We made it! It was a long travel day. My first flight from Philly to DC was only about 40 minutes but I'm happy it was short given the screaming child sitting two rows away from me. Once in Washington I met up with Dina and we grabbed a quick bite to eat prior to boarding our Austrian Air flight to Vienna. I was lucky to have an aisle seat, however the person sitting next to me had his arm in a sling and basically took over the shared armrest. I was nervous the whole time that I was going to bump him and hurt his arm! I slept for a little bit but the seats were really uncomfortable so I ended up reading most of the time. When we finally landed in Vienna, we went through customs and gathered our luggage and met the person who was driving us to Zlin, which was about 2 1/2 hours away.
Our driver was a local referee who actually worked sled hockey at the Paraolympics in Vancouver. My company, The Hartford, is one of the founding partners of the US Paraolympic team. We often sponsor different events for people with disabilities and I recently took a client the Ski Spectacular event in Breckinridge, Colorado. There they taught over 800 wounded warriors and other people with disabilities how to ski. We had different Paraolympians acting as our guides and every single one of their stories was absolutely amazing. So I found it really cool to hear about the Paraolympics from his perspective after spending time with the athletes so recently.
It snowed the entire way from Vienna to Zlin. The highways were fine, but when we had to drive through some smaller towns it got a bit interesting. Their plowing capabilities were about on par with those in the City of Philadelphia, meaning that the smaller roads were not treated at all. We had a few close calls but in the end we made it here safe and sound.
When we arrived our host was waiting for us and helped us get checked in. Dina and I are roommates which is nice. After getting showered and unpacked, we had lunch. At that point the jet lag and lack of sleep was really starting to kick in so we decided to take a nap. We set an alarm for 3 hours later, just in case we slept that long but neither of us expected to. Well 3 hours later when that alarm went off both of us woke up from a really deep sleep. I'm still tired and am sure I will sleep well tonight but I feel much better after the nap.
Some of the other officials have started to arrive so we went to meet everyone and took a little walk down to the local market. Dinner is at 8:30 and we have a meeting afterwards to have formal introductions, go over schedules and get the first round of game assignments. I can't believe games start tomorrow!
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