The 2007 Championship was the first 857 has gone to since it was in Houston (so ... first in four years?) Most of the kids on the team have never been on a plane before, let alone so far away from home, so there were some jitters. There are four mentors and 12 students on the flight. We leave from Houghton and land in Minneapolis - after a lot of turbulence - wait an hour, then catch our flight to Atlanta. The cool thing was, there was another FIRST team on our flight!
We land at 7:30 and both teams and the other two passengers find the baggage claim. We watch as the other team grabs their luggage. The conveyor goes around, and around, and around ... and ours isn't there. Not one single piece of luggage from our team came through. We noticed the other two gentlemen who were on our flight standing there and asked them if they had a connecting flight in Minneapolis -- they did.
So we talk to the airport, they tell us "uhh ... your stuff just ... didn't come in ... it's bound for Atlanta, so it'll show up sooner or later ... probably." Okay, fine. One of our mentors spots a bright red bag that looks just like hers sitting in the United Airlines office. She asks the woman sitting there if she can check the tag and the woman assures her it isn't her luggage, since we flew Northwest. She won't let her touch the bag, and shoos us away. The airport says they'll call when it comes in, so we head to the Hilton and decide to check in. Mind you, it's about 10:30 pm at this point.
The check in desk is super crowded when we get there. Turns out they overbooked the hotel (oops) and displaced a team or two. Ours wasn't one of them, but when we got there, they only had two of our five rooms ready! We had a crew drive down with our tools and stuff who couldn't check in until we got there, so they had been waiting for 4-5 hours for us to show up. We gave them one of the ready rooms, and waited.
In the end, all 5 rooms were ready by midnight, we got our luggage at 6 am on Thursday (except one piece -- the one with all the scouting sheets, of course -- which didn't come in until Thursday evening) and it turned out to be a good trip!
The funny thing is ... our luggage came in when we did, just on the wrong plane. The red bag sitting in the united office? Yep, that was ours, and the rest of our luggage was with it. The red bag was also the scouting bag -- the last of ours to show up.
*steps back from soapbox*
Hey Schuffman!! How was 93's trip to Atlanta this year? Or IRI 2004?
