USA 2025: The Start

So, I’ve arrived in Dallas. People talk about how bad LAX for transit and the time it takes. Personally, I’ve never found it to be a real problem but Dallas was definitely better. The queues were shorter and it was a lot quicker to get through. I spend about 30 seconds with the border force agent – why are you here and when are you leaving and I was straight through. Thanks to my oneworld sapphire status I can get into the American Airlines Flagship lounge so that was where i headed. Got my champagne on entry and spent a bit of time ordering a data eSIM, I was a little concerned that my 5gb roaming data wouldn’t be enough and data only eSIMS are very cheap. I had some food at the flagship lounge because I knew I wouldn’t get anymore. My flight left from a different terminal so I had to use the air train to transfer there but it was fairly easy. 

The flight from Dallas was suppose to be 2 hours 2 mins but I think it ended up being just over 1 hour 30 mins which I wasn’t sad about. I was very tired by this point and pretty much spend the whole flight just sitting there looking into space. We landed and I ended up meeting one of the schools from Australia (St Leonard’s) who had been on the same flights as me from Melbourne. I collected my luggage and headed to Hertz to get my rental car. Being a member makes like easier. The car I had hires was Gold Canopy (i.e. choose any car in that range) but when I arrived the board had be down for President’s Circle (better quality cars). I was super tired so I didn’t spend a lot of time looking but found a small SUV / large hatchback that seemed decent. A Hyundai Kona. It was pretty decent and certainly everything I needed. I drove to the exit, showed my license and I was off. It was a short drive to my hotel. It was nothing special but fine for what I needed and relatively cheap. So I headed to bed and got a decent sleep.

I decided I didn’t want to leave at 7 to make it down to AC so I took my time to get a bit more sleep and took advantage of the later checkout. I think I left around 10. I got in my car and realised I left my phone in the room so I went back and retrieved that. I drove to Starbucks around the corner and got coffee and breakfast and then started the drive down to campus. It was uneventful, though i was mildly annoyed that the car only seemed to have normal cruise control and not adaptive but I managed OK. I arrived just in time for lunch and there was about 5 times as much pizza as we needed to many of us talk some back to our rooms for later snacks.

My plan was to go down to Target but I ended up sleeping first and then after a nap went down to do the typical shopping. Food and a few things I didn’t bring with me like wine glasses and tea towels. Down there I bumped in to Suz & Simon (other Australian VIPs) as well as Anne one of the ADs from America. It was just as well Anne was there as for some reason Target as accepting Australian ID to show we were of legal age to buy Alcohol so Anne had to scan her ID for all of us!

We go back to Campus and I headed off to the Alumni social. As always it was good to catch up with my friends, mostly people I haven’t seen for a year. FPS friends are weird that way, but it’s always good to catch up. Then it was time for the appreciation dinner. It was very similar to previous years, although the first wine was free this year which was nice. Suz received here 20 year AD service award – very impressive. I spend half of what I spent last year in the auction but came home with a FPS branded hip flask after Simon pointed them out to me. Lynn did her usual parody song, this year it was a song that listed heaps of the FPS topics to the tune of We Didn’t Start the Fire by Billy Joel. It was pretty good as always. Then it was off to bed though I was a little worries about the tickle that had started in my throat. 

I didn’t take any photos of the accommodation this year, but it was exactly the same as last year so you can see this post here and know it’s exactly the same.