we waited at the end of our street, watching the lights getting closer, Teddy waved to folks like he was running for office and pointed "PLANE" at the helicopters.
Then UP the road came a bunch of protesters. Chanting "No ol-ym-pics on stolennativelands!"
Bless their little cotton socks. They held up the Torch for an hour and made me nostalgic as hell for when I was a rock-throwing protester myself (le sigh, it's been a while). They were very well behaved and the police were light-handed and relaxed. We weren't sure if the flame was being diverted so decided to trot down to Nathan Phillips sq and wait there. So off we went, chatting to a bemused Texan tourist.
We cut through the Eaton center to warm our toesies up (it was minus 11 out there) and as we came out of the queen street exit there it was! Rounding the corner, chap running with Torch. I went "EEEEEI!" and whipped Teddy out of his cart. We watched as it whistled past and it was... kind of magic.
It's so shiny. Pretty in reality and as an idea. I felt surprisingly moved, and our timing was serendipitous ( I love when that happens). As we got to the square the chap who had carried the Torch was leaving still holding his torch (though it wasn't on fire anymore) and I snapped a quick shot of him.
Doesn't he look like he's had a good night? We definitely did and now I CAN'T WAIT for the games to begin. Bring on the giant crazy ski jumping and the pretty twirly ice dancing. T-Bone and Teddy and I have our mittens ALL READY!

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