Early saturday morning, as we were leaving the North Carolina Outer Banks, our sadness at leaving the beach was added to the fact that we expected to miss the last two games of a tournament that the four of us have been following for weeks.

For a while the traffic gods were with us and, after a few hours, we started to entertain the possibility that, with a lot of endurance, we might be able to get home in a day and thus make it to the finals. Of course, once the decision was made, Murphy’s Law came into play. We encountered significant traffic jams south of Washington, DC and west of New York but these, like the lineup at the border, were expected.

What I did not expect was a midnight traffic jam at that FUCKING PONT CHAMPLAIN!!! Not exactly something that you want to see after driving 1500 km over 17.5 hours. Nevertheless, we finally made it home at 12:30 but it took me another two hours before I managed to metabolize enough adrenaline, caffeine and taurine to finally fall asleep.

As you can guess, we were not functional until the early afternoon. The suitcases, laundry and groceries had to wait until the end of this fascinating game. Although my head was rooting for France, my heart was with Italy.

Even though I live in the West Island, I can still hear the honking. My neighbor told me that St-Jean Blv is even worse than Des Sources and I don’t want to imagine how things are on the Plateau. This has to say something about our beloved city where an Italian victory brings out more celebrations than a victory by one of our founding country. As I drove around getting groceries and take out sushi, I couldn’t help waving and honking at all of those people exhibits the Italian flag, even though we were miles away from Little Italy.

It was hard, but was worth it.

Related posts:

1. On the psychology of crumbling infrastructures
2. No Stop-N-Go
3. Italian Week
4. The calm before the storm
5. Finally home…