The VolleyBlog returns with insights from Anna Bartz and Elizabeth Egerer after a weekend road trip to Ohio
This past weekend the Panthers had matches against Cleveland and Youngstown State in Ohio. That’s an 8-10-hour drive - talk about horrible. Lucky for us we got to skip out on the whole long, annoying bus ride together and hop two 9-passenger baby planes for a traveling time of one and a half hours one-way. If that doesn’t scream spoiled, I do not know what does. The flight to Cleveland was nothing out of the ordinary as Susie was close to tossing her cookies and a couple of laughing attacks that ended in tears (happy tears of course because what other kind is there?)
Anywho, when we arrived to Cleveland’s mini-airport it was raining, as it would for the entire rest of the weekend. Inside the airport we ate the entire large bowl of lifesavers in the lobby while we waited for a shuttle. Numzers. We took a shuttle over to the Hilton Garden Inn (what a lovely place). On the shuttle ride, the driver told Susie and some of the girls about how many famous people had sat in that same passenger seat… including Justin Beaver and Justin Timberland just to name a few.
When we arrived to the hotel we immediately walked over to Subway to have a “snack,” aka dinner, aka a meal an hour before the pregame meal. Don’t worry, nobody was hurt in overstuffing their faces. After we ate at subway we had about an hour to jump on the beds and have a couple of pillow fights before we were on our way to the Winking Lizard restaurant for our pregame meal. There is actually a ginormous real live lizard in there, however the winking part was up for debate. Talk about false advertisement.
It wasn’t long before we were on our way to Cleveland’s gymnasium. Since it was raining out, Susie thought it would best to sprint up several stairs to get inside (skipping quite a few here and there to increase her PR). Turns out that was actually a horrible decision compared to just walking into the gym because she wiped out halfway up those concrete stairs, leaving her with a raspberry and a wet pair of jeans. Lucky for her, she saved herself from a broken wrist with the ability to roll out of the tumble like only a true volleyball player could.
Once we were all inside a nice man took us downstairs to our dungeon-like locker room, filled with plywood lockers that were only there just to give you slivers (they could have at least sanded or stained them). It didn’t matter that they tried to hold us hostage and injure our silky smooth hands because we came out and killed the Vikings (aka mid-evil hairy men aka definitely not volleyball-ers) in 3.
The next morning we woke up to a delicious Hilton breakfast. Man, they have EVERTYHING. The lady even split a waffle in half so you could eat a half stack of French Toast with it (that way we weren’t limited to choosing just one). After that we crammed into a 12-seat van like a bunch of clowns in a clown car and went to Youngstown to take care of some business. We looked kind of like slugs out on the court but managed to pack up the game in three and get out of there.
Before we headed to the airport we stopped at the classiest Taco Bell. Across the street there was a puppy store (AWESOME!!!!!) Apparently some of us were being a little too loud for the people in Taco Bell trying to have intimate, candle-lit conversations along with their dinner. Unfortunately for them, we don’t understand the whole intimate thing, so the older lady had to tell us “keep it down” three times. Apparently it is “frowned upon” to scream in public places. Who knew? Not us.
After we ate, we piled into the van and drove to the airport. A member of the team forgot what Taco Bell does to her digestion system and let one loose. We thought we would lose a few due to suffocation, but the driver and passenger were on it and had those windows down within seconds.
We finally got to the airport and some of us were lucky enough to use the GOVERNORS PLANE!!!!!!! AMAZING!!! Aside from some leftover peanuts, the plane was super clean. Well done Gov-na!
That’s all folks.
Ta-ta for now.
See ya Tuesday and Wednesday at our matches against UIC and Valpo.
-Biz and Anna, aka Banna aka Aniz
