Liberty Lacrosse Blog Season-Opening Trip (Notre Dame and Butler): Day 2, Part 1: Thursday, February 9, 2017

I happened to wake up in the middle of the night a few times and remember how fortunate I was to not be in Group 1, heading for the airport at 5:15 a.m.

I finally got up around 7:30 a.m., got a short run in, and then had a very light breakfast. I was still pretty stuffed from the burger from the night before. Prior to leaving the hotel, I finished up my men’s tennis and lacrosse previews and sent them to my coworkers.

We made the short trek over to the airport with Gary, unloaded all the stuff, checked our bags, and made our way through security. This is when I became the only person in our group to get patted down.

Now, I had already worked up a pretty good lather (sweat) from carrying around the 64-pound bag of extra stuff from the bus into the airport. It also didn’t help that it was warm and stuffy in the airport. As I made my way through security and into the x-ray machine thingy, I was stopped by the guy doing the scanning. He told me that I had set off the alarm thingy with a “sensitive area” and that he needed to pat me down.

I had absolutely nothing in my pockets, but I was patted down. He eventually gave me the all clear and said sweat probably set off the machine. Sure enough, that was the case.

We boarded around 10:20 for our 10:45 to Atlanta, which was about an hour flight. I sat next to Sarah on the way there, with Nikki and Lexi also in our row. Flying out of Roanoke is cool because you are pretty much surrounded by mountains. I got to read a little for school and work on a tennis preview.

We had about three hours to hang out at the Atlanta airport, so everybody spread out to get lunch. I ended up being the only one to get barbecue, as I got Mustard Seed BBQ. I got a pulled pork plate with potato salad, mac n’ cheese, and bread. It definitely hit the spot.

I feel like I’m getting some kind of cold/sinus infection and hoping it doesn’t get any worse. The rest of the time in the terminal was spent posting my lacrosse story, trying to top Group 1 with better Instagram posts (clearly succeeded), and Instagram live video chatting with the Brittons and their family and extended family.

Right now, we are a little over an hour into our flight to South Bend and should be arriving with the next 30-40 minutes. When we get there, we’ll go the hotel for a bit and then head to practice around 7 p.m. Our captain of this flight told us it’s 18 degrees in South Bend, a stark contrast from the 70 degrees in Lynchburg on Tuesday and Wednesday.