Morey's Trip to Birmingham

Time to catch up on the events of the past week....it's been a busy one!

We left last Thursday to fly to Birmingham Alabama for the USQRA Wheelchair Rugby National Championships. I wasn't worried about flying with Morey since I now considered him a seasoned traveler. However, I did get a surprise when I went through security. Since he was trained in prison he is used to being patted down and usually just calmly stands there. This time, though, when he saw the TSA agent put on rubber gloves he started cowering and hiding behind my chair. I was surprised at this reaction as it was so different than how he had behaved in the past.

As I tried to figure out what might have caused Morey to be so nervous I realized that since the last time we had flown, I had taken him to the vet where someone with rubber gloves had stuck a thermometer up his butt. I think I'd be a little nervous too if I thought someone was going to do that to me! He kept a careful eye on the agent as she patted him down (although his tail was tightly tucked between his legs) and did a big shake off once she was done.

We had a 4 hour layover in Dallas and when we arrived one of the flight attendants offered to take Morey outside so he could "hurry". I always get a little nervous handing him off to someone else, but didn't want to have to go out and then back through security so I let her take him. She brought him back in about 10 minutes and said he was too distracted by all the planes and people to do anything, but I felt better knowing he had gotten the chance to go if he needed to.

Other than that our flights were uneventful. Getting 13 people in wheelchairs on and off a plane is always a time consuming process and one of our players had his rugby chair broken on the flight, but luckily we had spare parts to fix it.

We checked into the hotel, which had a nice grassy area out front to play ball. There was a golden retriever service dog also staying at the hotel and Morey was quite interested in her and the smells she left behind. He was really tired from the trip and we both crashed early since the next day started our competition.