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A HARD DAY'S NIGHT TO NORWAY 28th May 2010

I think that a few days ago, I wrote that I felt tired. I know now that I didn't know what I was talking about! We left our hotel in Washington DC at 10:45am and headed off to Reagan airport to wait for our flight to Newark, where we were connecting on to Oslo. The flight to Newark was immediately delayed.

It is not cool to be stranded at Reagan airport sa the place is rather boring t say the least. Our flight was meant to have departed at 2:55pm, but I think we only took off around 5:00 pm. Then, once we had arrived in Newark, a lightning storm raged around us. I was the first to suspect that we would be going nowhere. We did though. Even though other flights were delayed, those flying to Europe were good to go.

We boarded the aircraft, but then time stood still. We sat in our aircraft seats at the gate and waited ...and waited ... and waited. Then eventually, we pushed back... and waited some more. We spent about 3 hours delayed, sitting in the plane, but eventually we did get underway.

Traveling to Norway, I found that I was really looking forward to returning to my adopted homeland. The flight was pretty smooth, but unfortunately, this did not lend itself to me getting any sleep. I was fortunate enough to get an open seat next to me, but unfortunate in that my seat was next to the washroom. The light coming from the crew galley at the back of the plane wasn't conducive to sleep either. I think I might have gotten 20 or 30 minutes right before the end of the flight, not very much.

Once in Oslo, we met up with our bus and headed off on our hour-long drive to Hamar. I have driven through Hamar once or twice before, but I have never stopped to visit. So far, I am not overly impressed. I love Norway and was really excited to show it off to my Canadian teammates, However, Hamar definitely does not seem to be an exciting place that they will remember…. maybe I haven't seen the highlights yet?

We had lunch once we arrived at the hotel, and then most of us went and passed out in our rooms. We were given an hour or two to sleep, but we were soon up again and heading out to training. It was nothing too hard on a travel day, but we did do some stretching and some work in the pool, just enough to get our legs and bodies moving. We had supper at 7:30pm and then most of us headed right back to our rooms for an early night. I think I would already be asleep if D had not just rejoined the group. Having a roommate who is not jet-lagged is not ideal.