I Came, I Saw...I Stood.

All right, so first things first; I went to get my white armband at 10,000 Villages yesterday. I was determined to do that.

Great little place. The staff is friendly, helpful and enthusiastic. I'd e-mailed a day or two before to make sure that they had the armbands available and was told that there would be one waiting at the cash for me. Sure enough, they'd followed through.

Nowadays, whenever I see an option to buy something that's certified fairly traded, I take it. To that end, when I wanted to give organic chocolate a try, the first one that I came across was the Cocoa Camino line. Some of their products may be an aquired taste. I did not at all like the mint one, for example, but absolutely love the dark chocolate/almond bar. 10,000 Villages has several more options than I'd found before, including espresso and orange. Wanting to find a little treat for Mrs THIT, I bought her white chocolate, as well as peach and ginger jam.

Huh...not to have together, of course...I expect that she'll eat them separately.

That mission being accomplished, I wrapped up my day and began to prepare for today's quest. I made my way to the Byward Market, arriving about 20 minutes before the start of the event. It was right around that time that I realized I'd left my armband at home. Aw, crap!!

There were far more people there than I'd anticipated already, including a strong contingent of the Engineers Without Borders group. And again, much like when I participated in the CN Tower Climb, I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of young people there.

I was less pleasantly surprised at the police presence. I saw at least six cops there. Come on...expecting a rowdy bunch to stand up against poverty, were we? I guess you can't take chances, but it seemed silly though it certainly took nothing away from the proceedings.

Really my only (mild) complaint was that there was no official "moment" as such. While speeches were being made, one of the participants went around counting heads. That was the extent of the crowd participation. They counted 227 people. Oh, okay.

Besides that, the people responsible for organizing the event can be proud of their accomplishment. They'd estimated 100 to participate, and had far more. Media coverage looked fairly extensive, including A-Channel and I believe CTV. So good on them and congratulations on a job well done.