Shut the front door! Finally, we arrived in Connecticut.

Ten days ago, the Indiana Fever made history while their travel cancelations resulted in the postponement of a WNBA game at Connecticut. Finally, the team has arrived for that re-scheduled game at Mohegan Sun Arena, Tuesday night, but not without continued delays on each of its four travel legs since that time.

While I sit watching the Fever workout today with 12 healthy players for the first time this season (trainer Todd Champlin will accuse me of jinxing them), I reflect on what has become a tumultuous, sometimes agonizing and often comical series of travel mishaps.

The Fever has no doubt endured some bad luck since July 18. Last night’s turn of events turned to comedy though, in the 8:00 p.m. North Carolina dusk while the team sat on a plane for 45 minutes watching a Delta Airlines mechanic work, inside the aircraft, just to shut the front door!

[Witnesses to the Fever travel comedy were Connecticut Stars Kelly Faris and Camille Little, both on the same flight while returning to Uncasville after the All-Star break.]

“It was like watching a repairman at your house. He kept leaving and coming back with different tools,” said Gary Kloppenburg. He added, sarcastically, “I didn’t start to worry until he pulled out his duct tape.”

A part of last night’s comedy stems from the fact that I’m relating that story of the front door from third-hand conversation. You see, our initial 3:30 p.m. flight from Indianapolis, connecting in Detroit and on to Hartford, was delayed. Twice. Connections would be missed and in order to re-book our group through to Connecticut last night, our travel party was split in two. I was part of the later flight.

Group A – players and coaches and equipment coordinator Drew Stanich – was re-scheduled for a 5:30 flight and connection in Raleigh-Durham. It was just how Drew had intended to celebrate his 24th birthday. Champlin and I comprised Group B, accepting a 7:30 flight connecting in Detroit.

• In four stretches of travel since July 18, the Fever travel party has spent 5 3/4 hours inside delayed, stationary airplanes – either parked at the gate or sitting on a runway, whether for mechanical issues or storms.
• Those four stretches of travel have resulted in a grand total of 40 airport hours, which I am defining as bus travel to or from an airport; time spent sitting in an airport through delays and layovers; or time spent sitting or flying on planes. That figure is actually reduced by the fact that travel on July 18 was cut short due to the team’s inability to reach Connecticut in time for its game that night.
• All four legs featured delays of at least an hour. A relatively seamless return from San Antonio to Indianapolis on July 21, via Atlanta, was the shortest, with just an hour delay on the segment from Atlanta to Indy.

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Our story originated on July 18. You can read details of that adventure and the postponement here.

The following day, the Fever was re-booked on flights from Washington to San Antonio, through Atlanta. In a stirring continuation of Saturday’s travel, Sunday began with an email notification at 6:15 a.m. The team had boarded its bus from the hotel to Reagan National Airport at 6:00. While en route to the airport, airline emails from Delta Airlines notified the team of its first delay.

Just another day at the office, right? Our 8:00 flight was delayed until 8:50. No problem since, with our short-notice re-booking a day earlier, we had a 4-hour layover in Atlanta, anyway. The layover was shortened to three hours. Nothing hurt.

But then the layover ended. And the team boarded a flight from Atlanta to San Antonio. And the air conditioning wasn’t working in a plane that had sat all day in the Georgia heat. And then the storms came and flights were grounded.

And so we sat on the inside of a plane. For the second time in as many days. For two more hours, staring at overhead compartments and the backs of seats in front of us. This time though, in a suffocating heat for which the pilot apologized repeatedly but with no solution.

My favorite part of that Sunday folly was watching Jeanette Pohlen, in the opposite aisle seat in front of me, take a Twitter photo of Briann January. In a window seat in front of me, Bri had removed her shirt, opting for only a sports bra to combat the heat. Two seats to my left, Maggie Lucas was overcome by the heat and feeling ill.

Finally, we were cleared for takeoff and the plane was allowed to cool with engines running. The team arrived to our San Antonio hotel 13 hours after we’d left our Washington hotel. The Fever practiced on Monday, played poorly and lost on Tuesday afternoon, then returned to Indy on a relatively easy flight that evening.

Thankful for the All-Star break following consecutive losses and an 8-8 record at the break, Tamika Catchings and Marissa Coleman made their way individually to the All-Star game, coincidentally at Connecticut. Tamika became the leading scorer in All-Star history and awaited her teammates’ arrival for the newly scheduled Tuesday game, in which she needs just three points to become the No. 2 scorer in WNBA regular season history.

With Tuesday’s new game on the schedule, Indiana opted for an early practice at Bankers Life Fieldhouse without Catchings and Coleman, but with Natalie Achonwa who returned to the club after helping Canada to a gold medal in last week’s Pan Am Games. An 11 a.m. practice would have the team comfortably to the airport for a scheduled 3:30 flight prior to today’s first-of-the-season full squad practice at Mohegan Sun Arena.

Perhaps the silver lining in this week’s travel saga is that yesterday’s travel difficulty came on a Sunday, with 48 hours prior to a scheduled game – and emerging to help rescue the group from its first two delays yesterday afternoon was a Fever season ticket holder, Tia Harris, who works as a Delta gate attendant.

On hearing that the Fever was part of a flight delay at Gate 10 in Indianapolis, Harris gathered Champlin and Stephanie White and quickly guided them to Gate 11 to accommodate a new booking on a 5:30 flight and connection through Raleigh-Durham. It was there that the Fever joined Faris, already booked on the 5:30 flight, following her time in Indy with family during the All-Star break.

Indeed, Harris was a hero, with her immediate attention helping the large Fever group to re-book so quickly. Eventually, she took advantage of another Detroit delay, putting Champlin and I on another, earlier, flight in order to ease our own connection.

The delay in Indy passed and the Fever flew to its connection in North Carolina. An early arrival, in fact, was met with … yes, another delay, because the gate wasn’t available yet. After a 35-minute taxi on the runway, Fever players and coaches, and Kelly Faris, scrambled to their connecting flight. They were the last passengers aboard and ready for a final leg to finally reach Connecticut … but the door wouldn’t shut.

Meanwhile, Champlin and I safely arrived in Detroit where we began receiving text messages about the front door situation in Raleigh-Durham. Too funny. It was then that I realized my original travel story needed a sequel.

Eventually, Group A arrived in Hartford and arrived at Mohegan Sun about midnight. Champlin and I reached Hartford by midnight and used a car service to reach the hotel about 1 a.m.

With an extra day to spare, the Indiana Fever have arrived for the game that was supposed to be played before storms intervened … and a fuel imbalance … and a dysfunctional air-conditioning unit … and a door that wouldn’t close.
The Fever is not the only team to endure travel challenges, especially commercially. But the gods of airline travel certainly have not been kind during the past 10 days.

Indiana will bus from Mohegan Sun to the Hartford Airport Sheraton immediately following Tuesday’s game, in order to board two different 6 a.m. flights to return for Wednesday night’s home game with New York. No, that wasn’t a typo. Yes, the Fever party will travel in two groups again Wednesday morning as a result of short-notice, first-flight-of-the-day booking for a large group.

Cross your fingers … we hope to see you Wednesday night at The Fieldhouse.