Huge day tomorrow

The wrestling season starts in earnest tomorrow. I'm excited. But then this morning a sobering email came:

This is us at this meet, two years ago. All lined up like
pigeons in the stands.

Our team is departing CAJ at 5:30am (the team is to meet at school by 5:15am). We should arrive at the gates of Yokosuka by 7:30am. . . .   Everyone who enters Yokosuka base needs an escort, without exception. . . .   

The tournament is scheduled to start at 9:00am.  The end time depends on how everything goes throughout the tournament, but usually it ends between 5:00pm-6:00pm. . . . 
The drive back usually takes another 2 hours.  My guess is that we will get back to CAJ sometime between 9:00pm and 10:00pm. Again, it all depends on how the day goes.

The Yokosuka US naval base is south of Yokohama, only about 70km south of here, but there are a lot of people and cars between here and there. To add to the feeling of it being a long day: the sun gets up at around 6.50am and goes down at around 4.45 tomorrow. Yep, we're going to be doing most of our driving in the dark! David's the bus driver and our whole family are going on the bus this time.

It's a huge day. I knew it would be, we've done it before. Just seeing it in black and white in an email made it a bit more scary.

But, my memories of this meet (nicknamed "The Beast") are good. The category of good that our camping memory from this summer—packing up in heavy rain at 4am—goes in!

It promises lots of wrestling (non-stop, actually) and many opportunities to cheer our team on. At this meet two years ago our son wrestled one guy for 5 minutes and 58 seconds before pinning him two seconds before the buzzer. He didn't get everything his own way, though, he also lost two other matches.

It also promises a lot of fun on the trip home. Despite the fatigue the teams usually in good spirits after a meet. And a smelly bus! 10 to 15 guys who've wrestled several times during the day, but not been to the showers yet. Yippee.