I am going to make a series of postings describing my trip and visit to Albany. I hope they entertain you... As you may know, from my frantic postings early last week, my ride to Albany backed out on Monday.... On tuesday I found two travel agencies offereing trips. I chose a bus trip. PRE TRIP -------- we were scheduled to leave at 4pm on Wednesday. Wednesday morning, the agency called and asked if I could leave at 2pm, because of the weather. I said yes, and began making my list of everything I had to do before leaving. I managed to get my laundry done, buy a hat (a nice red hat with white embroidery that said "Its A Great Day for Hockey -- Bob Johnson"). I was looking for a Wisconsin T-shirt (can you believe I discovered I didn't own any Wisconsin T-shirts any more? All I had was a sweat shirt I wore to most games...) and saw the hat. I asked about it, and he said I could have one the next day (they do the embroidery custom for each order). I said I would be in albany, and he said I could have the hat in 30 minutes. I came in to work, printed off the hockey-l seat locations and dinner info, fixed up the files for my class project (I am taking one class) so my partners could work on them while I was gone (we have a demo today -- I have very tolerant project partners), and all I had to do was stop at the money machine (I didn't get enough cash). THE TRIP -------- I didn't know anyone on the trip, and have never gone on a hockey road trip before. I was ready for anything -- a bus full of drunk freshman or a bus full of old fogies... it turned out very nice. We had only 23 people on the bus, so we each got 2 seats to stretch out on. In the back of the bus, (where else?) were 5 younger people (including me). Brad, and his 21-year-old son Brad we in the middle (The trip was Brad 2's birthday present), and the front of the bus had some not-as-young-as-us people, most of whom travel to a lot of the games. The same agency also had a plane trip. One of the five younger people was a 6-year veteran of the band. He isn't taking classes this semester, so he isn't in the bad, and came on his own. With his yuears of bus-trip experience, he informed us that all bus drivers are named "Bob." Sometimes they have hypenated names ("Mark-Bob") but usually just "Bob." He was right, both our drivers answered to the name "Bob"... The 5 younger people and the two Brads played cards and backgammon for the next 20 hours, and consumed 5 cases of beer. It sounds like a lot (and it is!) but we paced ourselves, and no one got sick or obnoxious, so it worked out fine. The "regulars" had some beer, but told us they didn't drink as much on the bus anymore, so that they would be awake for the games... Brad 1 (the father) got lost at one of the stops on the Indiana (or was it Ohio?) turnpike, and a rescue party had to be sent out.... We then renamed him "Chad." ALBANY ------ We arrived at 11am, and our rooms were waiting for us. Our hotel was the Sheraton, which was kind of a dump. The team and band were also there. After a shower, I visited with the people from RPI manning the hospitality table (and bought some more RED stuff from our trip leader). The RPI people were very nice, and had handouts and brochures about the area, game times, lost ticket policy, etc. They also had a non-commercial list of bars, restarants, clubs and other points of interest. GAME 1 ------ At 1:20, we and the plane-trip people loaded on the bus to go to the first semi-final (MSU-LSSU).... which brings me to the end of this part of the adventure. --david -------- david parter university of wisconsin -- madison [log in to unmask] computer sciences department