Greg Sesker in BAKU, Azerbaijan - Greetings from Baku.

After a long stretch of traveling, we're finally in Azerbaijan as the 2007 World Championships are just a little over 48 hours away from starting.

The trip got off to a slow start, but the two long flights - from Denver to Frankfurt, Germany, and from Frankfurt to Baku, Azerbaijan - couldn't have gone any more smoothly.

We touched down at around 9:30 p.m. Friday night and USA Wrestling National Teams Director Mitch Hull was in the airport to greet us. After a short bus ride to the hotel, USA Wrestling National Events Manager Travis Shives and I were able to check in right away. Mitch did a great job hooking us up with rooms and everything else we need on the trip.

We now have a couple of days to become acclimated and prepare for the big seven-day event.

Ran into InterMat Jack-of-All-Trades Jason Bryant in the lobby of our hotel. He arrived the day before we did. This is his first overseas trip and he's already been to one of our freestyle practices near the hotel. The Wireless Internet wasn't working in the hotel and Jason walked over to reset the Wireless Router at the front desk.

Also bumped into young Greco-Roman phenom Spenser Mango in the lobby. Mango, second at the U.S. World Team Trials, is here serving as a training partner to World Team member Joe Betterman. He is nowhere near 55 kilos right now after just finishing a BLT and a chicken basket. But he doesn't have to make weight again until Sunkist in late October.

USA Greco-Roman training partner Jake Fisher, who along with Mango trains at the U.S. Olympic Education Center, is busy in the lobby working on a test over the Internet in psychological statistics. He is majoring in sports science. Spenser isn't working on his homework however.

Betterman (60 kg/132 lbs.), Lindsey Durlacher (55 kg/121 lbs.) and Harry Lester (66 kg/145.5 lbs.) will weigh in Sunday and compete on the first day of the tournament Monday.

Durlacher and Lester both won bronze medals at the 2006 World Championships. Lester looked very good in winning the 2007 Pan American Games.

I've been up now for about 36 straight hours. Time to get some sleep.

Friday, Sept. 14

FRANKFURT, Germany - Greetings from Europe.

5,025 miles and 8 1/2 hours after leaving Denver on Lufthansa Airlines, USA Wrestling Manager of National Events Travis Shives and I have landed in Frankfurt, Germany, before we catch a connecting flight to Baku, Azerbaijan, for the 2007 World Championships.

The flight went very smoothly on the massive jet and the flight crew did a great job taking care of us.

We were a little disappointed in the movie selection on the flight. "Mr. Bean's Holiday" was shown and I gave up on it after about 20 minutes. It was one of the worst starts to a movie I have ever seen with this guy who looks like a European Pee Wee Herman trying to be funny, but failing miserably in my opinion. "Ocean's 13" was being shown on some other Lufthansa flights, but unfortunately not on ours.

Walking through the massive terminal to our gate, we saw our fair share of people who are also heading to Baku for the World Championships. We saw wrestlers from Tunisia, Bolivia, Peru, Canada and Denmark who are going to be on our flight. A number of mat officials are here, including Dave and Zach Errett, and Tom Clark from the U.S.

Mike Juby, the state chairman from Kansas, also is in our terminal. He was selected by USA Wrestling as a reward for his work and also to expose a grass-roots leader to a major international event like the World Championships.

It's 12:22 in the afternoon (4:22 a.m. in Colorado) so we are starting to hit the wall after the long flight as we operate on very minimal sleep.

Time to get on the plane to Baku.

Thursday, Sept. 13

DENVER - Anybody who knows me is fully aware I'm not one to voice my opinion or complain a whole lot. Well, that's not really true at all, but we've had an interesting start to our journey.

Travis Shives, USA Wrestling's Manager of National Events, and I called to confirm Thursday morning that we had aisle seats for our flight from Denver to Germany. But after driving up to Denver from Colorado Springs and checking in with Lufthansa Airlines, we discovered Travis had a middle seat and I didn't have a seat assigned to me yet.

Travis, who has a master's degree in speech communications, put those skills to use as he adeptly negotiated his way into an aisle seat. We're sitting here eating right now and I was just told I have a seat on the plane, but they're not sure which seat yet.

We spent about a half hour, at least, trying to check in and then stood in line for another 45 minutes before going through security. For some reason, they only had about half the lines open for security as a long line formed in the Denver airport.

We were offered 700 Euros (about $900 U.S.) apiece by the airline to give up our seats on the overbooked flight. Maybe we should have thought a little more about that.

I sure hope this is not an indication of what lies ahead, but I know we could have a lot bigger problems with this. We had a good laugh about it.

This is the third overseas trip for both me and Travis. He just traveled to Greece in June and I was in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in July for the Pan American Games. It feels like I just got back from there.

I have to be careful what I say about Travis because his mom just called him and said she was reading about him in this journal.

Anyway, we're finishing off a late lunch and preparing for the nine-hour flight tonight to Frankfurt, Germany. After about a three-hour layover, we'll head to Baku, Azerbaijan on about a five-hour flight.

Hopefully, it will go smoothly. And hopefully I will have a place to sit during the several-thousand-mile flight.

The wrestling starts in four days and I'm like a little kid waiting for Christmas. The excitement continues to build the closer we get to the competition.

Wednesday, Sept. 12

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - Everyone was in full scramble mode at USA Wrestling World Headquarters on Wednesday morning.

All 21 of our U.S. World Team members in men’s and women’s freestyle, and Greco-Roman wrestling have already departed for the 2007 World Championships, set for Sept. 17-23 in Baku, Azerbaijan.

The Greco boys left six days ago, the freestyle team left Sunday and the women took off Monday.

The freestyle and Greco teams, along with their training partners, coaches and trainers, are already in Baku training and going through final preparations for the event. The women are in Austria taking part in an acclimation camp before heading to Azerbaijan.

Even though the teams are already gone, the World Team warm-ups didn’t arrive in Colorado Springs until Tuesday. That added to the last-minute push to make sure everything was packed and ready to go. Hopefully, nobody forgets anything.

In addition to everything else we are taking to Baku – clothes, computers, media guides, notebooks, passports, cameras, video equipment, etc. - a final group of five of us will each take a huge bag with the Team USA warm-ups in them. Hopefully, the airline will get them to Baku.

USA Wrestling Director of Broadcasting Dave “Doc� Bennett, Director of National Teams Mitch Hull and Director of National Events Pete Isais are scheduled to fly out of Denver this afternoon en route to Baku. It’s funny seeing Doc scramble around, all out of breath, trying to make sure he doesn’t forget anything. He’s been on more of these trips than any of us, by a large number, but you would never know it when you see him frantically trying to get ready.

As I found out at last year's Worlds in China, there is never a dull moment when you travel with Doc. He's also our Freestyle Developmental Coach and he is kind of our Jack-of-All-Trades here in the Springs. Even though he is in his mid-60s, he rode his Harley-Davidson motorcycle from here to Las Vegas and back this year for the World Team Trials. He's a guy with a million stories. And he's the guy who always seems to find the best buys when shopping on these overseas trips.

I am scheduled to catch a flight out of Denver tomorrow afternoon with Travis Shives, USA Wrestling’s Manager of National Events. We are scheduled to fly about nine hours to Frankfurt, Germany, and then take around a five-hour flight to Azerbaijan. Two planes doesn’t sound too bad to me after it took us four planes to get from the Springs to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in July for the Pan American Games.

Travis will be assisting me in our coverage of the event on TheMat.com. He has a strong communications background. He worked in public relations for the Minnesota Vikings and he helped cover the 2005 Worlds in Budapest, Hungary, for USA Wrestling and TheMat.com, so I’m looking forward to working with Travis in Baku.

Travis is a great guy who is one of the bright young people in our organization. He is very passionate about wrestling and very knowledgeable. Even though he wrestled for Minnesota State-Mankato, where he was an All-American, he still turned out pretty well. (I covered Nebraska-Omaha wrestling, one of Mankato's rivals, from 2000-06.) All kidding aside, it will be fun to have him along on this trip. I’m putting him in charge of making sure we don’t get into any trouble over there.

Putting together a trip like this with a large travel party is a major undertaking as Mitch and USA Wrestling National Teams Manager Jaimie McNab can attest. Among their many roles are trying to line up flights, hotels and ground transportation for everyone in the travel party, obtain Visas so everybody can gain entry into Azerbaijan, line up workout facilities for the teams, and transport everything to a country that is 11 time zones ahead of us here in Colorado.

As you can tell, there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work and preparation that goes into making a trip like this possible.

I can’t wait to get over there and see the competition. Last year was my first World Championships and I never want to miss another one. The competition was awesome, plus the opportunity to visit another country and see how another culture lives is always intriguing.

Seeing Joe Warren and Bill Zadick win World titles last year in Guangzhou, China, was something I will never forget. Anyone who has wrestled at any level has some appreciation for what those guys did. There is no sport more grueling or demanding, both mentally and physically, and to reach the pinnacle is an incredible accomplishment.

I’m guessing the crowds will be very good in Baku. Wrestling is very big over there and with wrestling-mad Iran bordering Azerbaijan to the south I imagine there will be a lot of fans watching the action. Azerbaijan has some very good wrestlers – several of whom have a shot at winning gold medals. Seeing some fans would be a big improvement over China, where the crowds were very sparse.

I think our teams are ready for a strong performance. We have veteran Greco-Roman and women’s teams, plus we have some newcomers to the World stage in freestyle who have been working their whole life for this opportunity.

This is a huge tournament, with it being a qualifier for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China. The top eight finishers in each weight class qualify their countries for the Olympics, so that makes the stakes even higher than usual for a World event.

Who is going to be this year's Bill Zadick or Joe Warren for Team USA? Can’t wait to see how it turns out.