June 3, 2007
IOWA CITY – – The Hawkeyes are back in Iowa City after traveling for 24 hours on Saturday. The team nearly went the entire trip with no travel hiccups, but hit a snag when they returned to the Cedar Rapids Airport last night. Junior Kristi Smith details the events in today’s blog.
We hope you’ve enjoyed following the Hawkeyes’ travels and adventures through Greece with the player blogs, photo galleries, game recaps and video postcards. This was truly a one-in-a-lifetime experience for the players and they had the time of their lives. This trip produced many memorable moments and the team is extremely thankful to everyone who made this trip possible. The Hawkeyes definitely have a head start on next season.
And speaking of next season, Iowa is scheduled to play its Thanksgiving tournament in Cancun, Mexico in November. Fans interested in traveling with the Hawkeyes to the Caribbean Challenge can find out more information by clicking HERE.
To view all player blogs, photo galleries, video postcards and game recaps from Greece click on Greece Central to review the team’s adventures.
The audio and video clips are free, but all visitors to Hawkeye All-Access, the multi-media pages of hawkeyesports.com, need to register.
One final note… the Iowa women’s basketball team will be hosting its “Golf Extravaganza” June 20 at Finkbine Golf Course in Iowa City. The golf outing helps the Hawkeyes financially for its next foreign tour trip in the years to come. For price information and to reserve your spot in the four-person best shot, call the women’s basketball office at 319-335-9258.
Yesterday was a very long and drawn out day filled with airports, crabby flight attendants, broken TV’s and mysterious airplane food, but we had quite a few laughs along the way, which made our day a little more interesting.
I woke up well rested and ready to take on the long day ahead of me. Of course the day started out great because the breakfast at our hotel was “off the meat rack” as we sometimes say. I ate a few eggs and even tried one of those chocolate croissants Krista had been raving about. Our waiter even surprised Wendy and I with a plate of delicious French toast, which we inhaled. After breakfast we paid our bills, loaded the bus, and took a few more last minute pictures before we headed to the airport.
As we walked through the sliding doors of the airport I was quickly reminded of the fact that Europeans can smoke where ever they want, including airports. As I breathed in the cloud of smoke that surrounded me I was very thankful that the next airport I was going to be in was going to be smoke free. After our bags were checked we all headed to the nearest airport shop and loaded up on chocolate, Cheetos and whatever else we could get our hands on. I had food to eat and there were good movies scheduled to play during the flight, so I was excited to get in the air. But that feeling didn’t last long. It just so happened that my TV and Abby’s TV were both broken, so we couldn’t watch any of the movies. I wasn’t very happy about this but Abby and I passed the time by walking around the plane trying to find people to switch spots with us, and just when we were about to give up hope Liz and Richie Gnida saved the day and offered to switch seats with us. The food on this flight was interesting to say the least. One of the meals was a sandwich with some sort of mystery meat on it. It didn’t look like anything I had ever seen before, but I ate it anyways and it was actually kind of good. Finally we landed in New York and it felt really good to be able to use my cell phone and send a text message or two.
I don’t remember much of the flight from New York to Chicago because I slept through most of it. But as soon as we got off the plane we had to rush to our next gate and we quickly boarded that flight, which was headed to Cedar Rapids. While we were sitting on the plane some people noticed that all of our bags weren’t on the plane, so Matt Weitzel took the liberty of informing our flight attendant of the situation. I believe her exact words were, “We’ll take care of it.” With that said, we were soon in the air on our way home. Of course when we got to baggage claim in Cedar Rapids, the bag situation was most definitely not taken care of because most of us were missing our bags. At that point, I was too tired to get angry and I was just happy to be home.
Looking back on this trip it went by way too fast. I had the time of my life! I saw many beautiful places, experienced a different culture and had many laughs along the way. I’m very thankful to have had this opportunity to experience Greece with some of my closest friends. The memories from this trip will be with me for the rest of my life and I hope everyone had as much fun as I did. Opa!