The Girl’s Trip to PIT (or Philadelphia!?)

This post is dedicated to the The Girl and the long journey to the 2008 NASC (ITTs) in Pittsburgh, PA. First is a short summary leading up to the long journey and last is The Girl’s delirious story of the night that never ended.

Note: The Girl is my girlfriend, best friend, and more, she asked to have her identity to be silent and a secret. So if you know who she is, please respect her privacy and don’t reveal her!

Since The Girl is changing careers this year from a number cruncher to a High School Math Teacher she has had to make some hard choices. For the last 2 years she has been the Assistant Coach of the West U23s and before that played for 5 years on the West U23 team as well. This year she had to leave the U23s in the capable hands of the other coaches as her student teaching was starting the week of NASCs.

However she decided to tryout for the West Senior rugby team as well this year. Of course she made the team, so she had an even bigger decision to make! Eventually she decided to bow out of coaching completely and to arrive on Thursday in PA to play for the Senior side. Upon searching for tickets to PA, she realized that it was going to be horribly expensive, finally she purchased a ticket and it was $660!

*Thanks to the Texas Rugby Union (TRU), Austin Valkyries and the Austin Valkyries Alumni group, The Girl did receive several donations…off setting the cost of the ticket quite a bit.

Greetings!!!

Good morning everyone… I’m signed in at the Philadelphia airport… that’s right! you heard correct… yes it may be 5:30am (4:30am Texas time) but I am not delirious (or maybe I am) I am in deed in Philadelphia and not Pittsburgh.

So what had happened was…. thanks to the great driving skills and street knowledge of Meg Pace (Amen to Austin Fire women) I arrived at the Austin airport in plenty of time for my 5:45pm flight yesterday… while I was on time, the oh so not friendly American Airlines flight was not…. so I get to Dallas at 7:15pm for my 7:30 departure to Pittsburgh (yes the correct city)… the nice little flight attendant came on the loud speaker and asked all passengers who did not have a connection to please stay seated to let the passengers that DO have a connection to d-board the plane first…does anyone listen to this nice flight attendant?? HECK NO! I seriously thought about doing rucking drills down the center isle, but being I was stuck by the window! I could not get to the isle, so i was stuck…

side note: in the future, anytime the nice flight attendant makes that announcement and that applies to you, please remain in your seat!!

ok where was I….so, I had a mile sprint warm-up in the airport to my gate (which was in another terminal) (thank god for those workouts!) I arrived at the gate at 7:30pm (remind you thats when the flight was to take off)… ok so maybe it was like 7:30 and 30 seconds… BUT I COULD SEE THE PLANE!!! Did they let me on…NO! So yes I got a little irate and probably had security on the way to taze me…but I was very upset!

So… chapter 2 of the story (I know, we are only on chapter 2!?)…. after thinking of every possible way to get me to Pittsburgh by Thursday night… I was on the phone talking with Wendy… there was thought of me driving from Philly to Pitt… or Wendy coming to get me… or flying up in the morning… I finally decided on leaving Dallas at 8:30pm which put me in Philadelphia at 1 am!!!!! I then went to a hotel (yes I got that sh*t comped what what!) at 2am… proceeded to sleep until 4:30am… do the math… and now I am at the airport awaiting my 7am (6am Texas time) departure to Philly which gets me there at 810am… and warm up starts at 9am!!!

thanks for reading,
The Girl

And that is her version of the story…what a journey, but its what a lot of rugby players go through to play this sport that we love. We just have to keep reminding ourselves that we love this game, we love our teams and we love what rugby has done for us.

Ticket to Pittsburgh: $660 (but landed in Philadelphia!)
Ticket from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh: $141
Donations from Teammates and Union: over $500
Playing the sport we all love? PRICELESS

For other tales during the 2008 NASC visit these links:

Links to Day 1 NASC – West U23s, Day 2 NASC – West U23s, Day 3 NASC – West U23s and Seniors, 2008 NASC Day 4 – West U23s & Seniors, 2008 NASC Day 5 – West U23s & Seniors, 2008 NASC Day 6 – West U23s & Seniors and the 2008 NASC Full Results.