Living the Adventure...: East Coast Trip

I'm sitting in my hotel room in Wilmington, Delaware waiting to go home tomorrow morning. It has been a good trip but I'm definitely ready to get back to Eugene. I miss my wife and kids, and I miss being in a familiar place. When I leave tomorrow morning I will have been away almost six days, which has been a long time. Here is a brief recap.

Wednesday:
A tough day of travel. Eugene to Salt Lake City to Atlanta to Wilmington, Delaware. Arrived only to find that my luggage hadn't made the trip along with me. That was frustrating. A $60 cab ride to the hotel later, we finally got settled in.

Thursday:
I spent most of the day trying to find my luggage, but I wasn't having much luck because there are only two inbound flights to the Wilmington airport. We had an orientation meeting for the competition, and thankfully Ash and Ryan were able to argue the first round that night.

Friday:
I learned that my luggage finally made it to the hotel sometime during the night, so I actually had some clothes to change into. I argued in both rounds this morning, but we had been selected to argue off-brief, which was the much more difficult argument to make. We did pretty well, but we were also up against some tough competition. On Friday night, Widener Law School had a banquet for us, which was pretty fun. We learned that we weren't among the eight teams that were to advance to the next round, which gave us two days to decide what to do.

Saturday:
I rented a car from perhaps the most incompetent Enterprise office in the country, and we headed north to explore. It is always a bit intimidating to drive in a strange region, and we decided to take off sans maps, so it wasn't really a coincidence when we took a wrong turn and ended up in Philadelphia instead of New York. We had lunch in Philly (I broke my vegetarian eating habits to eat a Philly cheesesteak). We explored around a bit and then got back on the New Jersey Turnpike and headed to New York. We had contemplated taking the train into Manhattan, but I decided to just try to drive and park somewhere. We definitely ran into a lot of traffic heading into the Holland Tunnel, but we finally made it into Manhattan and we parked as soon as we could. After buying a slice of New York pizza, we bought a MetroCard and tried to figure out the subway system. We checked out Times Square and Ground Zero and looked around for several hours before eating dinner at the ESPN Zone to watch some basketball. Later that night we met up with a friend of Ash's who has a place in Chelsea. We hung out with him for awhile (playing Wii) before heading back to the car. We finally made it back to the hotel around 3:30AM.

Sunday:
After the late night/early morning, we all slept in. Ash and I went to the final round of the competition, which was argued in front of the Delaware Supreme Court. It was interesting to see that one of the teams we had argued against in the second round had progressed to the finals. The level of oral advocacy was certainly good, but I wouldn't classify it as outstanding. The questions from the Justices were very challenging, and it was fun to watch. The team from Florida State University School of Law ended up winning. We retired to the hotel to watch the Oregon-Florida basketball game and then went to get some dinner. Now we're back at the hotel and packing up for tomorrow's early morning wake-up call. Our plane leave at 7:15 and then it is back through Atlanta, then on to Seattle and finally back to Eugene.

It has been a good, albeit long, trip. I feel like I've learned a lot about corporate law and I've been able to see some sights I haven't seen before. I'm thankful that my school makes opportunities like this available to law students.

Here are some black and white photos taken on the trip. They aren't the best quality as they were taken on my Treo, but you can get the idea.