Flight 1890, The Sequel

Bless Dina Rizzo's heart. 

The associate head coach for the Princeton field hockey team doesn't give up easily. 

Ah, but that part of the story will have to wait. That part happened around noon yesterday, long after the field hockey team's day began. 

 In fact, the team bus rolled out of the Caldwell Field House parking circle slightly before 4:30 am yesterday. The team had a flight to catch at Newark Airport, a 7:15 departure for Raleigh-Durham ahead of today's season-opener against No. 18 Old Dominion at the University of North Carolina, whom Princeton will play Sunday. 

The Tigers, by the way, are ranked second nationally in the National Field Hockey Coaches' Association poll this week. 

To get on a bus at 4:30, one has to be awake significantly earlier than that. For TigerBlog, that meant somewhere in the 2:45 range. It was okay, though. The flight would get into RDU at around 8:45, and then there would be time for a nap before practice began in the afternoon. 

Right? 

Wrong. 

Princeton arrived at Newark around 5:20 or so and was easily through security around 5:50ish. Everything proceeded as normal when boarding started. As he walked onto the plane, TB mentioned to head coach Carla Tagliente that they'd done all that and it still wasn't even 7 am. 

Oh, and what in the world possesses people to eat burgers and have beer around 6:30 in the morning, which is what more than one person was doing. On the other hand, there's no time for digressions in this story. 

The team was settled in mostly in the back of the plane. TB was in seat 34B. The middle is not his favorite, but it was a short flight. 

The pilot came on to welcome everyone to United Airlines Flight 1890, complete with her "greetings from the flight deck" report. She said that due to traffic and weather, flight time would be 1:19, a little longer than usual, and that the plane would have a cruising altitude of just 8,000 feet. That seems a bit low, but she explained that the higher elevations were being saved for the planes heading to Florida. 

Okay. That's not a big deal. The flight attendants went through the safety instructions, the plane pushed back and the taxiing began. That's when things started to take a turn. 

For the next two-plus hours, the plane visited various parts of the Newark Airport tarmac. The pilot eventually returned to say that a warning light had come on and, guess what, Flight 1890 would be heading back to the gate. Or at least some gate. 

It took a while for all that to be sorted out. Then it was time to get off the plane, around 9:30. Keep in mind that it's about an eight-hour bus ride from Princeton to Chapel Hill, so that would have put the team in North Carolina around 12:30 or a little later with a few stops. 

For the passengers, though, it was back to the terminal. United offered $15 food vouchers, and other than that it was hang around and wait. First the monitor said the flight would go off at noon. Then 12:20. Then 12:40. That's a lot of time to be killed.  

Interestingly, nobody seemed all that annoyed. Maybe it was sort of an "everyone's in this together" situation, for the Tigers and for everyone else on the delayed flight. Even the two pilots were hanging around the concourse. 

Out the window it was clear that maintenance was working on the right engine. It seemed like there was one technician with one screwdriver, and TB isn't sure if that made him feel better or not. 

Oh well. More time to kill. And that's where the part of the story about Dina comes into play. 

At some point, Dina got an excited look on her face. Who is that guy? What guy? That guy!! That guy there!!! He looks familiar. Overhearing her, another passenger said "That's the Giant's QB1. That's Jaxson Dart."

And it was. There he was, with his girlfriend, calmly walking to a gate for a flight. 

Dina said "I have to get a picture with him" and sprinted after him. As she did this, it took TB back to the last time this happened. Ironically, it was at the UNC field hockey stadium last November, as Princeton practiced for the Final Four. Dina is a huge New England Patriots fan, having grown up walking distance from Gillette Stadium. She wanted to get a picture with UNC football coach Bill Belichick, who was inside the facility giving a pep talk to the Tar Heel field hockey team. 

Dina waited and waited and waited — and then Belichick gave her the brush-off, even when she told him she was from Walpole. 

Would it happen again? Would Jaxson Dart pull a Belichick? Turns out Dart is a pretty good guy. Here's the proof:

That's Dina on the left. That's Olivia Caponiti and Izzy Morgan on the right; those two went to get a picture of their own as well. 

TB then walked over to where Dart was sitting and thanked him for being so approachable. He also told him the Belichick story, something that he and his girlfriend chuckled at. Dart then wished Princeton good luck, and TB did the same for him. Before he walked away, TB turned back and said "and try not to take so many hits."

Then it was back to reality. There would be a new plane and a gate change, with a resulting walk back to where the first flight started out before it parked at a gate far away. The flight began boarding at 12:30, and the pilot came on and announced "Welcome To Flight 1890, The Sequel." She was very good at reading the room, or at least the plane. Keep in mind, every single person on the plane had gotten up around the same time as TB, but she kept everyone from losing it. 

There was still one hurdle to clear. The luggage had to be moved from one plane to the next, something that fell through the cracks between the morning crew and the afternoon crew. As such, it wasn't until around 2:00 that the plane actually took off. It landed at RDU exactly one hour later, though it seemed like 15 minutes.

If you're keeping score, it was 10.5 hours from the time the team left Caldwell until it landed in North Carolina. It was only 8.5 hours from the time of boarding the first plane to landing on the second one. 

Anyway, the team made it. The season is starting today. 

It was a long day — but ultimately a fun one. It's the sort of misadventure that will make for great stories in the years and decades to come. The players on this team will be talking about the day they got stuck in Newark Airport long after they forget who won and who lost this weekend. 

And now it's time to play.