Day Three at the SBC Tournament - 3/8/10

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. - Spirits around the team are high following last night's 15-point win over Middle Tennessee.

This team is running through shoot around at Lakeside High School, just outside of town. None of the teams can use Summit Arena, because of all the other games going on.

The players seem to be comfortable with the late starts this week, even if it means chicken sandwiches at an 11 p.m. dinner.

The team will get together around 4 p.m. for its usual pregame meal of chicken, pasta, veggies, salad and rolls. Other than that, everyone needs to rest up for tonight's game.

Speaking of tonight's game, it will be available on the Sun Belt Network, which means anyone with the Full Court package can view it, including most sports bars around Denver (and the rest of the country). It will also be available on ESPN360.com.

More About Hot Springs: Bridge Street in downtown Hot Springs is allegedly the shortest street in the world. At least, that's what Ripley's Believe It or Not declared it in the 1940s. It's a strange connector between two other diagonal streets that form a small triangle.

It takes roughly 45 steps to get from one end of Bridge Street to the other, and every year they host a parade on March 17. This year's edition is called "The First Ever Seventh Annual World's Smallest St. Patrick's Day Parade," and the grand marshal will be Bo Derek. Previous grand marshals have included John Ratzenberger (Cliff C. Clavin on Cheers), Mike Rowe (Dirty Jobs), Mario Lopez (A.C Slater on Saved By the Bell) and George Wendt (Norm Peterson from Cheers).

The Irish Order of Elvi is also slated to march.

Food Inc.: Breakfast this morning was interesting, and actually pretty funny. Generally on the road, the team eats breakfast at a buffet, so everyone loads his plate with whatever he wants. This morning, however, there was no buffet opened, so everyone ordered off the menu.

The problem was that when they brought the food out, the table numbers apparently were mixed up, so each of the 12 or so tables ended up with food that one of the other tables ordered.

Because almost everyone in the travel party is easy-going, everyone seemed to just shrug and eat whatever the server put in front of him. It didn't take long before everyone realized what was happening, but by that point everyone was digging into their plate. And nobody seemed to mind.

Is that a Sign?: When you travel through enough town and along enough highways, you start noticing some strange street signs, messages on stores and other such attention getters. Here are the two best so far on this trip:

"T-Shirts and Concealed Weapons Permits"

"Dodge's Chicken and Check Cashing"

Yearly travel totals:       

Total Flights - 21

Total Mileage Flown - 16,609

Total Bus Miles - 1,752

Total Number of Hotels - 15

Total Number of Different Airports - 14

Total Number of Airline Delays - 2

Total Number of Cancelled Flights - 0

Total Number of Bags Lost This Year - 1

Total Number of Times the Team Bus Has Broken Down - 1

Total Number of People in the 24-Man Travel Party to Get What They Actually Ordered at Breakfast This Morning - 0