The Eagles have landed...

The team got on the road out of Great Falls, MT early this morning. After a brief stop at the wrong hotel (had to pick up Capt Caldwell from the HILTON hotel, not the Hampton :), we were on our way to drop off the team and me at Bozeman for our flight back to Denver, CO at 0730. At about 0745, almost the entire van-load of cadets were already fast asleep, with only one or two exceptions. Not even crazy-techno music (BTW- Thank you so VERY kindly for that Cadet Constant!) could keep these guys awake after a full day of competition, and an evening full of antics only a group of 14 teenage boys can come up with!

The team arrived for our flight in Bozeman with plenty of time to spare- even with one of our cadet's names being on the terrorist-watch list (NOT the actual cadet of course, just someone sharing the name). We boarded the same type of little turboprop puddlejumper aircraft that we flew out in on Thursday, and we must have had a good tailwind because we arrived in Denver about a half hour earlier than expected. That almost NEVER happens!

Since we had a cadet or two on the team that had never flown before, and some time to kill, we decided to take a little tour of DIA. Our flight out to Bozeman (and for that matter, back into Denver) was out of Concourse A at DIA, so coming in we (thought anyway!) we were strapped for time, so we just walked over the bridge from the terminal to the concourse to wait for our flight. Coming back, we decided to ride the train out from Concourse A to Concourse C, then back to the terminal. Gave our first-timers a chance to see some of the airport, and several of our old-timers enjoyed a game of seeing who could stand up on the train without using the handholds and not stumbling when it accelerated and decelerated very abruptly. (just a side note here, the lady computer on those trains really should warn passengers BEFORE the acceleration/deceleration starts, not AT THE SAME TIME- then it would actually be a WARNING, not a STATEMENT of fact- seriously people! Someone's going to get hurt! Okay, /tangent... this is a blog, right?)

After a little bit of confusion over which side of the airport we were being picked up from (Terminal West vs. Terminal East), a little bit of a escalator-glide walk by one Cadet Cramer (almost reminded me of Micheal Jackson's air-walking thing- you know that walk he would do, where it looked like he was walking, but not really moving- that one - but cool looking), okay, tangent again sorry! Where was I?

Oh yes, we were able to meet our wonderful parents who volunteered to pick the team up from the airport (THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!) and we were on our way home! The parents who so graciously volunteered were the dads of Johnson (pick-up), Harger (drop off), and Cramer, and the moms of Fahrenbruck and Schneider (sans cat). Debbie Schneider also volunteered to coordinate the entire effort in our absence, so double thanks Debbie!