UFC 127, Leaving for Australia

February 17, 2011

Today we leave for Australia. The day starts off with me meeting George for sprints at 7am. George is in good spirits and looking strong. These sprints have become a regular routine for us as the morning workout on the departure day for George's UFC fights. Once the sprints are done its off to do last minute errands and off to the airport.

We both get to the airport 2hrs prior to our departure thinking this will be enough time to make our flights right???.................. Well lets start off saying things didn't go quite as planned. First as we get to the ticket counter the computer is unable to scan our passports which ends up taking at least 20min with the assistance of a United agent. After we finally get everything done the agent tells us to go to gate C4. After another 15min-20min in the security we get through and see that we have enough time to stop at Starbucks and get a coffee.

This isn't to bad being that we can see gate C4 and know that we aren't to far from it. So we order our coffee taking our time talking knowing we are close. After a bit we walk over to the gate and I notice that there is no plane at the gate or passengers sitting in the area. At the same time me and George look at each other and say "Oh s@#$".

I look at my ticket and realize that the agent who told us to go to gate C4 was looking at my seat number and not the gate which was actually E7! Of course gate E7 is on the complete opposite side of the airport from where we are.

We are now in a full sprint realizing that we actually might missing our flight. We finally get gate E7 in sight and see that they are closing the door to the ramp. Both George and i about 40 yards away and are yelling for the agents to hold the gate letting them know that we were there.

Needless to say we were to late and they would not let us through. This was upsetting knowing that passengers were still actually walking into the plane when we got there. After a little exchange of words with the gate agent it was clear we were not getting on that plane.

UFC then re-routed us through different air lines that put us in Australia 2hrs. later. Our new flight plans went from bad to worse getting into LA and not being able to find our bags from the flight we missed after running all over LAX. We were then left with a choice of waiting and possibly finding our bags or making our new flight to Australia. Sooo, we got on the plane.

14hrs later and and 20hrs since we first got to PDX we finally land in Australia with no bags other then what we are wearing and our workout gear bags!! as you can guess we went up to our rooms after dinner and passed out!!

Really hope tomorrow goes better!!