Hey, just so you know ... this post is now about 5 years and 1 month old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.

It’s March … time for baseball! For the second year in a row we’re heading out to Spring Training in Arizona a little late (the last week again) but this year we’re adding an extra day. Hard to believe we’ve been doing this annual trip for 10 years!

Our first game was a night game so we all didn’t have to fly out as early as usual. But my day started out poorly because of an overnight power outage at the office that shut down a bunch of equipment (tripped breakers). I rushed out of the house to swing by the office before my trip (luckily I work very close to TIA) and while I was driving I received a text from United saying my flight was delayed by 90 minutes! So good news (I had time to fix the problems at the airport) and bad news (I was going to miss my connection in Houston). After getting all the servers running, I drove over to the airport and checked in. The United employee at bag check was very nice and helped me get booked on a later flight out of Houston which would get me to Phoenix just an hour after my siblings, so not too bad. She also gave me a $10 voucher for breakfast (unfortunately I used it at Starbucks to get a cloud macchiato not realizing it had egg whiles in the foam so I got a little sick, ugh).

My flight finally left Tampa at 10:30am, just an hour late, but still enough to miss my original connection. I now had a two hour layover at George Bush Intercontinental so I found a nice seat at once of the numerous bars/restaurants for the duration. The terminal I was in had iPads at just about every seat where you could order food, drinks, etc. I was even able to scan my boarding pass so it knew who I was and reminded me when it was time to leave for my gate. The United employee back in Tampa had said she got me a “better” seat on the flight to Phoenix. This turned out to be an exit row (good) middle seat (bad). sigh

I finally landed in Phoenix at 3:20pm. I guess I’ve never flown into Sky Harbor on United before … Terminal 2 is a dump (especially compared to the Houston terminal I departed from)! It took about 30 minutes for my bag to arrive and then I met my brother and sister who had already picked up the rental car. Finally it was time for vacation! We checked into our hotel (we’re staying in the “middle” of the valley off of I-17 this year), dropped off our luggage, and then headed over to Goodyear Ballpark for our first game: Indians vs. Angels. It was a beautiful (although slightly overcast) evening for baseball and we saw our first win of the trip as the Tribe won 4-2.

On our way back to the hotel we stopped at Fry’s (the grocery store, not the electronics store) to pick up a case of bottled water and some other supplies for the rest of the week. We got back to hotel by 9:45pm and turned in for the night (the first day is always the longest with the time change, especially since we came after daylight savings time so Arizona is on Pacific time).

Tomorrow: hiking and more baseball!