Wait, what? There's NHL hockey going on? (Or, Part I of the Tournament Blog)

Call me Alice. I feel like I fell down the rabbit hole. It's only Friday, right? Somehow it feels like I missed a week. Time seems to have sped up since Wednesday when I overcame my fear and set foot on an AIRPLANE and flew to Tampa. And I survived! I only experienced two real moments of anxiety. The first was before I even caught sight of the plane. For some reason I fixated on the oversize luggage cart; this thing was piled so high with our bags, I was convinced it was never even going to make it to the right plane. I even stood there and in my fretting, announced that "if this stuff makes it to where we're going, I will buy everyone a bikini". PS, it got there just fine, so I guess I have to go shopping... But come on. Tell me this would inspire a lot of confidence? I seriously thought at least one bag was going to fall off and end up in Moscow or something.



But, the porter and one other baggage handler brought the cart into an elevator and off we went. To the bar! We found one literally right next to our gate. Happy hockey players! I was fine until we got onto the plane. We were standing in the aisle waiting to get to our seats, and I just stopped and said "oh my God". The teammate in front of me and the teammate behind me handled it well though and the moment passed. And when we got to our seats and I discovered that with Direct TV, I could watch the Bruins' Game 7? I figured I was absolutely set. What better way to distract myself during a flight than watching Game 7 hockey? Except that the tv worked fine until takeoff.... at which point it completely died. Arrrghh! They did manage to get it working again, but not until midway through the 3rd period. Oh, glorious NHL game 7 overtime. We had already started our descent when OT started. It was quiet. And then Horton scored and GoalieHusband and I let out a whooping holler, which my teammate up at the bulkhead later said even she heard (we were one row away from the exit row). Woopsie. Hehehe.

Unfortunately we landed and didn't get to see any of the Lightning game. Waiting at the carousel was interesting. Because of Flipper's Super Awesome Traveler Status, all our stuff was tagged with neon orange priority tags, and came onto the belt relatively quickly. It might just be that the baggage handlers wanted to get that stinky shit out of their presence as quickly as possible though... Just wait til they catch whiff of it on the way home.