I decided to go ahead and try to see the Olympic torch yesterday afternoon... and boy are my legs sore and feet sore today! After a 4+ mile walk in the morning, I wound up running about 6 miles chasing the torch all over the city... and I'm not exactly in the kind of shape to casually throw 10 miles under my belt in a day.
In what SFGate called "an Olympic sized fake-out," officials secretly changed the torch's planned route in order to avoid the thousands of protesters. Here's the route the torch was scheduled to take:
but it didn't go that route at all. Like thousands of others, I was completely duped.
I started out by the green patch in the top left corner of the image above (aka "Aquatic Park) around 1pm (when the torch relay was scheduled to start) then made my way over 2 miles to the Ferry Building (labeled "Justin Herman Plaza" in the image above) and 2+ miles back again before running smack into the Olympic flame out of dumb luck at Bay and Van Ness as I was trying to get to where I'd parked my car.
The photos and videos I've seen in the press seem to depict an angry scene, but that wasn't the vibe that I got at all. What I saw were a bunch of peaceful protesters, many of them twirling around with colorful banners and flowers in their hair. And, of course, there were the requisite nude protesters. This is San Francisco, after all.
All in all a once in a lifetime experience and I'm delighted that I did it. I'm also delighted that Lady Luck happened to be on my side yesterday! See my video of the experience here:
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