Armed on the way there with Mapquest directions and Julia at the passenger seat helm helping navigate, you'd think you could get to John Muir Elementary in Portage for the Suns b-ball tournament without any major hitches. It's early morning; the sun is poking around at least a little bit. But you miss Slifer road and only by some luck and intuition you recognize that there's no more town left to hold an elementary school, and you turn back and re-coordinate. You see what you think is the coaches SUV, and happily follow...that is until the coaches SUV passes what looks to be the elementary school, then stop and turn around again, drive into the parking lot of the school, and see that the real coaches car is comfortably parked. Hey, "we're here, and on time, no problem." So this is why you allow yourself half an hour extra travel time heading into any rural ball tournament. Over the course of eight hours, Julia wins one, then two, three, and finally the fourth and final championship game against Portage itself, the host team – what I felt was a pinch of sweet revenge against the town's maze of barely navigable streets.
The girls truly played hard and well all the way to the last minute -- very impressive and fun to watch. Julia started the third game and got some great experience on the court. Nice work Julia. All was well. Tired, but team smiles. Outside, though, December fog and rain. It's dark. We've got Mapquest paper in hand, and we did previously get here didn't we, so shouldn't be a problem. But as we found out You Don't Leave Portage. What should have been five easy pieces became twenty three dark turns through highway farmland and at least one stop at a BP that I can remember to get directions that turned out to be a bit more vague than Mapquest's. Finally, hwy. 33 (south? north?) magically advertised 90/94 west, and as we turned on to the slippery and barely visible interstate, I could hear the words of Janet's voice from the night before... "you could just bring the Garmin."
No comments:
Post a Comment