Another week gone here in Wheaton. Training has been a rocky road this week with a few niggling injuries popping up. Still able to be productive in various ways. My coaching job has also settled into rhythm which is nice, just still waiting on my first paycheck.
This week, a former team mate of mine from New Zealand joined us in the apartment and training with Bridges. Its been great having a familiar face around and a lot of catching up to do after 5 years since we last played together.
March madness finally 
meant something to me for once being a Quinnipiac alum. Our Women’s Basketball team took the whole Quinnipiac Community on a great ride all the way to the Sweet 16. It was an incredible and inspiring journey they went on, and I was happy to go along for the ride. They have certainly put Quinnipiac on the map! Unfortunately the journey ended in the Sweet 16, but the standard has now been set and I’m sure it wont be too long until they get there again!
My weekend was filled with Family. My cousin Jeremy was in Chicago visiting his girlfriend and I was lucky enough to head along to dinner with them on Saturday evening. And Sunday afternoon I had lunch with Mum’s cousin and her husband. It was great to see familiar faces and escape from the apartment for awhile. That is just the beginning of my family visits hopefully!
I am certainly now settled in Wheaton, Illinois. My second week here has passed and I have begun to find a bit of a rhythm. I am more comfortable and more focused on the task ahead of me. After having a couple conversations with the assistant coach this week, I have a clearer picture of a few areas of my game that I really need to focus on. I put extra time into these areas before training, during training and also in the gym back at the apartment. As previously stated, I will get out of this experience what I put into it, and I have full control of my effort. So I am making sure I put in the work required, and more, to build a strong platform for future opportunities that I hope will arise.
Well this week has involved a massive step or progression in my development towards my goal of becoming a professional. On Monday I flew to Chicago where I was picked up by two future team mates. I have linked up with an organization called 
ve signed professionally with teams. So it is a well run organization, that is proven to be successful. But as I have already been told by the coaches, and also prior Bridges players, you will be as successful as you want to, all dependent on the work you put in leading up to the trip.
hopefully build my platform higher for when we travel to Europe and I can kick on from there. For now, the focus is not Europe. The focus is working on different areas of my game each day, and even in the first week, I have already began developing areas of my game that the coaches believe need improving and I can already see a difference.
On Saturday, both Anne and I headed to the gym to do our different types of training, and she was sporting a new outfit we have shopped for the previous week. After our workouts we headed down to Reading Terminal Market, which was suggested to me by a friend as a place to visit while I was in Philadelphia. It was a great place with all sorts of stores, mostly food and treats, but just the amount of people in the place was insane! An experience for sure.
Another week passes, and unfortunately not much movement on my end. Although Monday saw the completion and distribution of my new video, the waiting game continues. While this goes on, I continued to train, getting to the gym everyday and varying my workouts to get fitness in but also strength and speed work. And on Friday, I was able to attend a team training session with the Philadelphia NPSL team, Junior Lone Star FC. It was great to get on the field again and do football specific training. Depending on their training schedule in the coming weeks, I will hope to attend them as much as possible to keep the football work up. 
g, and considering I hadn’t seen the movie, it allowed me to just take it all in. I very much enjoyed it. Anne, Fred, and their friend Andrea, and I then head out for a late lunch at a nice Greek restaurant. It was just a great afternoon. After lunch, Fred drove me to one of his construction companies worksites that I would be working at beginning Monday. It will be a great way for me to keep busy and make some money while I play the waiting game. It will be a 5mile bike ride in the morning and afternoon. Should be a good week, and hopefully a little more movement on the football side of things.
Wednesday I was able to rest and recover a little bit after the busy few days of travel and trials, and just have a bit of down time to reflect on things and really question my intentions about what I want to achieve. Thursday I went for a run along the Delaware river and it was nice to get out of the house. I also began to re make my video and edit my Football/Soccer CV in an effort to search for new opportunities, so that was taking a lot of time in my days. I had to cut through many hours of games and get clips from various games from this season and last. It was a tedious task, but it needed to be done in order for me to be seen by coaches and teams for new opportunities. This is the final product 
where I was able to get a good work out in, and Anne was able to continue to do her rehab and balance work. Never thought the day would come that we would go to a gym together!! In the afternoon, we headed up to Fred’s place. He was recently completed building an incredible mansion on the river north of Philadelphia. I saw it last when he was still building, so seeing it complete was quite incredible. He has yet to fully move things into it. We had a lovely meal and watched a great film, Meet Joe Black!
Sunday morning I picked up South Street Philly Bagels for breakfast, before Anne dropped me off just passed the Museum where the statue of Rocky is on the steps, and I walked along the river before I found a nice spot to read my book in the sun. The weather has been unseasonably warm, with Sundays temperature near 20 degrees celsius.
Another week that began in one place and ended in another. I was at Marcos’s in Myrtle Beach until Thursday. We continued to have a great time together, going for a run together, having salad nights, going bowling, and then on Wednesday, he took me to his new office as such at Coastal Carolina University. It was great to see how another University Athletic Department functions and the different facilities etc. It was a great experience and the campus is lovely, especially with the sun shining and it feeling a little more like summer. I was also able to watch a bit of the teams training, which was good. It is only Spring season so all they did was play, but even then you could see how differently the team was drilled.
organized for me to stay with her friend, and it worked out great. A couch was all I needed to rest my head at night and I was great. In the evening, Rachel, my host took her dog for a walk down on the Battery, downtown Charleston and I joined. Although it was dark, it was a lovely evening with the air crisp and the water splashing against the Battery. That was really as much of Charleston I got to see.
iant grass and great facilities. Over the course of the two days, I was pleased with my play and the impact I had in the games. However, I obviously wasn’t what the coaching staff were looking for and now I am waiting to receive feedback so that I know what I need to improve on to take the next step as a player. After the second day, I showered at the stadium and then headed to the airport to catch a flight to Newark. I was picked up by James Greco, another former teammate of mine from Quinnipiac University. It was great to catch up with him as we drove to his place. We spent the evening catching up, and then Sunday morning James, his Dad, and myself headed out in the freezing rain to a local high school to get the legs going and pass a ball around in preparation for the next tryout, which James was also attending. Although cold and wet, it was good to get the legs going and for me to adjust to the temperature as I was now back in the Northeast winter. Two more of our teammates from Quinnipiac met us at James’s house and we all jumped in the car and headed for Harrisburg, PA.
This week has been filled with training and spending time with my friend, Marcos. Before I left Richmond on Monday, I managed to get a run in and lose a cat at the same time. I did everything I could to get the cat back inside before I left, I was unsuccessful. I then took a bus from Richmond to Wilmington, North Carolina. In Wilmington I was picked up by a friend of mine, Lisa. We grabbed dinner in Wilmington and then hit the road south to Myrtle Beach. I spent the night at Lisa’s apartment and witnessed a gorgeous sunrise over the beach from 12 floors up. I got some beach time in as I got the lunges and legs going before I was picked up later that afternoon by Marcos, my former teammate and close friend from Quinnipiac.
I spent the rest of the week with Marcos, keeping busy constructing things for his apartment, touring Coastal Carolina University’s campus, going bowling, and just catching up. The weather has been very nice down here and so it has been nice to spend some time outside in the sun and by the pool. 
Each day I utilized the gym that is for the apartment complex and made sure that I got in the appropriate training each day to keep my fitness and strength up. And Sunday I was able to enjoy the fresh air on a nice long run too.
As much as I am not a fan of American Football, I think most sports fans would have enjoyed the intensity of the game and the incredible comeback by the New England Patriots. It was a great ending to the week, as I prepare for another big week of training and preparation for more upcoming trials.
thankfully I have an American passport or I may not have been able to enter in the current state the country is in.
After a good sleep, I had a productive morning before I got on my next train to Richmond, Virginia. The ride wasn’t too bad and I was picked up from the station. When I knew that I was coming to Richmond, I reached out to friends who might know someone with a spare bed or couch, and the return was amazing. A wonderful family offered me to stay in a house that was vacant for the weekend as they were away. It was great to have my own space to relax in during the weekend, I just had to put up with two cats which wasn’t too bad. Friday morning I went for a morning run before I stocked up on groceries for the next few days before I relaxed until the afternoon.
I was in my regular training routine which has been great, especially training with the local college has been beneficial for both parties. I get extra technical training in, in an environment where development is the focus, so thats been great. I managed to get my regular sessions in at the gym too, and down at the local park as well, so it was a busy and productive training week for sure. Feeling as fit as I can be without playing 90min, which is now the focus for me. And on Friday, I enjoyed my yoga class as usual.