Passing the Torch, the Summer of 1996

 1996... The Summer Olympics were being hosted in Atlanta, GA. As you know, the flame of the Olympic torch is lit in Greece and travels to the Olympic Stadium where it symbolically begins the games. It's a really neat thing to witness it being "run" by different folks along its course to the stadium. That was my experience in 1996.

We (my husband and two younger children) were visiting our family who lived in Orlando, FL at the time from our home in California. My mom and dad volunteered to take all their little grandkids,  and sent my sister Darby, her hubby Paul, my husband John  and me off to enjoy an entire day together, which was a rare treat for us all !! 

So we decided to head 90 miles NE to a cute little Florida historical town called St Augustine. Off we went, footloose and fancy free!  As we traveled up the scenic coastal route, we noticed that the Olympic torch was also traveling up the coast toward Atlanta, for the summer Olympic games. We were thrilled to see it and shared the excitement in the air for the wonderful Olympics to begin. We saw evidences of the torch and its traveling path pretty much our entire day.

When we did eventually arrive in St Augustine, we realized the torch too had made its way here. By this time we were a bit over the thrill, and instead of joining in with the whole of St Augustine, being content to escape it and tour the town, we eventually found a nice shady park bench in the middle of St George Street to sit.
My sister Darby and I began catching up on life, with out 4 little ones interrupting and clinging on us, while our two guys went off hunting sunglasses! We were in our own little world, my sis and I, when  all of a sudden we heard......"Excuse me, would you please hold this?"
 Puzzled by the request, we turned and saw a sea of smiling faces, probably the whole town, who were following the runner with the torch! So I, puzzled, took the flaming torch in my hand, and the runner then asked me to pass it to my sister, which i did!

He then said "thanks!"
He took it from Darby, and off he ran with the entire town following after him!! 

In looking back, we think perhaps he must of thought, "here are two upsuspecting women, who couldn't care less about the torch, completely oblivious to the fact that I'm there with the entire town and this is an opportunity to ROCK these two women's worlds!!

...Which he successfully did!

But the best part of the story is that after the whole town followed him off, and there we sat in that quiet, peopleless corridor of St Augustine, just me and my sis wondering what had just happened to us...about that time, our husbands returned and listened as we excitedly recounted our quite lively tale! It seemed unbelievable that only moments before there had been hundreds of people with the Olympic entourage in this very quiet space...and we both had held the Olympic torch! Ugghhhh!!

....To this day our husbands, who were off buying sunglasses, do not believe a WORD of our story!!

yep, that's it, Id know it anywhere....after all I held it! ;)

silly sisters!!