Phoenix Airport - Homeward bound, eventually

The time in Las Vegas has been great. I was able to speak with a few teams from across the country, saw the Chris Angel show, had a great meal in the Cat House in Luxor (review coming soon), saw various sites and got a bit of a tan.

Then my team and I headed home.

Some 2 1/2 months ago we were told by our APA league operator that our flight home was the best he could do. Chris W. had scheduled my team to go home via Las Vegas to Phoenix, to Detroit, to Wilkes Barre from which we could drive almost 2 hours to get home. When we were at the Las Vegas Airport we were told by a ticket agent

"Whoever got you these tickets really doesn't like you."

That was said because we were on the last flight out of Las Vegas to Phoenix. It meant that we would be in the airport some 7 1/2 hours before continuing our flight. This is how grand an experience Phoenix is at 12:30am



Now at the time of the video I have been up some 16 hours and was wearing a hat earlier - so forgive my look. Were there a place to sleep in Phoenix I wouldn't be writing this. Or if there was a bar, a newstand, a television, a comfortable chair. Anything. But there isn't, especially since everything closes at 8pm reportedly.

How bad does it seem that Chris W. feels about my team?

Well our sister team from Central New York (Endicott) left Las Vegas 3 hours after us, and will arrive home some 8 to 10 hours before us. This is a team who flew to Las Vegas with us on 2 of the 3 flights we took to Vegas. Somehow, as we were told at the time, there was no way to get from Las Vegas to anywhere near home without taking 17 hours with 8 people on the same flights. Though our tickets were booked 2 1/2 months in advance. And there was obviously another way to get the other team home sooner. And we are taking an entirely differnt route than we took to get here.

Even worse is the fact that the ticket agents in Las Vegas let us know that there was a flight roughly 3 hours earlier that had the seats we needed and would have gotten us home the same night.

To be fair, our flight was set this way (we were told) in case we made it to the finals of the competition. Of course we did not know that if we did, it would have meant that we would have had to win the competition in less than 2 1/2 hours, get paid, get team photos, get into a cab/limo, race thru Saturday evening Las Vegas traffic, get our tickets, rush through security and make the plane with a spare 5 minutes before departure. And that's the best case scenario. Suffice to say that doesn't work any better than the other facts I have learned.

So with that wonderful news I sit in Phoenix, while my team is sleeping on the floors and chairs in an airport that is closed, without access to anything until 4am at the earliest. It's 90 degrees outside and humid. There are major restrictions on where you can smoke, the place is empty of everyone but TSA guards (especially one woman with an attitude and an aversion to questions about the airport) cleaning crews, and 5 people besides my team (2 of which are on last minute flight changes).

Is this return home spoiling the experience of the APA National 8-ball competition? Oh yeah. Do I personally think that better could have been done? On several levels I have come to the conclusion that it seems so.

These are of course my thoughts. They are not those of my team. And the fact that I have another 15 hours of traveling is not improving my thoughts about this matter.

More coverage of the good parts of the Las Vegas trip and competition some time after this journey ends. (Hey, do you know if it took this long for Lewis and Clark to find Mississippi?)