And sporting the new fall line from Target for men Saturday at Scott Stadium in Charlottesville, Va. is Shawn Courchesne from the Hartford Courant.
Oh the glamorous life of a UConn football writer.
Does it get any better than this?
Probably not.
There was just something inside of me that said something had to go wrong with this weekend. Barring the Dodge Charger in Pittsburgh, the first two road trips of the season have gone all too well. Just something in the air that said get ready for fun on the trip to Charlottesville, Va.
And I had that feeling for some reason in the pit of my stomach this morning as I got ready to fly out of Bradley International Airport. I guess when you get to the airline check-in counter and they don’t have in the computer the reservation that you’ve had since April you kind of figure that’s not a great start to the day.
Oh but it gets so much better.
The first leg of the trip was fairly uneventful, decent sized plane to Philadelphia. Quick flight, no problems beyond the woman sitting next to me who happened to have some issues with understanding personal space and how it pertains to seats on airplane. It’s one thing when you want to hog the armrest, entirely another thing when you use my leg as your armrest.
Arrived in Philadelphia, one of the more unique airports, where you get ferried from one terminal to another on a bus, busses that seemingly employ wanna-be Nextel Cup Series drivers. Good times there. Think Speed without Sandra Bullock driving the bus all while playing chicken with overzealous luggage buggy drivers.
Now you know you’re in for an interesting mode of transportation on leg 2 of the journey when the gate 
you’re leaving from has a door that walks directly out to the tarmac and has only 16 seats in the waiting area. And then you see JayJay the Jet Plane’s friend Jake meet you at the gate for the fun ride from Philly to Charlottesville.
It had propellers. That’s all I need to say about this thing.
And as we waited on the tarmac for crews to finish firing up the motors (seemed the jumper cables attached to the 1978 Oldmosbile parked next to the plane weren't fitted correctly), Waterbury Republican-American writer Ed Daigneault, sitting a row behind me, pointed to a lone piece of luggage sitting under the wing, making a crack that my bag was sitting out there. I laughed. I shouldn’t have.
We took off and reached our cruising altitude of 93 feet fairly quickly, although I didn’t feel all that great about things when some dinging sound went off as we were elevating through some turbulence and the eyes on our stewardess, little Miss Sunshine, got as big saucers.
Beyond the fact that I’ve been on amusement park rides that went higher in the air, it wasn’t a terrible flight. You always wonder when you’re in the air about where exactly you are. The beauty of this flight was when we reached Virginia you could at least see the welcome signs on the highway below.
As Ron White would say, we arrived at the Charlottesville Airport, Hair Care and Tire Center and I headed to the baggage claim and watched bags go round and round and round for about 15 minutes before I came to realization that my bag wasn’t coming out.
Nice. At least my luggage didn’t have to suffer through the propeller plane. Though where it was, that seemed to be anybody’s guess at the airline counter.
The nice lady behind the counter assured me that they would find my bag. When I asked her, “shouldn’t you know where it is by all that code stuff on the claim ticket?” she just kind of a giggled a cute little southern belle giggle. “Oh that stuff doesn’t tell us anything honey,” she told me. Ah, now I feel much better, thanks.
She did say that 99.9 percent of the time the bag arrives there before the end of the night. Then she looked at the schedule and told me, if it gets here tonight, it will probably be coming on our next flight from Philadelphia, which arrives at about 11:30 p.m. So it was off to Target for me to buy come clean wears.
Perfect.
Why do I have this feeling I’m going to be the .1 percent this weekend.
If you see me looking a little run down Sunday afternoon at Thompson International Speedway, clothes a little bit worn out from the weekend, you'll understand I am the .1 percent.
Shawn Courchesne, 6:27 p.m.
I hope you asked Ed why HE never reports on the Connecticut racing scene. Your previous column questioned the lack of coverage of the Ct. press. Maybe if he had an all expense paid trip to Thompson or Stafford we would read about it in the Waterbury Republican. NO, on second thought we need to read more about U-Conn !!!!!! What ? the coach said something ? U-Conn ! Coming up, basketball, which means non stop coverage of U-CONN !! Didn't Ct. have a hockey team called the WHALERS ? Wait a minute ! A U-CONN player said something ! News at 11
Posted by: ray cote. palm bay, fl | October 13, 2007 at 12:28 AM