I have covered five Olympics on three continents and I have never seen crowds of people like the tens of thousands who have jammed downtown Vancouver during these Games. Robson Street, one of the major shopping routes in the city, is jammed from mid-morning until past midnight as tourists and locals alike soak up an atmosphere they know will disappear in just a few days.

We sure will miss it. After all, will we ever again happily line up for seven hours to take a forty-five second zip line ride over a city block? And by the way, why exactly are people doing that? I can’t imagine lining up for even an hour for that ride, unless it ended with me dropping into a big pit of fresh Timbits!

Can I even say Timbits? It is NOT an official Olympic sponsor and VANOC, the local organizing committee, takes a dim view of any non-Olympic advertising. It even bought up every single billboard in Metro Vancouver. So, that leads to the unofficial Olympic sport of guerilla advertising. My favourite? Scotiabank has wrapped it branches in red and white banners of cheering fans with the slogan: Show us your colours! They even got two-time gold medallist and former hockey captain Cassie Campbell-Pascall to help kick off the campaign but, as their lawyers have made clear, any suggestion this has anything to do with that major sporting festival going on down the street is pure coincidence.

That other unofficial sport, scalping, is also in full swing. There is a rather intimidating group of ticket sellers who gather at every big event around the world, who now ply their trade on our streets. It took them a few days to realize that scalping is legal here, so they don’t need to pretend they’re looking for tickets. It took them a few more days to find out that unless the ticket says "men’s hockey" and involves Canada, the U.S. or Russia, their Olympic tickets are selling about as well as a Columbus Blue Jacket-Minnesota Wild regular season game. Poor scalpers.

What are the hot sellers? The red mittens, for sure. The Bay certainly got that right — a nice souvenir and it only costs $10. Who knew that the post office and mint would also be in the middle of a retail frenzy, with their special edition stamps and coins drawing lineups? It probably doesn’t hurt that Canada Post gambled and won, wrapping their main branch downtown with a giant poster of the country’s first gold medallist, Alex Bilodeau.

And now we in Vancouver wait. The second biggest question each day on the street (after ‘Did we win any medals?’) is a variation of Sally Field’s Oscar speech: Do they like us? Do they really like us? A lot of people here seemed quite bummed out with the negative stories in foreign papers after the first few days.

But, after a few days of beautiful weather in the city, our willingness to share the podium and our gentle hospitality all seem to have combined to warm the hearts of even the grumpiest visiting reporter. Let’s hope they write their updated stories before they see our reaction to the men’s gold medal hockey game!