Galen Rupp's Blog

July 20, 2005

Yesterday we traveled to Heusdon-Zolder, Belgium for the final meet of our European tour and it was officially a trip from hell. Our ride didn't show up at the meet hotel so we had to jump on a bus. After an hour and a half we got off at a station to meet the car that was suppossed to bring us to the airport in the first place. At that time the driver said that it would take another hour to get to the airport which was cutting it close because our flight was leaving in 65 minutes. After a half hour the driver started to argue with his wife and pulled out a map. We were obviously lost.

At this point Adam put his hands on his head and started to moan. His eyes rolled back in his sockets (just kidding - I just like giving him a hard time). Several times the driver passed clearly visable airport signs because he insisted he knew the backroads. Alberto and I ended up forcing him to follow the signs after we did a 20 minute circle which found us looking at the same airport sign we had saw earlier.

If you think that's the end of the story, believe me, it gets much better. The airport we flew out of looks like a maintanence shed. When the driver pulled in, Alberto and Adam started yelling that where we were wasn't an airport. We finally got to security and then the guards made us go check one of our bags because everyone is only allowed one carry on bag, so we did that and had to go through security for a second time. Finally we got on the airplane, which was a half hour late leaving.

Alberto had called the Lignano meet director Giampoloon on the way to the airport when we were running late, and he assured us that he would make the flight wait for us because his brother was one of the pilots. Right before we took off Alberto called him to tell him that we had made it and he knew that it was not a problem because in Italy, everything is always behind schedule.

There was another slight delay after everyone was on the plane and Adam and I joked around about how the pilot was probably reading the flight manuel before he tried to take off. This next sight topped off the whole trip. As we were driving to the runway, we looked out the window and saw signs every 15 meters reading (no joke) air brakes? rudders? lights?

Thankfully, we made it to Belgium alright. We just jogged easy on some grass and did lots of drills. We all looked forward to going to sleep after such an exhausting day.