It has begun: 2009 Adventure Begins

Saying goodbye to Edmonton.  Our alotted four bags were 50, 50, 48, and 47 pounds respectively... guess we can only buy scarves on this trip!

It has begun.  As I type those words, I imagine the booming voice of a Charleston Heston-esque character thundering down over a crowd of thousands, hands raised to the sky, staff in hand.  I’ve always been very fond of staffs, and the characters that would brandish such hardware.  Perhaps a little dramatic, but needless to say a great visual to the thoughts that are going through my head right now.

Greeted by a little snow on our way into town... a little different than the beaches of Sicily, but equally appealing.

Yes, YEAR TWO of the Really Playing for Pizza European Adventure began on Saturday with a red-eye to Munich and connection to our new home in Innsbruck, Austria.  However, in some ways it is not really a new chapter or even a new book – more just the continuation of this wild adventure I am learning to call my life.  For while I had imagined that playing six months of football in Europe last year would be a sort of ‘self-contained tangent’ in the grand scheme of things, I am coming to a greater realization that when you open yourself up to such experiences, you get caught up in this contagious lifestyle as if it were a raging river.  You meet fascinating people.  You think outside the box.  You understand a little better what really is important in life.  You eat way too much food.  It’s like a solution to an old math problem in high school where you had a repeating decimal or something that made you put an exclamation point after your answer – never quite knew what that meant exactly but always conscious that the opportunities were even “more than you could ever fathom.”

The time we spent last year in Italy was magical, for so many reasons.  It was my first time in Europe, and everything we encountered was new & exciting.  The smallest detail was larger than life – old buildings became fantastic ruins, innocent encounters on the street became blog fodder, sunsets were reasons to celebrate, and the food, well, as mentioned before a little more fattening than I care to admit.  I simply don’t think there is any way we could duplicate such a unique and special time in our life.

 

Yet as we begin the 2009 season in Austria, the last thing I would ever want to do is try to recreate what we experienced, or even make a comparison between what happened last year and the new adventure we are embarking on.  For one thing I learned last year told me that things are not always better or worse, but just different.

 

Sign #1 of Good Times Ahead: A morning meeting with the offensive coaching staff of the Swarco Raiders was very fun and very productive.  We are going to have a lot of touchdowns together in our future!

Sign #2 of Good Times Ahead (Literally): AUTOGRILL!!!  Yes, our favorite pre-game meal destination slash highway gas-station/cafe has a location just a few miles outside of town.  You can be sure that in order to fuel up for our home games, we will make the short jaunt for a ham sandwich and Snickers bar!

Above all, I am excited for this new season.  I hope you will all take this journey with me, or if you prefer, to simply “live vicariously through me” as my good friend Joey likes to say, representing the sentiment of all those thirty-something, mini-van drivin’, 2.5 (average) children raisin’, white-picket-fence-ownin’ America families.  I will do my best to be witty, relevant, and at the very least, provide a great break from work as you nod to your boss across the office, making him think you are working hard on his TPS reports.

 Until next time, Arrivederci…

~ J. Twice