One of my warmest memories of the couple years after I graduated college was waiting with a couple hundred people outside the entrance to Mission Santa Clara (northern California)in the middle of the night waiting for the torch to pass. The runner wasn’t expecting a crowd, and when he saw them, he thrust the torch into the air and the crowd went nuts. Truly an electric moment. I don’t watch the Olympics much any more, and frankly I’m not a big fan of southern California, but LA did it right, made a couple bucks, and I wish them well to pull it off again.
I stood on Whittier Boulevard as the Olympic torch passed through Whittier, Calif., my home town. Many onlookers were waving American flags.