Brooke: Maybe There's a Hole in Your Gas Tank

The title is much funnier to Wayne (VB head coach), Tom (VB SID), and me than anyone else. It's one of those you had to be there moments. Let's just say we had an adventure getting back from the St Louis airport last night. It was definitely a long weekend by the time we returned at 8:30pm. We left Thursday morning at 9 and headed east to St Louis. We had an hour layover in Albuquerque after flying through the worst turbulence I've ever flown through. Our flight was delayed, but only about 10 minutes, so it wasn't that bad. We landed in Salt Lake City about 5:45 MT got our bags and headed to the rental car counter. Of course this ended up taking about 30 minutes, they don't have the vans we have reserved and are completely unorganized. We finally end up with 3 mini-vans and a large car. We drive about 45 minutes to Provo, head straight to the gym & practice from about 8:15-9:30ish and finally get to eat supper around 10. The weather in Utah is amazing. The mornings were cool and the afternoons were hot (it was in the 90s while we were there), but there is no humidity, which I absolutely love. The mountains provided a beautiful back drop and there was little wind. Friday morning we practiced in the morning and then played Tulane. We won in 4, 23-25, 25-20, 26-24, 25-14. It was great to get that first win. Saturday morning we had an early game vs Utah State, which we won in 4 also, 20-25, 25-19, 25-20, 26-24. A quick side note on that game, Jules (the girl who tore her ACL last September) had 23 kills in the game. That is only 3 off her career high. Saturday night proved to be a little tougher. We played No. 20 BYU. We ended up losing in 5, 25-20, 19-25, 25-10, 22-25, 17-15. Game 3 was pretty ugly as you can tell by the score, but we came right back at them in game 4 to push for a 5th game. It was exciting to see us fight back and put ourselves in a great place to come away with a win and heartbreaking to lose especially when we were that close. We finished 2nd in the tournament and Jules & Wendy were both named to the all-tournament team. Due to our late game time on Saturday, we stayed the night and flew back on Sunday. Things were going great, we got to sleep in, had an afternoon direct flight back to St Louis, no delays, turbulence wasn't bad at all, landed safely and had all of our bags. When we got to the shuttle for our parking lot, there was only one van and we were all so ready to get back all 18 of us (plus the other 3 people already on there) piled into the one van. This wouldn't be as big of a deal, but you must remember there are 18 people and all of our luggage. I claim the award for most bags though--my personal bag, training kit, equipment bag, game ready & my backpack. We make it safely to the vans and head out. We leave the parking lot about 6 pm in our 3 Mizzou Athletic Vans. In my van is Wayne, Susan, Tom & me, then in each of the other vans there are 6 players and 1 coach. They chose to ride that way, which was fine with me because I had a whole bench seat to myself. Well we are about in Warrenton when Deng Yang (assistant coach) calls Wayne. She says she has run out of gas. Let the laughing begin. We are all a little confused how she has run out of gas, because we still have half a tank left. So we ask if Chen Feng (her husband & assistant coach) is behind her and she says yes, he went to get her some gas. Susan is talking to Deng Yang and asking her all these questions and telling her to watch her temperature gauge and several other things while Wayne, Tom & I are busting a gut laughing about the whole situation. Then comes the ultimate comment, "maybe there's a hole in your gas tank or something." We lose it at this point. Susan is trying her hardest to not laugh and keep a straight face, but in the midst of all our comments, she got flustered and that was the first thing that came to mind. So we kept driving and told her to call if she needs anything else, because we are about 15 miles ahead of them. So about 15 miles down the road we get another call. The van won't do anything and there is no power. They have added gas, but still nothing. There wasn't even a click when she turned the key. The 4 of us are thinking battery or alternator. So the 7 people in the broken down van all pile into Chen Feng's van. They are headed our way, so we pull over at the Hermann exit and wait for them so some of them can switch vans. I still don't think the 4 of us had quit laughing when they finally arrived. It was pretty funny to see the van pull up with 14 of them piled in. Apparently the air conditioner wasn't working either; it was just blowing hot air. So they were all hot, sweaty, cramped & griping when they arrived. After a little rearranging we finally get back on the road and headed towards Columbia. We arrived at Mizzou Arena around 8:30 pm without further problems. I'm not sure about the other van, but we laughed the entire rest of the way home about the incident as well as the other travel mishaps we have encountered with the volleyball team. Hopefully next weekend will be uneventful as far as mishaps. Below are some pictures of the weekend

As for the football team---YEAH!! GO TIGERS! I didn't get to watch the game, because we played at about the same time, but did get to see a few drives on Tom's computer on media row, and got to watch about the last 7 minutes of the game. I did get to see Spoon run back his interception for a touchdown. I recorded the game and watched the first half last night before going to bed. JMac's 99 yard kickoff return was AWESOME! It's nominated for the Pontiac Game Changing Performance this week....so go to espn.com & search for pontiac to vote for us to win! I can't wait to actually get to see a game in person...just 3 more weeks :)

It's off to Maryland on Thursday to play Maryland, Kentucky & St John's. GO TIGERS!