My Marching Orders Arrived

Wednesday, 8 April, 2020

Day XXXI of the Great Italian Lockdown, also day 36 since our last Varese Skorpions football practice, turned out to be more than just somewhat interesting to those of us living in The Bunker.

Well, that would be just me.

It was a day of revelation!

This little ditty pretty much

summed up my mood today

It all started with a WhatsApp message from Enzo Petrillo late Tuesday night.

We'll need a background first . . .

 FIDAF is our federation in 

charge of our beloved,

beleaguered sport

The Italian Olympic Committee,

aka, CONI, figures into our story

prominently today too

When our Coronavirus Lockdown was imminent over a month ago, CONI and the Italian Ministry of Sport asked for a meeting with representatives of all of Italy's sports federations to discuss a joint approach to dealing with the postponement, restarting dates and potential cancellation of seasons.

At that meeting, all of the sports federations agreed to work through CONI before announcing any decisions about the status of their 2020 seasons. It was further agreed that CONI would make one announcement at some point in time that would cover the status of all of the sports federations at the age time.

About two week ago, the Rugby Federation broke ranks deciding to announce the cancellation their season despite their agreement to let CONI be the all-sports spokesperson.

The Rugby Federation, believed that it made no sense to keep waiting on CONI when they recognized that cancellation was in the best interests of their players and teams.

On Monday, the Basketball Federation cancelled their 2020 season for the same reasons as the Rugby Federation, again in contradiction of their earlier agreement with CONI.

Which brings us back to Tuesday' late night message from Enzo . . .

 The Varese Skorpions are

undefeated and tied for first at the

half way point of the 2020 season

Girone C Standings

1T. Varese Skorpions 0-0

1T. Modena Vipers 0-0

1T. Monza Brianza Hammers 0-0

1T. Reggio Emilia Hogs 0-0

1T. Savona Pirates 0-0

The essence of Enzo's message, which he explained in depth to me in a phone conversation this morning, was a simple one.

Members of our Skorpions Board of Directors as well as several coaches in Italy that I have been talking with over the last month, all know people in FIDAF's inner circle.

The consistent word on the grapevine has been that FIDAF had decided to cancel the 2020 season. They have been reluctant to announce their decision as they, unlike the Rugby and Basketball Federations, prefer to honor their original decision with CONI.

Enzo and our Board believed that knowing all of this to be true, it was time for me to go home to Camarillo.

With all of this information now in front of me, I agreed to go home.

Enzo talked with his travel agent and the team bought me a new return ticket that has me leaving Italy this coming Sunday which is Easter.

My itinerary is a good one at a good price under the current circumstances.

I'll fly out of Milan's Malpensa Airport at 7:00 a.m on Sunday for a 70 minute flight down to Rome.

My layover in Rome's Fiumicino Airport is only 80 minutes long. I will then fly to London's Heathrow Airport at 9:30 a.m., a flight that will take two hours and 55 minutes.

My final layover of the day in London will last three hours and 35 minutes. At 3:00 p.m., I will board a plane heading to Los Angeles for my last flight of the day that will last 11 hours and 20 minutes.

If all goes according to plan, I will land at LAX at 6:20 p.m. on Sunday, 20 hours and 20 minutes after leaving Milan.

Rather than facing possible exposure to the Coronavirus, Laurie has already contracted a private company to pick me up at LAX and drive me home to Casa Contreras in Camarillo.

Then, I will start two more weeks of isolation before I am allowed to be with other people including Laurie.

She has already drawn up the plans to divide our house in half in a way that should allow us to live together but still apart.

The movie Ladyhawke came to mind when I heard her foolproof plan.

I'm Going HOME!

In the afternoon, I made the Skorpion players and coaches aware of the days happenings via a video that I made and uploaded to our team's WhatsApp site.

I had to bid them all a bittersweet farewell.

What might have been . . .

Huge Easter Sunday chocolate

eggs are a tradition in Italia

As usual, the Nardi family next door (Santa Barbara, Federica and Raffaele with Giorgio still in exile in Switzerland) came through with this egg as a gift.

Ever helpful, Santa Barbara knew of the club's decision and told me to just leave everything in The Bunker and that she would take care of it and clean the place. She would have everything ready for our return in 2021.

I thanked her but told her that I had plenty of time to clean up and pack away the things that I was not taking home on Sunday.

Santa Barbara never fails to go that one extra step in helping me survive.

Day 88 living in Varese this year was indeed interesting.