When the Olympic flame rests, so does its entourage.
Since kicking off 77 days ago, the torch relay has taken just five days off on its journey across Canada. One of those was Thursday in Edmonton, providing its support crew a rare opportunity for a breather.
Considering the tour schedule sometimes involves waking up at 3:30 a.m. and going to bed at 11 p.m., those travelling with the torch use days off to catch up on sleep, RBC relay float dancer Melissa Oberman said.
"I think, 'We're going to eat a plated meal!' I won't scoop it out of a bucket with a flame underneath it," the 22-year-old Toronto native said.
The daily schedule of a torch relay worker is often hectic, but once the team has settled into a routine it can feel unusual to have a day off, said media relations specialist Brian Findlay, who travels with the group of more than 200 people.
"It takes a little bit of time to adjust to this life of a different hotel every night, two different community celebrations a day and so many different towns and faces, but you get so used to that rhythm that on the day off, you feel a bit lost," Findlay said.
Oberman and her co-dancer, 23-year-old Kyle Wong, spent the morning relaxing and going to the gym before they headed to West Edmonton Mall to shop and ride some roller-coasters. Wong said he planned on doing laundry later. The duo ran into dozens of fellow torch team members in the mall, all looking for a break from their hectic jobs, Oberman said.
Both dancers said before they joined the relay, they took for granted simple freedoms such as having access to a toilet anytime they needed one. But on the road, people had to learn to time food and drink consumption to match the few stops the convoy makes in a day. The RBC vehicle doesn't have a washroom, so if there are emergencies, workers have to jump off the bus, sprint to the nearest bathroom -- sometimes found by knocking on people's doors -- and sprint back to the torch convoy.
"The torch isn't going to stop for you to go to the washroom," Wong said.
"On our day off , we can wake up and drink water as we like, we can do all of those things people don't even think of for a second," Oberman said.
The dancers typically sleep for only a few hours a night and have to take short naps between relay communities. Both, however, said they forget their pain when they see how happy Canadians are to be around the torch.
"I dropped everything, I forgot my apartment, my other jobs. I said, 'I'm going to see all of Canada, I'm part of the torch relay,' " Wong said. "Everything came to a standstill, so I could do this."
Thursday wasn't a complete day of rest for the flame. It briefly returned to work in the evening as part of a mini-torch relay held before the Oilers game at Rexall Place. Five torchbearers carried the flame before it reached centre ice.
The official relay resumes today in Stony Plain at 6:58 a.m. and travels through Spruce Grove, Enoch, Devon, Beaumont, Leduc, Camrose, Wetaskiwin, Hobbema, Ponoka, Lacombe and Sylvan Lake before it reaches Red Deer at 6:17 p.m.
