vs. Indiana

Kitty cats and the laws of physics

If I had to pick a recurring theme for this season it would be that "Murphy's Law Sucks". This road trip was definitely no exception, in fact, other than our joke of a trip to Seton Hall earlier this year, this trip defines the law to a tee.

Guess what we found when we got to Chicago Midway Airport Saturday morning? Nothing. Well, that's not really true--our plane was there for once, but this time our flight crew had gone AWOL (this Matt Moran thing is contagious, I fear). By now I've gotten used to the fact that our plane is not going to be ready when we arrive at the airport so I don't even bother to get all riled up like some of my team mates--I just sit back and catch some more Z's. Only problem was that Coach Byrdsong decided to bring the whole Byrdsong clan with him. Mrs. Byrdsong and the whole nest full of little byrd fledglings were there--which is ordinarily is no big deal, but little Ricky Jr. is, other than my own two little brothers his age, the most incredibly annoying child I've ever had to be around. Kinda made me feel like I was back home in Florida with my family--fun for the first fifteen minutes or so but after that I'm ready to leave.

There we sat on the tarmac, once again dissed by the conspriators at the charter airlines...which wouldn't have been to bad if it weren't for one 4' tall rug-rat running up and down the aisle, jumping all over everyone on the bus and slapping me on the head as I attempted to sleep. Kids will be kids and there's nothing I could really do about little Ricky, so I just gave him my psycho-killer look...a lot.

Coach Byrdsong wasn't too pleased about all the waiting around so he went in to see what happened to our crew. A little interrogation revealed that the wonderfully competent folks at Sierra Pacific decided not to schedule anyone to fly our plane. How nice. One plane, one team, three kids, no crew. Lovely.

Mike Gilmartin, our trainer, managed to arrange a flight on one of the little planes that Delta (a REAL airline) operates and an hour after we arrived our bus pulled up to a smaller, albeit manned, plane for us to file into. I was so irritated with little Ricky by this time that I had to take a walk on the tarmac to get my mind off of him. I started concentrating on more important matters, like why "abbreviated" is such a long word, wondering what they ship styrofoam in and most importantly, if bread always lands butter-side down and cats always land on their feet, what would happen if you strapped your bread and butter (butter-side up, of course) to the back of a cat? I really do think about things like this.

"Uh, Coach, I'm having trouble motivating the ground crew"

Once loaded up and ready to go in this tiny little plane (I stood on my knees and my head almost touched the ceiling on this thing) we sat and waited some more. I couldn't believe what I heard coming from the front. The pansy we had for a pilot (I think it was the pilot) was having problems getting the ground crew "motivated." Yes, he actually said this. Evidentally, the guys were acting up outside, goofing off since it was near the end of their shift. They refused to work, basically. I could see the back of Byrdsong's neck get red with anger and I think he even started to tremble a little bit he was so mad. Never, I mean never tell a coach that someone needs some motivation. Just because you're not on his team doesn't mean that he won't give you some motivation if you're the reason that his team is getting held up! I didn't hear any screaming (the door was closed behind him) nor did I see any blood splattering up against the windows so I don't think he did anything illegal to motivate them but whatever he did worked--within 5 minutes we were airborne. Total waiting time: 1.5 hours.

Game Time

People keep asking me how we did in the land of Knight. They keep asking me if we won. I want to tell them "we never had a chance", but of course I'm supposed to maintain a positive attitude. I likened this game to getting open heart surgery -- without anesthesia. It was not fun. It wasn't even close. When I went into the game during the second half, I walked from the scorer's table up to Todd Lindemann. He just snickered...I don't think he was expecting that answer. What else could I say? Was I supposed to be happy that they were scoring at will, using us like a bunch of $2 whores? Bobby's boys had us for lunch and didn't even bother to leave any scraps for the dogs.

This will have been my last visit to Assembly Hall and needless to say it will be a visit I will not soon forget.

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