Airports Suck

I spend a lot of time in airports. Usually I don't mind the experience. I browse shops, look for the best coffee, or find a quiet spot to do some work.

Quite possibley the best airport in the world is Schipol in Amsterdam. It is easy to navigate, loaded with shops, and is very well maintained and clean. Klm is their main operator and generally run in a timely fashion with good customer service and a friendly disposition.

Currently, as I write this I am experiencing what is most likely the worst airport experience of my life. I'm at the Santo Domingo International Airport in the Dominican. I spent most of the day scouting in 95 degree heat with fairly intense humidity so my body odor and sense of cleanliness is virtually nonexistent. I arrived 3 hours early for the flight on the recommendation of a colleague and was greeted with a massive line to check in.

After 1 hour of standing in line and virtually moving backward (it seems there are many relatives travelling together and most people were simply holding spots for the group) I entered the terminal. Here I learned my flight was 30 mins late. No problem.

1 hour later we were delayed from an originally departure time of 4:35pm to 7:35pm, it is now 8pm and I won't be on a plane for what they say is another 1 hour and 30 mins, so 9:30pm. the only way I know any of this is because we simply havn't departed.

Communication is nonexistent and the volume of 180 unhappy Dominicans is not something I want to experience again soon.

On this current trip I have dodged hurricanes Dean, henriette, and Felix. To make matters more worrisome there is a large 'tropical disturbance' off the south easter coast of the U.S.

I was planning on getting into Miami Wednesday evening at a relatively decent hour so I could enjoy a workout and get some paper work done at the hotel. Then enjoying a long morning before departing on a 15 hour tour back home. Now I'm just hoping to get to Miami by morning!

Weather

Before departing for the current trip I'm on there were threats of Hurrican Dean putting an end to any of my travel plans. Information, however, was scarce and it slowly occured to me that these storms are so volotile that weather experts simply don't know which direction they will head.

I ended up missing Dean, or catching the remnants of it once it had been disapated by the landfall of Mexico. Dean struck the east side, I was on the west side. When I landed there was significant rain but nothing to cancel a trip over. Beside, they still played baseball.

I departed Mexico on Saturday afternoon and spent an evening in Miami before departing for the Dominican Republic, which is where I am residing at the moment. When I went to bed, Felix was a tropical storm bearing down on Aruba. When I woke up Sunday morning Felix had undergone massive growth and became a category 1 hurricane. By the time my plane landed and I arrived at my hotel Felix had become a category 5 hurricane!

Now I just saw Henriette, which is only a tropical storm, skirting the western coast of mexico only a few miles out from where I was working in Zihuatenejo.

This weather is really a helpless situation. I can't control when planes go and when they don't. I simply rely on the airlines and that they won't fly you into a hurricane. That doesn't however take into account that they will transport a person if they can get the plane in there. They won't however refrain from getting you there if inclimate weather may arrive while you are on the trip. Additionally, you don't have a choice of getting your money back if you decide you shouldn't go.

Maybe i'm over reacting. I've never been in a real serious storm that I remember but I couldn't help but to be amazed as I looked south over the carribean seas during the drive from the airport in Santo Domingo to the city center, that out there someplace was a big storm and here I was only a 'short' way from it acting as if life was normal. It really is a big world.

Kids on the Road

I'm in transit at the moment. I'm returning from the Junior Pan Am Baseball tournament in Ixtapa, Mexico. It was an interesting event to witness, especially for the first time. The games were played on three very simple fields in very small towns located throughout the small coastal communities. At one of the fields each morning they would have to chase the goats off of the field before the players took the field to warm up.

Also interesting was to see a selection of the some of the 'Americas' top talent. I over heard many U.S. kid's parents describing different events they had attended throughout the summer in various cities across the country. It is unreal to think that many of these kids spent no more than 2 weeks in their own beds throughout the summer. How their parents afford it I have no idea but the committment level on all sides, by the parent and the kid are unreal.

It got me thinking about my own youth and the level of seriousness with which I approached the game. I was borderline nuts about it. I used to stand under the streetlight outside my house and practice my swing, using the shadow from the light as a sort of feedback tool to see my mechanics. I used the same streetlight to practice pop ups, particularly good I thought for training to play in dimly lit amateur parks throughout Minnesota.

Along the way my parents were very supportive. My father threw me batting practice nearly ever day until he had a heart attack. My mother worked hard and made sure that I always had money for new spikes and made games whenever they were remotely near. I don't however beleive we could have afforded to send me on a summer long tour to play in various events geared toward getting kids signed into professional baseball. I'm not sure I would've wanted to.

After all, there were real games to be played, against real opponents, in small towns where winning and losing was more important than how fast you ran to first.