Wow…I’m still beaming from what happened early this morning. I never expected to get ‘into it’ like a lot of people have been but I now ‘get it’ after witnessing first hand what the Olympic Torch relay means to people.

This morning I had the privilege of doing a ride along in a GM support vehicle for the relay.

These guys have the tough job of keeping all the relay vehicles going as they drive across the country and back. This morning, our driver was Art and he has the enviable job of driving in the ‘parade’ of vehicles and coordinates repairs along the trip. This can include finding the nearest dealership to source parts or a repair bay to doing simple fixes on the road. Art seemed to love every minute of it though. You’ll see why in my photos – so many excited people of all ages cheering and smiling as we drove by.

We were behind the Coca Cola ‘float’ trucks that had music blasting while dancers handed out drinks to the crowd:

Our vehicle was nondescript – it had no official markings other than a sign on the windshield. As we drove past the cheering crowd we heard them shout all kinds of things including “Rockstars!” and “Hey look it’s the CSIS truck” and my favorite “who are those guys?”.

We still felt compelled to wave back as the energy from the crowds was incredibly infectious.

So many kids were possibly more excited than on Christmas morning had braved the cold and waited for the Torch to come by.

and finally, what the crowds were waiting for:

I made a little video to give you an idea of what it was like to drive in this crazyiness:

A HUGE thank you to Art, Alex, Jim, Michael and everyone at GM for allowing me to be a part of this….it was pretty special.

Here’s all the photos I took during the relay:

or you can watch a slideshow of them on Flickr:

Update: Here’s Rebecca’s shot of me hanging out the window: