The Joys of Traveling

Who knew flying could be so complicated? As most of you have probably read already the Men's basketball team made it to the NIT this year and our first round game was against the University of Mississippi in Oxford, MS. We departed early Tuesday morning on a flight that departed at 6 am. Normally this is no problem, but one of the guys slept through his alarm. This caused us to be late and three of us were not able to check in. Our head coach managed to negotiate with a gate agent to allow the player and myself onto the flight, but our checked bags had to go with the assistant coach who was left behind.
Our travel party was split into two groups. The group that I was in connected through Phoenix and then onto Memphis while the other group connected through Dallas and then onto Memphis. Everything went according to plan for the Phoenix group. The trip was rather turbulent leaving the majority of us feeling nauseous upon landing in Memphis. The group going through Dallas however was not so lucky. The Dallas group got redirected to Abilene, TX where they were stuck for four and a half hours while the Dallas airport was shut down due to severe weather. They finally made it to Dallas later that night, but were unable to get a flight out to Memphis till Wednesday morning.
The game was played on Wednesday evening with us playing well for the first ten to twelve minutes before Ole Miss started pouring it on. The plan after the game was for us to catch a chartered flight out of the Oxford airport at 11 am. Initially we were to have two fuel stops and arrive in Santa Barbara around 4:30 pm. Our flight didn't end up taking off till around 12-12:30 pm CT. We made our first refueling stop in Norman, Oklahoma. We then made a stop in Las Vegas, New Mexico where we were supposed to have lunch provided for us. When we arrived however, there was no food to be seen that was not encased in a vending machine. Apparently the charter company cancelled the order because the food would have arrived late. We ended up spending about two and a half hours in the lobby area. This actually turned into a golden opportunity when the Mayor of Roswell, NM walked through and told us all kinds of fun facts about the infamous Roswell, NM.

Roswell, NM Facts:
There is a UFO Museum
A burgeoning Dairy Industry
The World's Largest Mozzarella Cheese Factory
Numerous Carnivals and Festivals

After our wonderful meeting with the Mayor we got back on the plane and made our way to Kingmen, AZ on the famous Route 66. We had pizzas delivered here, so everyone pigged out on Papa Johns and then back on to the plane for the final leg into Santa Barbara.

Total travel time: 10 am till 8:45 pm PT. It was a full day of travel that left us all happy to be back and to not have travel on a plane again for a long time!