Footy Trip 2009 - Day One

We're here. Here being Melbourne. Box Forest SC Glenroy to be precise.
The boys are blowing up their air mattresses and hyper-ventilating in the process.
We've been to the first of our 6 games, Collingwood v Essendon at the MCG on Friday night Football. The Magpies were way too good for the Bombers, who I think are over-rated.
There were 77,699 people at the game, with the usual percentage of feral fans, from both sides.
The kids were pretty impressed with their first taste of footy in Melbourne.

The trip from Perth had elements of The Amazing Race. The flight out of Perth was delayed taking off and lost a further 10 minutes due to poor tailwinds, reducing our connection window fom 50 minutes to about 40. The staff did their best to assist us within the bounds of rules and regulations. Then, just to add a touch of drama, upon touch down in Adelaide we were instructed to remain seated while paramedics attended to a passenger with a medical emergency during the flight. Finally we were allowed off and I made a dash for the check-in counter while the kids went to retrieve the bags. The check-in attendant wasn't very impressed with us cutting it fine, admonishing me and saying if we were in a big airport like Sydney we'd have missed the flight for sure. The thing is we weren't in Sydney. And the web page instructions say allow 30 minutes to be at the airport and checked in before your flight, and we should have had 50. She remained unimpressed but I didn't mind, by then the kids were arriving with their bags and we were assured of making our connecting flight to Melbourne! Celebrations all round. We had made it.
One of the kids made the Amazing Race comparison and it seemed appropriate.

Further drama ocurred at Tullamarine, Alex and Haydn's bags had not made it for some reason and would arrive on the next available flight. They'll be dropped off by courier in the morning.
Hopefully! Haydn had already left his pillow behind at the security screening in Perth.

We had kebabs from Glenroy for dinner then missed a train by one minute. The next train was delayed by 8 minutes. Thus, we were a little late for the game, arriving just before quarter time.
The game passed without incident, except for the disappointment of Collingwood winning.

When we got on the train at Southern Cross the boys found a mobile phone someone had lost so we spent the train trip home tracking down the owner, a girl called Mani as it turned out, after talking to her Dad, in Northern NSW, her friend Anthea in Brighton and finally her boyfriend Duane who was most appreciative and is coming round in the morning to pick it up.

Fortuitously Coles at Glenroy was still open when we got back so were able to buy some provisions for breakfast.

Meanwhile the boys have discovered several of the air beds have leaks and are not looking forward to an uncomfortable night's sleep! We'll deal with the problems tomorrow.