I'm 10 days into my Christmas trip and so far its been a blast.

The trip started off with a bang since it snowed in both of the places my flight stopped. I left home and took the first plane to LAX, that went off without a hitch. Next it was off to Denver. That flight was delayed because of snow where the flight was supposed to be coming from but the delay was only half an hour and I still should have had thirty minuets to make my connection. Thirty minuets turned into an hour and I had little chance of making my connection. To keep from dragging this out my connecting flight to Philadelphia was also delayed by over an hour so I made it with plenty of time to spare. It was a very long day of travel. I left my home at 8:30 AM PST and did not get to my hotel in Philly until 11:30 PM EST so about 12 hours total travel time.

The Marriott hotel in the Philadelphia airport is rad. Its inside the airport and I could walk there from the terminal. ****ing COLD! It was under 20 F when I arrived. I had arranged with my friend for him to meet me there under the pretence of us staying overnight and driving back to the Scranton area where he lives the next morning. What my buddy did not know is I had booked the room for two nights and purchased tickets for us to go to the New Jersey Devils hockey game the next day. He's a huge Devils fan and had been too busy to get to a game this year so it was the perfect Christmas gift for him.

We got up early and hit the breakfast buffet. We left in plenty of time to make the game and luckily enough I remembered the tickets before we got out of the hotel parking lot so we spun around and I ran back up to the room and got them. The night before my bro had mentioned that we would need to get gas for the two hour drive to the arena. Of course we both forgot that right after he said it so we quickly ran out after getting on the road. Ironically after loosing power and hitting the first available off ramp we coasted up right in front of the Wachovia Center. (The Philadelphia hockey teams arena) We called for a tow truck that would charge us fifty bucks for two gallons of gas and impatiently waited for it's arrival. We saw the tow truck turn down the wrong street and as we were talking to the driver on the cell phone telling him where we were we noticed a parade going down the same street the tow truck had. We thought nothing of this as the tow truck arrived and began dispensing our fuel. As the driver finished giving us our two gallons but the tail end of the parade had not yet finished turning left. Before we could leave the front end of the parade began to pass us entering the arena lot via the entrance we were parked at after going all the way around the arena. We were stuck. The cop would not let us cross the parade line to get out so we waited for over a half an hour as the parade slowly blocked our path. Fire truck after fire truck, semi's and floats all went by at an excruciatingly slow pace and we could do nothing but stand there as the clock ticked. By the time the parade had finished it was 11 AM and we were still two hours away from the Devils game that was scheduled to start at 1 PM.

My buddy pushed the speed limit and we made it to the arena with fifteen minuets to spare. Luckily I had purchased a VIP parking pass online and we were able to just cruise in, park, and jam inside. We sat down in our seats with exactly three minuets on the clock to go before the teams took the ice. Our seats were excellent, tenth row directly behind the opposing teams net. (Devils attacked twice on our end) Unfortunately the Devils lost 4 to 1 but other than that it was great.

The trip back to the hotel and home to my buddy's house is a whole other story and I will have that in part 2

To be continued...