A Weekend in Virginia - Day 1

This weekend is not starting out on the best foot.  I arrived to the Minneapolis International Airport about an hour early for my 10:40AM departure to Washington Dulles.  Luckily, the volume of weekend travelers was light, so I was able to check in quickly using Northwest's e-Ticket machines.  I had requested a needed window seat (see below) but found out that they had booked me in an aisle.  I tried to change this at the machine, but the flight was completely packed.  Moreover, as I looked at my boarding pass I noticed that 10:40AM had somehow magically changed to 10:12AM.  Holy crap! 

I hustled over to the security checkpoint only to discover a huge back up.  OK, I thought, at least the "A" gates should be the close ones.  Wrong.  Not only were the "A" on the other side of the terminal from the NWA check in, but they were at the far end of an expansive, seemingly endless corridor. I swear gate A13 was located in Mendota Heights. 

Suffice it to say that I made it to the gate just before they started boarding.  Full flight?!?!?  There were like 20 people in the tiny staging area.  Where's my window seat?!?!

Now I absolutely LOVE flying, but I don't much like planes.  Weird statement, I know, but very applicable to me.  I think it's the loss of control feeling when I'm strapped into the plane seat.  That, or maybe the constant feeling that there is no way something this big could possibly stay airborne for a prolonged period of time.  Every little bump of ever so miniscule turbulence and I'm sure we're getting ready to plummet to earth.  Logic would then dictate that I would prefer smaller planes to larger planes from a sheer weight aspect, but in general smaller planes = more turbulence = more unease on my part.

With this said, I wasn't much thrilled to hear the first words from the gate attendant on the loud speaker, "Welcome to NWA flight number whatever it was to Washington Dulles.  Now boarding all rows.  What?!?!?!  No first class cabin?  No "We would like to start boarding from the back of the plane with rows blah blah blah to blah blah blah.  Just "Now boarding all rows."  Crap.  No wonder there weren't very many people around. 

At least the plane was a jet, not a prop-death-trap.  I boarded in the last group of people and found my seat, 1C.  I was thinking that I was in a bulkhead aisle right behind first class.  Instead, I'm right at the front of the plane staring into the cockpit.  My row mate beside me was about 250 lbs.  Now before you get the picture in your head about some grossly overweight, sloppy dressed, bad smelling, German dude with a crew cut, let me jut tell you that he didn't have a crew cut.  Great.  This should be a fun ride.

The plane taxied down the runway, made the turn onto the take off strip and clawed its way airborne.  The sole flight attendant, Marty, was sitting about 3 feet in front of me... facing me.  I kept searching his face for some innate flight-attendant sixth sense that something was dreadfully wrong with some hydraulic system or hyper drive, but luckily his face betrayed no signs of trouble. 

I brought my book out and, with elbows tucked in near by belly button, squished in by Dolf's massive left forearm dwarfing the arm rest separating our two seats, began reading to try and pass the time/get my mind off the soon to be overheated flux capacitor and loose wing.

I landed at Dulles at around 1:30PM, took the shuttle to the Alamo rental agency, and jumped in my rental car to head to Richmond.  The tournament people at the Jefferson Cup had told me that Richmond was about a 90 mile drive, all freeway.  The neglected to mention that gazillion people that would be on I95 on a Friday.  I have never seen so many cars packed in for such a prolonged period of time and over such a prolonged distance.  It was bumper to bumper from Dulles to Fredericksburg (about 40 miles south of DC).  It took about 3 hours to make the 50 some miles to Fredericksburg, then traffic loosened up and I was able to hit 40 mph for the rest of the way.

The field complex that the U13 Championship flight was scheduled on was in Hanover, about 15 miles NE of the hotel.  I like to see the fields when I get in town, so I decided to stop at the complex prior to making the drive all the way to the hotel.  I found the 7 field complex no problem.  There were 3 (out of four) fields set up on the south side of the parking lot, and another 3 set up on the north side.  I went to the north side with the three field as they all had Richmond Kickers (the host club) corner flags set up.  No field signs though to indicate which field was which. 

The north fields were not bad.  Big (120 x 68) and relatively flat.  The grass was short and there were a few clumps of taller grass/weeds. Not great, but not bad.  I was just happy to finally be on grass!  I also think that the work that we've done on the turf will help us better be accustomed to the speed we would likely see on these fields.  I walked over to the two south side fields and they were not in as good of shape.  The third south side field was off on its own across a little gully, and I didn't make the trek over to see it.  I hope Field #4 (where we are scheduled to play on for both games tomorrow) is on the north side!

I made the drive down to the Holiday Inn, got checked in, and then prepared for the team jog and stretch at 7PM.  I like to get the team together when we travel to events like this to do some light jogging and stretching the night of arrival.  It helps the girls shake off some of the travel legs, allows me to talk about the weekend rules, expectations, and goals, and reminds the girls that we are still the same team, just in a different environment. 

However, we only had 6 girls checked in by 7PM.  5 or 6 were coming in late that night, another 5 or 6 were stuck in the I95 gridlock.  This kind of defeated the purpose of the team jog and stretch, but the 6 girls there got together, played a little 5v2 in the Holiday Inn courtyard, and then settled in for the remainder of the evening.

A lot of things didn't go as planned today.  Hopefully the rest of the weekend will be better.