February 2008: Phoenix Arizona
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One of the benefits of having soccer players in the family is the opportunity to travel to distant locales. In February of 2008 Nick's Mequon (WI) club was entered in the SCdelSol Presidents Day Tournament in a frigid Phoenix, AZ. With Yumi's demanding class schedule it was decided that I'd go along since Yumi would have to fly back on Sunday while the tourney ran through Monday. I'd be the designated baby sitter for the flight back to chilly wisconsin.
As things turned out, potential bad weather back in the badger state and due to the fact that Yumi could not miss class on Monday required that Yumi catch an even earlier flight back home.
The tourney did not go as planned for the team, managing only 1 win (on PK's) and scoring no goals for the weekend other than during warm up.
In the meantime, mother nature thought it would be fun to force us to endure cool temperatures most of the weekend. I took the opportunity to begin my annual trimming of the fat by climbing Camelback Mountain on Monday morning. As I write this 2 days later, my legs are feeling it. At about 1400' vertical gain over just about a mile, this might not have been the smartest way to begin training, but nobody ever accused me of being a genius anyway. The payoff for my sweat: a great view of a smoggy valley of the sun.
Nick and I returned to Milwaukee right on time at 12:15 AM on Tuesday, spent another half hour waiting to get off the plane and another half hour waiting for our bags. We finally made it home by 3:15 AM.
A special note of thanks goes out to the flight crew who managed to get the plane back to earth in one piece in what proved to be a difficult landing.
