As I am writing this we are at the gate at LAX waiting to board our plane headed to Tokyo. The trip started yesterday with a flight to Los Angeles. We landed around 2pm and headed to our hotel. Once we were all checked in we called up some Uber rides and headed to Manhattan Beach.
The trip was kicked off with a great reception at Bill and Ginny Laliberte’s house in Manhattan Beach, CA. It was a great night as you can see from the pictures. They have a beautiful house 100 feet from the beach. They catered a great meal and we had some laughs and got to meet with some other SJU alumni like Garrett Ackerman, Jake Anderson and Paul Noack. This truly showed the Johnnie way in that we were so graciously met with open arms and great hospitality.
We are now sitting at the gate waiting to board our flight. This flight is 11.5 hours so it will be quite the adventure. The flight leaves LAX at 11:05am on Tuesday and arrives at 2:35pm on Wednesday (Tokyo time). The guys keep saying we are flying into the future as we are losing a day.
Once we land we are going to have a lot to figure out. We have to find our contact to transport our hockey equipment to the hockey rink, we have to find the location to get our JR East Rail Passes and we need to get every player a pass for the local rail system. It is going to be very interesting getting 30 people on the subway system and to the hotel around rush hour time in Tokyo. Maybe I should say impossible.
I look forward to letting you know how everything goes in my next blog and wish us luck.
The next blog should come in a couple days. Thanks for all your support of Johnnie Hockey.
