"When's your flight?"

This past weekend 11 hardcore Laurier football fans headed out east from Waterloo, Ontario to Halifax Nova Scotia to see the Hawks pummel Acadia's Axemen in tha Uteck Bowl. Many other Laurier fans also made the trip, mostly parents and players' girlfriends, and we were asked one question time and again - "when's your flight?"

Then we got to see their reactions when we told them that we had not flown but instead rented an 11-seater van and driven the 18 hours and 1,882 kilometres to see the game. That's right. We actually spent more time in the van than we did in Halifax. Everyone thought we were nuts, but I think this is another step in the direction of the revival of the lost art of the roadtrip. These days it is far too easy to book a discount flight and get anywhere you need to in a couple hours. Now don't get me wrong, it's great that it's so much easier (and inexpensive) to travel these days, making it a lot more convenient to get to far-flung destinations. But there is something to be said to the old adage that it's not the destination, but the journey that really matters. As we were leaving in the very early hours of the morning the day before the game, one of us summed up the trip as 'this is either the best idea or the worst idea ever', but he was deliriously excited while he said this, making it clear which side he was on. We were quite lucky that the 11 of us managed to not get on each other's nerves, and in the end I think that the time we spent in the van ended up being more fun than everything else in the whole trip. From jumping curbs, having pylons thrown at us, and realizing that for all the time we spent in Fredricton, NB (where we spent the nights), we would never actually see it in daylight, the entire weekend was hilarious.

While it's true that everyone who flew out east had more time to spend at the actual location, and clearly spent much less time getting there, I wouldn't have traded that van ride for the world.

Pictures, courtesy of everyone who had cameras