May 23, 2007
Hello Hawkeye fans!
Well, we’re on our way, despite a slow start out of the gates this morning on our long trek to Greece. As we loaded the bus at the Iowa Hall of Fame building at 6 a.m., we were missing one person… Johanna Solverson. Johanna’s alarm clock did not go off, allegedly, and she missed the bus. It was okay though, as she drove up and met the traveling party at the Cedar Rapids Airport on time.
After a long check-in process, we awaited boarding of our first flight of the day (Cedar Rapids to Chicago-O’Hare). During our wait, some of the team members played Uno, ate a small breakfast, while another player almost lost her paperwork. Director of Basketball Operations Chuck Evans was walking through the terminal and spotted a brown envelope on a chair, which enclosed Krista VandeVenter’s passport and boarding pass… oops!
As our plane approached the runway from our flight from Cedar Rapids to Chicago-O’Hare, we were notified that the flight was going to be delayed. Not the news we wanted to hear. We spent just over an hour sitting in the plane, awaiting clearance from O’Hare traffic control. We spent most of that time sharing a few laughs over the captions in the Sky Mall magazine. Finally, we got word and we were on our way to Chicago around 9:15 a.m.
The flight was just an appetizer as to what was on the horizon. The flight was about 40 minutes. We landed at O’Hare at 9:55 a.m. and had a brief one hour layover as the next leg of our flight was a two-hour flight (Chicago to New York-JFK). We were surprised as our plane to New York was a regional jet, the exact size as the one from Cedar Rapids to Chicago. Most of the team used this flight to relax, listen to music and read. Everyone will likely try and catch some zzzzz’s on our next flight from New York to Athens, which is a scheduled 9:30 flight across the Atlantic Ocean.
We landed in New York at 2 p.m. (EDT) and then spent about 30-40 minutes passing through the international terminal security. We have two more flights remaining before we reach our final destination of Thessaloniki. We are slated to arrive there at 1 p.m. Greece time on Thursday (5 a.m. CDT).
The team is really excited about this opportunity and ready for a week of sightseeing, team bonding, competing against the Greek National Team and experiencing a new culture.
Hopefully, everyone will enjoy the daily photo galleries, player blogs and video postcards we will post from Greece the upcoming week.
The next blog will be posted by junior-to-be Megan Skouby Thursday night.
Go Hawks!!!
SID Matt Weitzel