(Written by kencraw)

(Sorry for the lack of posts this week. Monday and Tuesday were really busy at work, as any vacation shortened week seems to be.)

After missing the Tennessee game road trip in 2006, and hearing about how amazing their stadium and game day environment was, I vowed never to miss another road game at a big-name school again. With that as the goal, how can one even THINK about missing a trip to the Horseshoe?

The planning for this trip began in March, and it started with the search for a cheap flight. I’m somewhat good at it and I’m willing to fly somewhat unusual routes to make it happen. Leave from a different airport than I arrived at? Why not?!? Fly the red-eye? Of course! Multiple airlines? Whatever it takes.

Thus my trip began from SFO at 11:05 PM on a Tuesday night. I took the red-eye to Detroit. I had a hard time sleeping on the flight, which was a bit of a surprise. I don’t usually have a problem. It was even more surprising because the plane was half empty and I ended up having a row to myself. You’d think with all that room it would be easy to fall asleep.

Maybe I normally rest my head on the people sitting next to me and I don’t know it (because I’m asleep)?

In any case, I only got about an hour of sleep before arriving in Detroit.

Detroit is an interesting airport. It has one VERY LOOOONNNGG terminal for all of the full size planes. To facilitate movement through the airport, they have a tram that runs up along the ceiling of the terminal. However, not being familiar with the airport, and with signs explaining what the tram was for and where its stops were, I ended up huffing it down most of the terminal.

To add to the walk, the small commuter jets have a separate terminal as they do in a lot of airports. And just like most of those airports, it was a pretty long walk to get over to the other terminal. Luckily my gate wasn’t too far down that terminal.

Also of note for Detroit is that it is almost entirely a Delta hub and nothing else. I don’t know if I saw a single plane that wasn’t delta, and it was a bigger airport than I anticipated. In any case, I got to the gate with plenty of time to fly on to my final destination: Hartford, CT.

I know what you must be thinking, “Hartford!?! Doesn’t this bozo know that Connecticut is a long way from Ohio State which is in, you know, OHIO!”

Yes, I know.

But like all my road-trips I decided to combo it with another goal. In this case, to see my brother and my brand new from the factory nephew. Because my wife and I are both eldest children and we married young (at least by today’s standards), we were waiting for our first niece and nephew for a long time. Late this July, the first one finally came.

The plan was to fly out to see them in Springfield, MA for a couple days.

Also, because my brother was raised to be a life long Cal Bear fan like his brother, he’s aching to go to any Cal game within driving distance from the East Coast.

So this trip is a flight and THEN a road-trip. My brother and I leave for Columbus tomorrow morning early.