Training Trip Madness

I have so much to catch up on. Whats new. Christmas break has been awesome. Time with the family, including cousins and my nephew have been tons of fun. I've been in New Jersey (multiple times), New York City, Lake Champion, Richmond, Charlottesville, the Outer Banks and finally Puerto Rico! I'll catch up on everything later, but wanted to write about all thats been going on here in Puerto Rico.

My flights for the most part went alright. On my second flight we sat on the plane at the gate for two hours before we left, which seemed like forever, but we got here safely and everything worked out. I flew on my own, but the rest of the team flew in two groups. There were ten people that flew out of Chicago really early yesterday morning and the rest of the team practiced in Grand Rapids and flew out of Chicago later in the day. The people already in Puerto Rico were supposed to practice at the pool here and then go pick up the rest of the team last night.

I got in later than I was supposed to and Aaron and Casey picked me up from the airport a little after six. There was a whole huge catastrophe that I wasn't apart of the hour before they got me. We are supposed to have a bunch of rental vans here to take to and from the pool. I don't know what happened, but all we had was the car for the divers which seats seven. They piled eleven in and drove around for an hour to try and find the pool. The roads here are absolutely insane. The exits are all crazy where you have to drive past something and then take the exit towards where you want to go, but then turn away from it to turn around towards it...I don't know, it doesn't make any sense. So Casey and Aaron picked me up and we went to go find the pool we are diving at since it is different from the pool the swimmers are at. It took about 45 minutes doing lots of loops and turns, but we finally made it there.

On the ride to the pool Casey and Aaron informed me of all the craziness that had been going on. Casey told me the rest of the team wouldn't be coming that night. Something about a volcano erupting and there being too much ash in the air, making it dangerous to land a plane. I don't know, Kelly and I both flew in on our own and didn't have any problems, but the airline wouldn't send them out. Dan said that they were gonna try to get a flight out for this morning, but if the team couldn't get here by Friday, they wouldn't come at all. So crazy.

So there are twelve of us here in Puerto Rico and the other 50 of our team isn't here. They not only couldn't get to Puerto Rico, but were stuck in Atlanta, Georgia. The plan kept changing, but what eventually happened is the team split up in three groups and flew to Orlando late last night. This is our training trip, which is always really intense, so Dan wanted to get in all the training they could. They flew to Orlando, where we usually stay for one night when we have our training trip in Florida, practiced this morning, are practicing again later today and then are taking a really late flight into Puerto Rico tonight. They're supposed to get here around 2am. CRAZY.

I am so thankful everything with my flights worked out and I'm not stranded in an airport by myself. Casey and I are the only divers here, but we lucked out and have our coach, which is great. We dove for about 20 minutes yesterday since we were so late with everything and then went to pick up the swimmers. We were going to take two trips because we now had an added person (me) and my luggage. We decided to try and make it work, so fit twelve people plus a suitcase into a 7 passenger car and went to grab some dinner. Dinner took forever, but we got back to the hotel, crashed and did some dryland practice this morning. We're not sure what time we are able to get on the boards to dive this week cause what we were told is not the same as what the people at the pool said. We're hoping to work that out today.

Anyway, I am alive and doing well! It's been a crazy couple of days and seems like we're just going to have to keep rolling with the punches and being flexible. Please pray everything works out for our team and that they get here safely. Also pray that we don't have 12-2 as our pool practice time like they think we do cause that would mean we wouldn't be able to do things as a whole team during the day. God is in control and I just have to keep trusting in him.