Home For the Holidays

As I write this, I am 13 hours into the second of two plane rides that have taken me from Vienna to Los Angeles. We have one hour left until we land on American soil. Our first plane departed at 6:55 AM Vienna time on the 17th and we will arrive in LA at 12:30 PM on the same day. That makes this the longest day I have ever had in my life. 33 hours to be exact.

Imagine Osier and I sitting for 14 hours straight. And we don't have seats next to eachother… and we both pulled all nighters last night to try to plan our sleep patterns in accordance to the time changes. But besides the three children in the row behind me who keep kicking my seat, the ride has been steady, filled with on and off sleeping, a Harry Potter movie which I had no idea existed, and some German tunes. I can't wait to be on the ground though and finally head to Irvine!

We had two games since the last update. Both games were against the same team; Klosterneuberg. The first meeting was Sunday out at Happyland (again, best gym name ever). Considering we played poorly, it was big for us to walk away with the 23 point victory that we did. A 96 point offensive output doesn't sound too bad on paper, but boy, it was ugly. One of the (two, in my opinion) highlights of the game came right before the end of the third quarter. After our coach called a timeout with 1.4 seconds left to draw up an inbounds play from the sideline, Osier took the ball out on the baseline opposite our basket and proceeded to throw one of the most awesome baseball-style passes to the complete other end of the court to a waiting teammate under the basket for a layup. That shot put the game out of reach in our minds…we played the last 10 minutes even more fired up than before and cruised to victory. The second highlight, which doesn't even compare to the aforementioned event, came right at the end of the game. For some reason the other team felt the need to foul…all the way down to the last few seconds (down 20-23 points the whole time). With about 35 seconds left and following a Klo-berg basket, I received the inbounds pass and dribbled the length of the floor, dodging attempted fouls from every single opposing player the entire way, for an easy left handed layup.

Tuesday night, we went straight from our German class to meet some teammates at the University. From there, we walked through downtown in the freezing cold, past the infamous Rathaus Chriskindlmarkt at City Hall, to a little restaurant called Tokyo Running Sushi. Guess what we ate there. Running sushi is where the food comes around on little plates and you grab them off the line as they "run" by you. For a land-locked country, we didn't expect much, but the idea of all you can eat and the decent quality of the sushi they did have made it a delicious experience. That's not to say both Osier and won't be enjoying some super fresh California sushi at some point this trip.

Wednesday was possibly one of the longest days. We decided to pass on class that day, just to make sure everything was in order for our trip and to mentally prepare for the game later that evening. I knew Klosterneuberg was not going to go down easy for the third time in a row. The game finally started at 8:15 PM. We probably didn't score until 8:25 PM. We went into halftime down by five, but we knew there was still hope. We were the better team and we were playing way off our game. Oh, and did I mention we are down to 8 players? And only 7 played on Wednesday. Anyways, we crawled our way back from being down 11 at one point in the first half to being up by 13 in the second half. One of our post players, who had three fouls at halftime, then picked up two quick, ticky-tack fouls and was forced to leave the game. So 6 players for the fourth quarter. Up 5 with 1:30 to go in the game, they hit a transition three. On the other end, I drove the lane, spun, hit the layup over the front, and got the foul call, converting the 3 point play. That was their first foul of the quarter, which came back to bite them. We followed with a silly foul on a prayer 3 point attempt, and the opposing player converted all three free throws. Up two with about 45 seconds left, they began to foul. They needed to commit 4 fouls just in order to send us to the foul line, burning about 10 seconds along the way. I hit two free throws, we stopped them on defense, Julia hit two free throws, and their last chance opportunity failed. We won by 5.

This game was the first round of the Chevrolet cup, which I explained a bit in the previous post. We will now most likely take on Wels in the second round. Their coach was at the game scouting…rightfully so, I think we play them three times in January. Enough about basketball though. I am so excited to have a break. I will have the chance to see both the men's and women's UC Irvine teams in action and hopefully to make it to a Chico State practice. I may not update for a bit, unless something exciting happens that is worth writing about…so if you don't hear from me, MERRY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR! I'm so thankful for what opportunities this year has brought my way. (Wrong holiday??)

Fast Forward 6 Hours: Now I am in Molly Goodenbour's apartment in Irvine...just spent my first dollars of the trip and had my first Mexican food, courtesy of Baja Fresh. Chipotle tomorrow. And the weather is beautiful!

12-12

It's true. I have officially gotten lazy when it comes to posting. I knew it was bound to happen. And I wish I had an excuse, but I have plenty of free time, enough to write about, and I just got a brand new computer. I hope you accept this apology. Now read!

The last game I wrote about was in Sopron. Since then, our ventures have taken us south to the second largest city in Austria, Graz, which also happens to be the hometown of current CA Governor Arnold Schwarzenneger. I attempted to regain my title as team DJ (which I haven't held since college...a whole year and a half) and make a road trip CD. The way there was pleasant. We stopped to meet the rest of our caravan at a gas station about half way, which was between the road and a beautiful field of pumpkin or some type of squash. This stop was sandwiched between hours of mountain climbing and descending through woods that looked like they were pulled straight from the Twilight books/movies. Anyways, it was dark once we arrived so we missed seeing the actual city. Once inside the gym, we were shown the gym, which had been taken over by archers. Yes, bows and arrows. We opted, for our own safety, to stay in the locker room until they were completely through with their training. The gym was then transformed into a basketball court and we were on our way. The game was ugly, to say the least and we walked away with a 93-65 victory. I felt the pressure to one-up myself from the previous game of 38 points and drop 39 (with seven 3's). One of our players who has been flying under the radar all season came away from the game with FOUR converted AND1 plays. Pretty amazing!!! The drive back was filled with silence, minus the road trip CD playing for the seventh and eighth times. Love those songs...so much, actually, that I unloaded the CD on our coach , who was more than thrilled to accept the gift.

The next week included a lot of discussion between Osier and myself over the increasing depression we were both feeling for having to miss Christmas with our families. So we decided to take care of the situation. After asking our coach's permission, we successfully booked each of our flights home for the holidays. My trip will take me from Vienna to Amsterdam, switch planes, and then to LA, where I will continue down to Orange County (Michelle will venture further to San Diego) to visit my basketball people, who I miss SO much. After 3 days spent there, in which I will see a Men's and Women's Anteater basketball game, I will hop on a Southwest flight to Sacramento where I will be met by my lovely father. I will then spend the next 10 or so days in Chico with my family and best friends before flying out of San Francisco back to Vienna for part 2 of the season. My goal was to surprise my mother, but she found out through, what else, Facebook! So Mom, yes I am coming home. And stop stalking me on Facebook, please.

Back to games. The next week seemed like one of the longest yet, but we were rewarded with a 2 game spread over 3 days. Friday we took on a team from Bratislava, Slovakia, which plays in the Bundesliga over in Slovakia and had previously been a member of the AWBL. We started off very slowly and it seemed like every prayer they were awkwardly hucking towards the basket was going in. At halftime we were up 11. The second half showed more promise as we took a 20 lead and never let them get any closer. The team was very young and will be good in time. We can look forward to playing them again, our first game in the new year, on Janurary 5th. On Saturday, we enjoyed a lovely day off and eventually ended up at a club to celebrate the birthday of one of the Basketclubs players who turned 23. So old.

Sunday we played (again) Vienna 87. Now THIS game was UGLY. The other team managed to put up 11 points in the first half while we scored a slick 57 and rolled to a final score of 96-35. This team is also loaded with promising young talent, but is missing someone to put the ball in the basket (which generally helps in Basketball). Our entire roster of 9 people received some quality playing time and every player scored. We had a 5 day weekend since German course had been cancelled Friday, as well as the following Monday and Tuesday. We made use of this time by doing absolutely nothing.

These next few days are crucial. We travel tomorrow to Klosterneuberg to play at Happyland again, a game we need to win, and then proceed to play the same Duchess team the next Wednesday in the first round of the Chevrolet Cup. A little about the cup: From what I understand, the cup is seperate from the actual league play. The seedings are based on the previous year, giving us a 3 seed. We will play for the opportunity to play Wels in the semi-final round, with the winner earning a spot in the finals. Furthemore, I believe the winner of the cup tournament also receives an automatic spot in the year ending Final Four playoff (which should make no difference since one of the predicted final four teams should win the cup). And of course there is money up for grabs for programs that win cup games...the real incentive. The morning following this cup game, which we host in Vienna, we will prepare our things and hop our flight to our deluded idea of a vacation. Just kidding...I can't wait. Ah, Mexican food and Mommys who take you shopping...and Daddys who take you eating...and my neice!

Bis dann (until then), check out the website: www.uk-flames.org as well as a link to my new favorite song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfS_fugJYOI.