Basketball Logistics

  I woke up this morning to the news report, “Today is the busiest travel day of the year. More than Thanksgiving, with Christmas on a Friday, making it a long weekend, for most returning home today to get back to work on Monday.” This news would make little difference to me normally since don’t travel for Christmas, but unfortunately today we did have to travel.
Carter and her basketball team have a big tournament in Charleston, SC starting tomorrow which meant that today was the travel day. Now as far as places to have to go as a parent support system, Charleston sounds lovely. The only problem is to get here from Durham involves some interaction with I-95 and for an unknown reason to me, it is still just two lanes each direction in North Carolina.
I can give a first hand account for the accuracy of the news. Today was the biggest travel day of the year. The trip, which should have taken four hours and twenty-nine minutes, according to google maps took over six hours and that was with minimal stops. The things that made no sense to us were the cars from Illinois, or California that were heading south. Where were those people coming from or going to? Now the New Jersey or Connecticut cars I could see might be going to Florida and certainly the South Carolina cars were heading home from visiting relatives in more northern states, but the random Wyoming people, what the hell, stay out west we have no room for you on I -95 today.
The speed on the highway was a good twenty to thirty miles slower than it should have been. The worst drivers were the Ontario Canada cars (sorry Stuart) who changed lanes with no signals with hardly enough room to butt in.
Amazingly the whole team showed up at the restaurant we were having family dinner at at the right time. Many of us skipped checking in the hotel until after dinner so we would be on time, but that was no big deal. After dinner the waiters could not figure out how to split the check up so we just paid the whole thing and will figure it out tomorrow. After the terrible day of driving there was no reason to make everyone sit any more than necessary.  
Now we are tucked in at our hotel. Apparently there are 80 teams playing in this tournament and at least one of them is having a party outside our room, by the pool. I can see this is going to be a very relaxing few days. For now I am praying for good playing.