For the many Coast residents who've been zipping into town for some weekend Olympic thrills over the past three weeks, this is the weekend it all grinds to a halt.
The world-class events have stopped. The visitors with their exotic accents - including that disproportionate contingent of fantastic, Bond villain-esque Russian men - have caught their flights home. And the mixed fear and anticipation for the men's gold medal hockey match has surged to frenzied, glorious triumph - will we ever forget last Sunday?! - and, as had to happen, dissipated.
Which leaves us here: with the so-called Olympic Hangover. Except that it feels more like the eerie stillness of loss than the you-know-you-deserved-it misery of excess.
And sure, the Paralympics are coming, and the zipline is still going through Robson Square (if you can stomach the lineups), and some provincial pavilions are still open, and people are no doubt still wearing their red, maple-leafed Olympic Superstore swag.
But the loss is undeniable.
And it caught some of us - myself included - off guard.
Three weeks ago, as we waited to see if Vancouver would implode under a tsunami of visitors, if terrorists would target us, or if the Games would unravel completely for lack of snow, I was feeling pretty smug about living safely out of town. I'd begun to refer to the Coast as my "Olympic-proof fortress."
I wouldn't have described myself as anti-Olympic, but with the city's mounting debt and VANOC's accruing missteps, I was certainly a skeptic. I had decided to hedge my bets, wait and see.
And as I waited, something happened. Or rather, a three-week series of somethings happened. And the result is that, nearly a week after the last medal was won and the last outsized flying moose was hustled off the stage at the closing ceremonies, I can't quite let go.
Everyone has lived these three weeks differently, and doubtless some are nonplussed and others are appalled by the scale and excess of the whole production in the face of pressing social needs.
But here is what I think we've gained.
Beyond the athletes' triumphs, the medal counts, the men's hockey gold, Joannie Rochette's heartbreaking heroism and the incredible rush of camaraderie in the streets of Vancouver, Canada has come into its own. As we've watched and participated, Canadians across the county have come together, linked by common hopes and shared stories. We've even - particularly as we reacted to opening and closing ceremonies - worked to define what we're about. Which is a big deal in a country that notoriously defines itself by what it isn't.
And while those ceremonies missed the mark many a time - I'm still appalled that the so-called Vancouver 2010 Olympics didn't even acknowledge the city's significant East and South Asian communities - they gave us pause and made us think.
And they gave us moments of brilliance.
Frankly, I think I'd have fallen for the Games if all I'd heard was slam poet Shane Koyczan remarkable poem about our Canadian identity, We are more.
So as we go into the void of this weekend, I'll leave you with his words - one of the Games' many legacies: "We are an idea in the process of being realized. We are young, we are cultures strung together, then woven into a tapestry, and the design is what makes us more than the sum total of our history. We are an experiment going right for a change."
