A series of events in the last few days somehow resulted in me staying at home on a weekday this Thursday. Before I begin, let me retrace my steps first. On Tuesday, I received both my seasonal flu and H1N1 vaccine at the same time, one on each arm. I was a little tired in the evening so I took it easy at plyos. When I woke up the next day, I felt like I got hit by a truck. My waking heartrate was through the roof (25bpm higher than my good days!). I was cold and every muscle in my body was aching. I knew that working from home would be imminent so I booked an appointment to have the water heater tank check out. It has not been working as well lately so I suspect something is wrong. The earliest appointment that I could get was Thursday so despite feeling like crap, I went to the office anyway.
Today I worked from home as planned and the extra rest was effective. My waking heartrate drops back to acceptable level and the muscle ache subsides. The water heater appointment turned out to be much shorter than anticipated because the repairman discovered an unrelated but more serious problem which forces us to shut off the tank until further repair can be done. So at 12:30, I was at home in Richmond Hill. This is probaby my luckiest coincidence in a long time because the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics torch relay is scheduled to pass by merely 200m away from my front door in about 15 minutes!
I quickly changed into my warm winter layers, grabbed a cowbell (because everybody must own a cowbell), my camera, and rushed out the door. My neighbourhood is not a major part of the relay route so I picked my choice spot easily.
First came the Coca Cola truck handing out flags for everyone...
Look, this is my flag! You can see other revelers too. We were all bundled up because it really was a cold day.
One convoy...you must check out the license plate.
More convoy...the license plate on this one is even better!
The sponsors vehicles tried hard to work the crowd into a frenzy...
Apparently we were not frenzied enough, so they tried harder.
At last the flame arrived! I had little luck with getting a good photo because the security runners kept blocking my view.
What a great day. I don't say this often enough but I feel very proud to be Canadian. Granted, I still giggle whenever I hear longest torch relay route ever in a single country.
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