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There are just mere hours until the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics begins and the city of Vancouver is buzzing. You can literally feel the excitement in my city right now. I felt it walking around town, I felt it while taking the bus to work this morning and among family and friends, well we can't stop talking about it. It's like you feel like you and your city are part of something bigger, like something great could happen during these Games.

You can feel the excitement in little things like the flags on cars or the different country flags hanging on the balconies at the Olympic Village. Seeing people wearing something that says Canada or something to do with Hockey Canada makes me smile. You can strike up a conversation with anyone on the street and be able to be excited about something together is amazing in a city where that isn't the norm. It's in the flood of people from around the world speaking different languages, even if they are taking photos of things for some reason that us locals can't seem to understand.

It's hard to explain what my city is going through if you have never happen before and if you would have told me before that I would feel this way, I probably would not have believed you. The announcement that Vancouver had won the games came in 2003 and it took years of planning to get to where we are today. There was construction, cost issues and worries about not having enough snow on Cypress Mountain, but none of that will matter today.

In the past few weeks we've also see the flood of Olympic staff or volunteers in their Olympic blue threads. Never did I before realize how many people volunteer their time to put on an event like this. I know of people that have taken vacation time in order to volunteer 10 hour days for the next two weeks in order to work at the Olympics.

The torch was run yesterday through Vancouver, Steve Nash and Trevor Linden took part running it through the city. I watched it last night as it made it's way from UBC to downtown Vancouver just after the sun had gone down and rain had stopped. It was an experience. It was over in a few seconds, but you could feel the excitement of the people that came out to line the streets to watch the torch run through the streets was energizing.

With Canada being a country that loves their hockey, a lot of our focus will be on the hockey tournament that begins on Tuesday, but right now it's about a city that is excited for what can happen in the next two weeks.