Anyone want a dog?

I have been here in Romania this whole time and I haven't brought up the stray dog situation here. Well, there is just about every mixed breed of dog known to man here simply walking the streets just like people. It really is quite strange. One of the guys on my team said there around 100,000 stray dogs in Bucharest, Romania's capital, alone. I believe it. We had a couple games in that city and there are dogs everywhere, of all shapes, colors, and sizes. There are a lot in Oradea as well. Three dogs actually seem to claim their territory right around the hotel where I stay. It's something different, that's for sure. I actually had a close encounter with a tough dog this fall. This dog has an owner and it is a good guard dog although it has a crippled front leg. I was walking back from the grocery store on afternoon and this dog is barking at me furiously. I was even on the other side of the street. He still didn't like it and he started to charge. I've never seen a dog with a bum leg move so quickly. I put my leg back like I was going to strike and he backed off, but it still got my heart pumping a little. The streets are rough out here - not with gangs, but with stray dogs haha. It's a different world over here - I am reminded of that every day.

I should also bring up the little airport in Oradea. We flew to Bucharest for our last away game and it was an interesting experience. The airport had one check-in desk, a little security checkpoint, and everyone that checked in was going on the same flight. Half of the walls were missing and replaced with plywood due to continued construction. But they had free wireless internet haha :) Good ol' Romania.

I hope all is well with everyone.

Take care and God bless,
Mike

Quality was more than quantity

I will give you a little rundown of my trip to the states and Andrea's visit to Romania although it's already been about a month since that has happened. Where does time go? Andrea and I went to Boston for a couple days to check out the city. It was quite cold when we were there, but it would be a pretty city in the summer. We went ice skating when we were there. It has been years since I have been on skates so I was a bit nervous I was going to fall, but I stayed up the whole time with a couple close calls. Andrea can tell you it looked pretty goofy with a guy nearly 7 feet tall on skates struggling to stay on his feet. It was a good time though. We also went to a Maine Red Claws game. They are an NBA D-League team that plays right in Portland. It was interesting and fun to see that level of play.

I felt like I was in America for about five days so it was great to have Andrea come to Romania. She got to see three games so that was great. Ten days she was here, but it went so quickly. It felt like we didn't get to do very much, but it was still well worth it. I showed her around Oradea and we got to see Budapest, Hungary, which we were really excited about. We rented a car and drove from Oradea to Budapest (about 3 and a half hours) the day before Andrea left. That is a really beautiful city and the architecture is amazing. We had our city map and we got to see everything we wanted to in one day.

While Andrea was here, I was also able to get my hands on one of my teammate's guitars. He asked if I knew how to tune it and I was glad to help. I had been really missing my guitar and wished I could have brought it over here with me. I got a lot of gratification out of playing again - playing music is something I really enjoy and I missed it more than I thought. The guy who covers our games for the t.v. wanted to do a brief story of Andrea and my relationship. I was a little leery at first because I didn't know what they were going to do. Plus I don't know what they are saying so it could be about anything to my lack of knowledge. I saw it and it turned out, how should I say, different. The camera angles were strange, but we got a kick out of it. It's a unique world over here, that is for certain.

All in all, the time flew by, but it was quality time.

I hope everything is well with you all.

Mike

Traveling - what a roller coaster

After much delay, I am back to the computer. First of all, I hope everyone had great holidays and are enjoying the new year. I will start with my flight back to the states before Christmas. It didn't go well to say the least. The flight was at 9 am so we started from Oradea at about 4:30 in the morning. The weather was foggy and the guy who was driving must have had x-ray vision because I could barely see 20 feet in front of the van. Plus he was trying to break a land speed record so that didn't help circumstances. Tyronn and I got to the airport to find out that our flight to Frankfurt was delayed and that no flights were going out at all. That is the last news we wanted to hear. We just wanted to get back to the states. We finally got on a flight six hours later, but we had to hurry if we had any hopes of catching our connections. Both Tyronn and I were sprinting through the Frankfurt airport in hopes of getting on our flights. Unfortunately, we both missed them. So now we had to wait in endless lines to try to get other flights. The weather was poor in Frankfurt as well so there was a log jam of people trying to get on flights. There were rumors from travelers that the flights were backed up four days with the amount of people that had to catch flights. My heart sank when I heard that. After running back and forth from service desk to gate and back again, I was finally able to get on stand-by with a hoard of people in the same situation. I was absolutely blessed when my name was called to get on that flight. I figured if I just got into the states, that was more than half the battle. I flew into Washington D.C. airport and had missed my other connection to Portland, Maine. There was a man in my same predicament and he said if I could get on the flight to Boston that he was on I could ride with him to Portland in a rental car. I know, kids don't try this at home. Riding with a complete stranger is not the smartest thing to do, but he was a small guy and I figured I could take him if things went awry :) So finally at 1 am I got into Portland and got to see Andrea. It was a sweet ending after all.

Traveling didn't go so hot on the way back to Romania either. This time Andrea was with so that made things better. The flight from Portland to Chicago went well and Tyronn was scheduled to be on the same flight as us from Chicago to Frankfurt. We took flight from Chicago and were just about to cross the ocean when we turned around and the captain comes on the radio saying we have to make an emergency landing in Toronto. Oh boy - here we go. They took forever to tell us what actually went wrong. As soon as we landed there were fire trucks on both sides of the plane for precaution. We were at first told that we had to land because of overheating brakes. I didn't know we needed our brakes while we were in the air :) I wouldn't be surprised if they actually had sensors telling them that info, but that wasn't the real reason we had to land. The captain comes on again and says that two of their three radios weren't working so they didn't want to cross the ocean with only one working radio. So by the time we got into Toronto it was 1 am or so and they at first weren't going to let us off the plane since we were in Canada and no one had visas to be in the country. They decided to block off a section of the airport so we could get off the plane and wait for another plane to bring us back to Chicago where we would stay the night in a hotel and catch a flight the next day. We got to our hotel room at 4:30 am and couldn't wait to sleep. What an adventure - wow. Besides waiting for a couple hours for our ride back to Oradea from Budapest traveling went well from then on so we were blessed about that. At least we were all safe and everything worked out in the end.

I will write more soon about my trip to Portland and Andrea's visit to Romania. I hope all is well back home and sorry again for taking so long to get another post up.

Take care and God bless,
Mike