Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Home For The Holidays, Not
My dear readers, I know that I promised to publish updates to my latest tale with no more than one day between installments. However, at this time, I am not at my place of residence.
The story goes like this: As you know if you are a loyal reader of this little piece of the internet, my eldest
daughter, Maribel, attends college where she is a basketball player of some prowess. Basketball season is upon us, and, quite often, the season starts with some sort of invitational tournament, with four or eight teams descending on one school. Each season, Maribel’s schools has taken part in one of these tournaments, and each season, we have attended.
In past years, these tournaments have been held at school sites. Since Maribel’s school competes at the Division II level, these are usually smaller, albeit very nice and very friendly schools.
Due to their success the past couple of seasons, Maribel’s team this year has been invited to a more prestigious holiday event. Now, when I heard “more prestigious,” I thought that we might be invited to someplace warm, or perhaps to a large city such as New York, Washington DC, or Boston.
This event is being held in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Now, for those of you who live in Sioux Falls, please do not think that I am insulting your fair metropolis. We arrived today, found the city to be modern and friendly, and our treatment is first-class.
However, getting here sucked.
When we first discovered where this tournament was to be held, we began to look at plane flights to get there. Maribel and her team were taking a direct, chartered flight that the school was nice enough to provide. Unfortunately, there was not enough room on the plane for parents.
A check of airline flights showed that, being the holiday weekend, there weren’t too many seats available. We would have had to fly to Cincinnati, then Minneapolis, and then to Sioux Falls. When taking into consideration the time to drive to the airport, get through security during a busy time, layovers, and the inevitable flight delays, it would be at least a 10 hour trip. Since we figured we could drive there in about 10 hours, we decided to travel by automobile.
We wanted to get an early start, but that was difficult because our other daughter, Colette, didn’t seem interested in getting out of bed, despite the fact that she was getting out of school and could sleep the entire time in the car. The weather was cold and rainy, but at least there was no snow. We lost some time early in the drive because we had to pass through a major metropolitan area and, due to the weather, traffic was pathetically slow. We also had to make roughly 2,700 potty stops. First, Angela had to pee. Then Colette had to pee. Then Angela had to pee. For the record, I peed twice during the entire trip, once when we stopped for lunch.
Perhaps the worst part is that there is absolutely nothing between the major metro area we passed in the morning and Sioux Falls except lots of flat. Even the billboards were scarce.
We pulled into Sioux Falls at about 7 pm local time, which meant we were just in time for Maribel’s game. The good news was that Maribel scored 23 points and her team won by 21.
So now we are safe and warm in our hotel room. There will be no spanking on this trip. Although Colette has her own room, it is adjacent to ours and the walls are paper thin. The tournament organizers have promised us a spectacular Thanksgiving feast. Friday and Saturday will be more basketball, followed by the long drive back. It will be nice to spend some time with Maribel and her teammates. I’m planning on catching all of the games, while Colette and her mom check out the Black Friday shopping, since Maribel’s game is the last of the day.
So the story will have to wait a bit. Perhaps I will get to write a smidge tomorrow. I promise that it will be worth the wait. After all, everything I write actually happened to me.
To bad that I haven’t actually happened. That’s okay. It’s still fantastic.
The story goes like this: As you know if you are a loyal reader of this little piece of the internet, my eldest
daughter, Maribel, attends college where she is a basketball player of some prowess. Basketball season is upon us, and, quite often, the season starts with some sort of invitational tournament, with four or eight teams descending on one school. Each season, Maribel’s schools has taken part in one of these tournaments, and each season, we have attended.In past years, these tournaments have been held at school sites. Since Maribel’s school competes at the Division II level, these are usually smaller, albeit very nice and very friendly schools.
Due to their success the past couple of seasons, Maribel’s team this year has been invited to a more prestigious holiday event. Now, when I heard “more prestigious,” I thought that we might be invited to someplace warm, or perhaps to a large city such as New York, Washington DC, or Boston.
This event is being held in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Now, for those of you who live in Sioux Falls, please do not think that I am insulting your fair metropolis. We arrived today, found the city to be modern and friendly, and our treatment is first-class.
However, getting here sucked.
When we first discovered where this tournament was to be held, we began to look at plane flights to get there. Maribel and her team were taking a direct, chartered flight that the school was nice enough to provide. Unfortunately, there was not enough room on the plane for parents.
A check of airline flights showed that, being the holiday weekend, there weren’t too many seats available. We would have had to fly to Cincinnati, then Minneapolis, and then to Sioux Falls. When taking into consideration the time to drive to the airport, get through security during a busy time, layovers, and the inevitable flight delays, it would be at least a 10 hour trip. Since we figured we could drive there in about 10 hours, we decided to travel by automobile.
We wanted to get an early start, but that was difficult because our other daughter, Colette, didn’t seem interested in getting out of bed, despite the fact that she was getting out of school and could sleep the entire time in the car. The weather was cold and rainy, but at least there was no snow. We lost some time early in the drive because we had to pass through a major metropolitan area and, due to the weather, traffic was pathetically slow. We also had to make roughly 2,700 potty stops. First, Angela had to pee. Then Colette had to pee. Then Angela had to pee. For the record, I peed twice during the entire trip, once when we stopped for lunch.
Perhaps the worst part is that there is absolutely nothing between the major metro area we passed in the morning and Sioux Falls except lots of flat. Even the billboards were scarce.
We pulled into Sioux Falls at about 7 pm local time, which meant we were just in time for Maribel’s game. The good news was that Maribel scored 23 points and her team won by 21.
So now we are safe and warm in our hotel room. There will be no spanking on this trip. Although Colette has her own room, it is adjacent to ours and the walls are paper thin. The tournament organizers have promised us a spectacular Thanksgiving feast. Friday and Saturday will be more basketball, followed by the long drive back. It will be nice to spend some time with Maribel and her teammates. I’m planning on catching all of the games, while Colette and her mom check out the Black Friday shopping, since Maribel’s game is the last of the day.
So the story will have to wait a bit. Perhaps I will get to write a smidge tomorrow. I promise that it will be worth the wait. After all, everything I write actually happened to me.
To bad that I haven’t actually happened. That’s okay. It’s still fantastic.
