We start with a trip to the park...next the Olympics!

Okay, well maybe we didn't make it to the Olympics but we did have our own Olympic experience today.

The Olympic Torch is coming through Calgary and surrounding communities this week and, since I have never seen the torch, I thought it would be fun for us to go as a family. Unfortunately, I got my dates mixed up and so I ended up missing Calgary's evening show at Olympic Plaza. There were a few other events in town today and tomorrow but, since they're during the day, I would have had to take the baby alone to go see it (which I was willing to do but not particularily excited about since both events took place at 8:30 am).

As luck would have it, I was driving home from a class this afternoon and I heard on the radio that the nearby community of Airdrie was hosting the flame this evening. They had a little relay route around town and then some festivities at a local park. I called Dave at work and told him to try and get home as early as possible and we quickly fed ourselves and Isla and headed out the door.

We originally intended to go to the park to see all the festivities but we were cutting it close on time so we decided to just pick a spot on the relay route instead to see everything. I had a small , fairly unhelpful map that I found on the internet to guide us to the route location. Since my map didn't have any street names on it, I took a guess as to which intersection we should take to get off the highway. Well, it was a very lucky guess since we ended up in a traffic jam just in time to see the torch bearer run by.

It wasn't how I imagined it would be with us cheering the runner on from our comfy spot on the side of the road. It ended up being pretty perfect, though. Isla was nice and cosy in the back seat (although she did cry a little bit afterward from all the honking of car horns) and we had a fairly unobstructed view between the cars at the relay route so we managed to get a few pictures and a small video. Within a few minutes the traffic was moving again and we were on our way back home talking and laughing about how typically "us" our first Olympic experience as a family was.

Clearly this is a once in a lifetime event so I can't really recommend this as an activity for families to do but I guess it shows that it's worth it to pack everyone up in the car in order to gather a few priceless memories.

Location: Airdrie, just off of Highway #2
Cost: Free
Gear that we used for Isla: Graco Snugride 32 Carseat, our Pentax digital camera, and the video on my iPhone