Greetings from Florida

Hello Rapids Fans! This is Stephen Keel blogging from sunny Sunrise, Florida.

I will be (with the help of my trusty sidekick and roommate John Diraimondo) writing every couple of days to give everyone an update on our preseason training.

So let's get this party started! We arrived late Wednesday night after a nice flight through some tornadoes. The flight was nice and fine until the captain ordered the flight attendants to take their seat. It's never good when that happens.

So we are flying and its bumpy (nothing too crazy, but still my OJ was sloshing). Then our friend from Morocco, Mehdi, decided he would ignore the fasten seat belt sign and get up from his seat, to which the flight attendant spoke over the intercom, "the turbulence is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS and everyone needed to be in their seats."

At which point myself and our fearless captain Pablo turned and asked Mehdi what the frick he was doing? So now we are flying through extremely dangerous turbulence and I was grippin' and rippin' my chair. I was scared but was relieved to know that our assistant coach Steve Guppy was darn near terrified of what was going on. The following conversation took place between Steve and Johnny D:

Steve: "D what's going on outside?"
John: "Umm, it's hard to see because it's pitch black!"
Steve: ---White knuckle gripping his seat ---
John: "You really don't like flying do you?"
Steve: " No, I just hate turbulence"
John: " Umm I think it is kinda out of hands at this point"

But fear not. Our noble pilot got us through the storm and landed us safely in Miami.

Now onto the footy section. Yesterday the team had a light training in the morning to get the flight and travel out of the system.

Today the team broke into two groups. One group worked on pressing in a 7v7 session, while the other group worked on a 7v5 session. The groups were switched halfway.

After a nice meal we played our first game against FIU. The team was split in half with each playing 45 mins. We were victorious 3-0, with goals from Cory Gibbs, Mehdi and Omar Cummings. It was a good display and a good training session.

We have just finished dinner and now the guys are free to do what they wish. For myself I watch TV and surf the internet for the Chris Brown case.

Nick LaBrocca likes facebook...a lot. John loves TV. No seriously, he is a TV guide and if you speak during his shows (especially "Lost") he will threaten your life. Others such as Jake Peterson aka "Dante" and Colin Clark enjoy their XBox and taking the Denver Broncos to the Super Bowl.

So that is about it for now. But I will be back later this week to give another update.

Greetings from Florida