The Long Awaited Arrival of a Good Friend from California

Tuesday, 30 April, 2019

As the greatest American football player in the history of St. Anthony H.S. in Long Beach, California, one Johnny "Johnny O" Olszewski reminded me, today marked . . .

. . . ZERO more days until

Laurie arrived at Milano's

Malpensa Airport!

I arrived at the airport area about an hour before Laurie's scheduled 1:40 p.m. arrival time so I decided to explore a bit rather than just sit at the airport.

Remarkably,

I found a church

It was closed, but . . .

. . . it had a mural of a traditionally

dressed Camino de Santiago peregrino

Other than the gorgeous natural scenery to enjoy, there was not much to see so I headed back to Malpensa.

As expected, her plane from

Frankfurt, Germany was still a few

minutes from touching down

 MAGA in Italy in

an art museum?

I pray NOT!

The only way the MAGA movement would come to Italy would be to celebrate an anniversary of Friar Girolamo Savonarola's 1495 bonfires of the vanities.

Fortunately, in this case, MAGA is an acronym for Museo Arte GAllarate. Gallarate being a city near Malpensa Airport.

Finally, after clearing customs and collecting her luggage . . . 

 . . . Laurie was officially in Italia!

Because of a serious accident on the Autostrada, my GPS app took us through some previously unexplored areas of the greater Milano megalopolis that we had never seen before.

As usual, the scenery on this alternate route did not disappoint.

After a spritz at Pasticceria Marabelli, we got Laurie settled into the Villa Scorpion II before heading on to Skorpion Field for our 90 minute Flag team practices.

The U13, U15 and U17 teams have their final qualifying tournament this coming Sunday in Bergamo.

All three squads are trying to qualify for the National Championship Tournament in June.

U13s warming up

U15s flag tackling drill

U17 scrimmaging

U17s running every which-way!

U17 Slo-Mo action

 Andrea "Volo" Volonnino

Volo is a talented, hard working WR for the Skorpions' U17 Flag and U16 Tackle teams.

When our son Michael was here he enjoyed working with Volo but noticed that the chinstrap on his helmet was ancient and held together only with white athletic tape.

So Michael remedied Volo's situation by sending him a brand new black chin strap via Laurie.

Volo was excited to get his gift from all that I could tell.

Because we had three weeks until we played again, this time on the road for the Varese Derby against the #12 ranked Varese Gorillas (1-3), and because of the extremely physical nature of our Bengals game last Saturday night, we opted too not have a Prima Squadra practice tonight.

At this point of the season, a day of rest physically and mentally was the right call our coaching staff believed.

This was not to say that Prima Squadra

team members would not show up at

Skorpion Field for a pizza party

Team bonding is a good thing.

So is having Laurie in Italy back on the Continent.