Flight Day One

Well, a world games trip doesn’t really start out on the right foot when the first text of the day, in pre-dawn hours, is that your flight is cancelled. What was supposed to be a relaxing breakfast and easy trip to the airport turned into a tsunami of cell calls and emails and texts. No flight meant the crew from Wisconsin heading to Newark NJ was going nowhere fast. The SOUSA management team is really stellar and after a brief panic, several options started coming in.

Option 1: being booked on a flight the following morning. Ahhhh, no.  We have coaches and athletes that need to be there by this evening.  United airlines thought that was their best option to start.  Soon after a question came pinging my phone- “How close are you all to the airport?”  (just 5 minutes away.) So there is a flight in like an hour.  Goes Milwaukee to O’hare, but then a connecting flight to Newark.   SO it’s scramble scramble scramble-grab the luggage and sprint to the airport.  

Luckily, the counter wasn’t too busy, but changing tickets and checking bags takes a while.  The United folks were great and we made it thru TSA and onto the gate with no time to spare.  The group had to be split, so some of the SOWI team will catch a later flight and arrive in NJ tonight.  

If you’ve been to O’hare, well, you know-its big and spread out.  Luckily, United sent an escort to the gate and lead us thru the different concourses and to the correct one to depart. Surprisingly, United also had a little welcome for us there-kind of unplanned, as we weren’t supposed to be there then.  The Illinois team had departed shortly before, so a crew had an impromptu meet and greet with cake an introduction to the CEO of the airline!  Time just enough to hit the BR before boarding.  

The flight to NJ is about an hr and a half plus losing an hr in eastern time.  Thru all of this slight chaos, we’ll end up arriving an hr earlier than we were supposed to-well, at least some of the WIsconsin team.  

I’m banging this out on the seat tray and we’re descending.  Hurry up and wait is SOP, so each hurdle we clear gets us one step closer to Abu Dhabi. Now onto finding luggage, getting it onto a truck, a bus ride and then check in processing for SOUSA.  Just a few more hurdles on the way to Abu Dhabi.