Torch Relay

This was absolutely, without a doubt, most definitely the best day I’ve ever spent working for ATCO! (Field work like Jack Bauer!! Whee!) So yes, today we went to Okotoks for the ATCO-sponsored torch relay. When we first got there I felt a little out of place because I didn’t think I could be of any help but then I found out that they were short volunteers to stay with the kids before they ran their leg of the relay. Children! My specialty (compared to manual labour and technical work I am not trained for)!

I was wearing a yellow t-shirt when all the other volunteers were wearing blue. That doesn’t seem important, but it was! We were all standing in a parking lot, and this lady came by and wrote three numbers on my arm in permanent marker (the names of the kids I was going to watch). So I got on the bus with my first number (nine, otherwise known as Courtney). The bus driver was old, possibly senile, but more relevantly, had no idea what was going on. Courtney and I were dropped off at the flag numbered ten, and so we walked back to our correct flag.

After Courtney had taken the torch, a bus came by and got the girl who had just finished running, but not me because I was supposed to get on the volunteer bus. But when the volunteer bus came by, it passed me because I was wearing yellow and not blue! Luckily (I think) for me, the lady who had written on me came past in her car. She was clearly stressed and clearly articulated to me that she was a smoker and really needed a cigarette. She was wearing a radio in order to talk to the bus drivers, but then hers broke so we booked it back to Okotoks to get a new one. Just as we got there, her radio fixed itself and then we had to go back the way we came, so she could drop me off at twenty-nine. My mom would have gone out of her mind with fear if she would have known how fast we were driving just then. Finally we got there, and I waited with child number twenty-nine (Taylor) for almost half an hour. We hardly said anything since I couldn’t think of anything to say, and he didn’t seem like the talkative type anyway, unlike number nine.

Good thing the crazy stressed lady gave me a blue t-shirt, because the bus actually picked me up that time! My next number was forty-two. I waited with that girl (Jocelyne) for a while and then the bus took us all back to Okotoks. One of the other guys from ATCO named Brian saw me and said he’d take me back to Angela and Sara, which I was eternally grateful for, considering I was beginning to freak out, wondering how I’d find them again. But first, he said, we are getting lunch!

So we went to Wendy’s and had our lunch while we drove to meet the truck Sara and Angela were on. We showed them our fast food, they got jealous (hehe) and Angela said she lost her pager at Petro-Canada. Brian and I went back and got it, gave it back to her, and then went to High River where they were setting up a BBQ. We found out that something was left behind in Okotoks so we went back, got it, and got back to High River. We stayed there for about… twenty minutes and then Brian took Angela, Sara and I back to Okotoks. We left for Calgary from there, but holy crap, I wonder how many miles I traveled today just going between those three cities… err.. towns and city.

Reading over it, it doesn’t sound like that much fun, but Brian was a pretty great guy so, whatever, I had an awesome time. Plus it was better than filing!