During the hockey season I will regularly find myself in some sticky situations and return home with stories that both shock and entertain my friends. After hearing my latest harrowing tale, people often ask, “So, what’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you on the road?” Truthfully, I don’t know. I find myself asking that same question while I’m barreling through a blizzard or some other obstacle standing in the way of safely arriving at my hockey destination. I’ve seen it all from near pimpings in Nashville to near kidnappings in Chicago. I’ve had to deal with abusive border guards, unwanted “sneak attacks,” getting snowed in at frat houses, and every possible form of weather related danger… just to name a few. While I still have no idea which misadventure was really the worst of the lot, in this entry I will share a particularly bad trip to Florida from back in the 07-08 regular season.

It was my reading week from university, and, unlike this season, I actually planned to stay home and be studious and work on my Robertson Davies essay as well as a presentation for another course. Basically, I had three novels to read in a week! There was a slight setback in my game plan, though. My aunt had rented a place in Naples for a few weeks, and while this didn’t faze me at first, I made the horrible mistake of agreeing to drive her and the family to the airport. Being in close proximity to the airport made me itchy for an adventure, and by the time I had driven back home I had my mind made up that I would be irresponsible and fly down to Florida for some puck, of course.

The trip started out without any problems. I flew into Miami and rented a car to drive to Naples. Unfortunately, the weather was crap. The only hot day was game day. There wasn’t much to do except hang around the condo. However, the condo was infested with the contagions of my 8 month old cousin’s bout of stomach flu. One by one my family members started to go down.

Come game day, I had still managed to avoid contraction, and I set out with my cousin for a two hour road trip to Sunrise, Florida. By the time we got there, it was lunch time. I started to feel strange and could barely touch the food I ordered. As the afternoon progressed, I was getting perpetually worse, and by the time the gates opened at the BankAtlantic Center, I had already thrown up four times. But I was determined to press on in the interest of my hockey addiction.

I threw up again just before the warm up started, then took my seat for the showdown between the Florida Panthers and the Boston Bruins. However, I only managed to sit through the warm up. I ended up in the doctor’s office hoping for some miracle that never came. I was pretty much given a transparent barf bag. I stumbled around the arena looking for a place to get some air and threatening to destroy the lives of any arena staff that dared to stand in my way.

Finally, I gave up. I was sprawled out on the floor of the platinum lounge longing to die. I couldn’t help but thinking that I was lucky that the Philadelphia Flyers weren’t one of the teams facing off that night. I knew that I would have found it very hard to have pulled myself away from my precious Flyers. I would have very likely thrown up all over the bench, and may or may not have spontaneously combusted right in my seat. Anyway, my cousin wasn’t overly heartbroken that we had to leave early, he’s not a hockey lover (he’s American *ahem*). Oh, and even though I was near death, I still refused to let my cousin drive – HA!

The official barf bag of the Florida Panthers. Notice how the internal bleeding around my eyes adds to my already sickly exterior!

Now, you might be thinking that this trip sounds pretty awful as it is, but trust me it gets worse. I was still feeling pretty gross when I flew out of Miami, and what’s worse is that I had an overnight layover in Baltimore. I arrived after midnight, but since I was flying back to Buffalo around 7AM, I figured I might as well stay up at the airport all night and get back to some much needed reading time. Fun.

Part way through the night one of the airport staff came over to chat with me. This guy was just gushing about how proud he is of his son. He was telling me how successful and smart and good looking he is, and how it makes him cry how proud he is of him. Not gonna lie, he was a good salesman. He showed me pictures, and let me just say, his son was one hot man! So, I was already mentally planning what my life in Baltimore would be like when I eventually bagged this guy, but then his daddy dropped the bomb. He starts telling me how beautiful and successful his son’s new wife is! Well, @#$% you, old man!!

4AM finally rolled around and check in resumed at the airport. But guess what?! My flight was cancelled, and flights to Buffalo were backed up for two days! This caused a major problem. I couldn’t be stuck in Baltimore for two days because I had tickets for the Flyers game in Buffalo on that day, and I didn’t have the tickets with me either – eek!! I was tired and I was cranky, and I needed to come up with a survival plan that didn’t leave me stranded with the masses in Baltimore! I thought about driving to Philadelphia, and fantasized about popping in for their home game against Florida, and stir up some drama by wearing my newly acquired Panthers jersey. But instead I focused on the goal of putting my Sabres tickets back in my hand in time for puck drop at HSBC Arena.

I had my flight redirected to Toronto. Unfortunately, my car was still in Buffalo. The day before game day, my friend and I had to travel by bus to B-lo – thumbs down! We grabbed a cab from my place to the bus station downtown Toronto. We were still on the DVP when we realized that we left the tickets at home, so we had to back track. We just barely made the bus that we were trying to get out of T.O.

The bus was unpleasant, but I took the opportunity to get back to my reading. Crossing the border by bus is an irritating process. Anyway, from the station in Buffalo we grabbed a cab up to the airport where I finally rescued my car from his unexpected extended stay at Buffalo Niagara. When we got to the hotel we celebrated my stomach flu recovery with a lot of $3 champagne (as pictured) and the discovery of an awesome pancake house (mine had bacon in them!!).

The next night the Flyers defeated the Sabres in an exciting (“eyebrow raising”) shoot-out spectacular which snapped some ridiculous ten or eleven game losing streak! And you’ll be happy to know that I did not puke all over the Flyers bench.