[Liz Smith]

2005. 555 is a New Jersey team, and we decided to go to the Arizona Regional.

With the timing of our flight, we were set to get on a bus from the school to the airport about an hour or so after the end of school. Perfect, you go to school, then make a short trip home to get your luggage, and then you're on your way. The problem was that, half way through the morning it started to snow. A lot. By the time school got out, the roads were not easy to drive on at all. I had to get a ride from my neighbor with the 4 wheel drive SUV to get back to the school to catch the bus.

We finally all got to the bus to the airport, and its ok. The problem was that the teacher who was our head mentor, who was basically was the one with all the trip information, decided that he wanted to drive his own car to the airport.(Fine, lets just all get to the airport.) So it's all the ~15 students, and one other mentor in the bus, and our head mentor following behind in his car.

Here is another issue. For those of you who live in the general NYC area, you know that there are 3 local major aiports: Newark, Laguardia, and JFK. Newark is by far closest to us, and JFK is the farthest. Ponder a guess to which airport we were flying out of... (Hint: It's JFK). Anyway, this bus driver didn't seem to know exactly where he was going. He assures us he did, but it took a really long time, it's snowing really badly, and I didn't really believe him. Plus, we all thought we were going to die in the bus, because the roads were really slippery.
The main issue was that, half way through this eternal bus trip from the airport, we got a call from someone's mother that she checked, and our flights had been cancelled because of the snow. (Great.) We attempt to call our head mentor, who once again wasn't in the bus. Of course, his cell phone doesn't work. We had a problem, because we could have either turned around and gone back home, and gotten a flight for the next morning, or we could have tried to go to the airport and book a flight for that evening. The bus driver informed us that if we did go to the airport he was going to leave right away, and was not waiting around for us... so if we didn't get a flight, we would have been stranded at the airport for a long time. It doesn't matter though, because the mentor who needed to be making that decision was not on the bus and was not picking up his cell phone. We continued making our way to the airport.
So, we had one of the parents trying to book us on flights to at least get us to the west coast, while we were trying to write signs to put up in the bus back window saying "CALL US", hoping our mentor would see. So, we were trying to make things organized, and have our other mentor try to figure out what we're going to do. The funny part was that he kept saying "Have Liz [me] do it". But he was the adult!

Anyway, right when we get to the airport, we look, and our mentor's car is nowhere to be found. I guess he had gone to park, but we didn't know where he was. So we get to the terminal, and one of the parents had found that there was a flight to Las Vegas leaving shortly with enough empty seats on it. We were trying to get booked on that flight, but our mentor STILL wasn't at the airport terminal, and we STILL didn't know where he was, and he STILL wasn't picking up his cell phone, and we didn't even know if he knew that our flight had been cancelled. So, finally he got there, and he was in a good mood joking around. Everyone else was pretty upset.. and after a few choice words regarding how we all should have been in the same vehicle, and how a new cell phone should be purchased, and how a certain student should not be the one who has to be in charge of booking flights, and keeping everything organized... we finally get booked on a flight to Las Vegas, which a short jump from Vegas to Phoenix.

In Phoenix though, our luggage was nowhere to be found. We went to the hotel, and were told our luggage would be delivered to the hotel when it came in. So, we waited.. and waited, and about 1/4 of the luggage came in. Not my stuff, which is a problem, because I was carrying all of the team shirts (because I did all the iron ons myself), and I was the only girl on the trip.. meaning, I'm probably not going to be able to borrow anyones clothes if it comes down to that. The other problem was that we had a kid who had a medical problem, and he had neglected to pack his medicine in his carry-on (which you should always do!), so he was worried about that, and wasn't feeling well, and everyone was tired and gross and had no changes of clothes. Finally at around 2 in the morning we got the rest of our luggage. Yay! I did lose one of my bags though in the end, the one with the food I had brought for the team to snack on. Worst travel experience ever. We did end up winning the regional though.