Dorothy Piotrowski’s blog

Karen’s niece Liz and the rest of the AU Eagles won the Patriot League championship a couple of weeks ago.  That gave them entry into the NCAA Volleyball Championships.

Of all of the teams (which there are 64 of them) and of all the places, they drew the #1 team in the country … University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  The Huskers have a girl from Kitchener playing on their team, Sarah Pavan.

We were able to get a couple of basically free flight from the Region of Waterloo International airport aka Breslau.  Karen, myself and her brother Ross (Liz’s dad) are making the trip.

Even though we were all up late, there was no sleeping in.  The cars got packed up and we started our long journey home.  The drive home was long (12 hours) and uneventful.

We made a pit stop in Altoona, Pennsylvania for lunch and checked out a Big Lots to see if they had any Cocomotions (which they didn’t have).  We picked up fries from The Gin Mill in Ellicottville, New York for dinner.  We crossed the border at 7:30pm and were home by 9:30pm.

We started the day by heading down to awesome buffett breakfast.  After lots of discussion, Larry and Joan went to the shopping mall and the rest of us head down to the National Mall.

We walked to The White House, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Lincoln Memorial and along the reflecting pool to the National World War II Memorial.  Everybody took lots of pictures.

We then made our way over to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History where we saw the Hope Diamond.  We stopped and had lunch at the Cascade Cafe at the National Gallery of Art.

We then walked back all the way to the car (it was really far) and headed over to the university to hit the book store.  We had a quick walk about around the campus and then relaxed and waited for the match to start.

The AU Eagles won the match (game recap).  This was their sixth straight league championship.  The best part was that Liz was named the Patriot League Tournament MVP.

The entire team along with their families headed over to Chadwick’s in Friendship Heights for the celebration dinner.  We headed back to the hotel for a small victory party before calling it a night.

We decided that we wanted to be on the road early today, so we got up and were on our way by 8:15am.  The drive was fine with a stop at KMart in Monroeville, PA for some quick shopping and Cracker Barrel for some take-out lunch.

We arrived in Washington around 3:30pm.  We decided to stop at The Annapolis Lighting Company to have a look at their lights.  Boy do they have lots of them.

We pulled into the Residence Inn Fairfax Merrifield ($107 USD) in Falls Church, Virginia and who was getting their as well but Larry and Joan.  We checked in and then decided we better start making our way to the university.

Traffic is horrible in Washington on a Friday at 4:30.  It took us took us over an hour to get to the university.  We met up with the rest of Karen’s family.

The AU Eagles were victorious over the Lafayette Leopards (game recap).  The win gave them a berth into the finals.  We stayed to watch the Bucknell Bison beat the Army Black Knights.  This means that AU will face Bucknell tomorrow night for the championship.

We all headed over to American City Diner for a very late dinner before getting back to the hotel and calling it a night.

Since we didn’t get enough volleyball last weekend, we decided that we would head back to American University to see Karen’s niece Liz and the rest of the AU Eagles in the Patriot League playoffs.  American University got the right to host the playoffs by finishing first in the league.

This trip to Washington, would be the first for a few of Karen’s family.  Joining us this weekend is Karen’s brother Ross and his wife Susie (Liz’s parents), Karen’s brother Rob and his daughter Deanna, and Karen’s brother Larry and his wife Joan.  It’s going to be a party.

This week, we were fortunate enought to get out of work by 3:30pm and we were on the road by 4:30pm.  The trip to the Peace Bridge was uneventful.  We stopped at the Olive Garden at McKinley Mall for dinner.  Once again, we stopped for the night at the Red Roof Inn Erie ($52.49 USD) in Pennsylvania.  Travel tip … even though the room is on the first floor, check to see if it faces the highway.  All night long, we had the lovely sounds of the trucks zooming down the I-90.