Last season was my first venture into the world of the AF2 road trip. Playing football at a major university and in the NFL you tend to assume that all football teams travel by charter plane and stay at luxury hotels. After doing that for years I was caught off guard when I first entered the AFL and realized that, gasp, we flew commercial! There are some funny things that are taken for granted as an athlete.

While the AF2 travel experience isn’t quite as high dollar as the higher levels I can honestly say that it’s got plenty of perks. Most of these can be summed up in a simple phrase, “You may never truly know a man until you’ve spent 15 hours on a bus with him.” Believe me, it sounds much worse than it actually is. These are large sleeper buses with bunk beds, lounge areas, and yes even a bathroom. The various arrays of drivers usually have a colorful personality and a seemingly infinite number of stories about the rock bands they drive around the country. They’re usually pretty good about finding places to stop so we can grab a late night snack too.

If you suffer from extreme claustrophobia there might be an issue with the lack of available space, but if you’re a people person you’d probably dig it. There’s a lot of time for both interacting and people watching. Dean and I don’t tend to sleep much so we catch up on some of the latest movie rentals. I’ve usually seen most of them by the time they make it to dvd, but I don’t mind watching them again.

Compared to the regiment of day to day preparation for the game our road trips tend to be a kind of escape. The upcoming opponent is never far from our minds but we can take that time on the highways to hang out together and just be human.

-Anthony Herron