OK, so I’m now a long way behind. I’m currently on my last leg of the return home, my flight from Sydney to Perth. But I’m in business class and I have internet, so lets see if I can’t pump out a few more posts before I decide to do work or play Civ!
So IC finishes and my holiday begins, but I have to get there first! I headed off back down to Hartford. There were a few times where I thought I would have a passenger, but it ended up just being me. I realised that my trip has quite a lot of driving. I do enjoy driving but it takes more concentration in the US as everybody is on the wrong side of the road! It’s not a long drive to Hartford, just under an hour but the problem was that I couldn’t check into my hotel until 3 meaning I had a bit of time to kill.
Anyone what to guess what I did? I went to Target (because they always have a Starbucks in the US) and I got a coffee! I also got pumpkin loaf, because well it’s good and we don’t have it here. That effectively gave me enough time to go find my hotel and check in.
It was nice. They had a pool that I was keen to use, but there were a lot of other people in it and I didn’t really want to share. This is me being introverted, needing some alone time after all the people at IC. I had a drink and and some chips and watched some Masterchef – me relaxing and having my alone time! I had some food, but not enough for a full meal so I decided to walk down to McDonalds (how adventurous of me), came back, ate that, watched more Masterchef!
A brief aside, because I forgot to mention this before – the food at UMass was fantastic. Admittedly it’s probably not a fair comparison, but relative to Uni food in Perth I can see why UMass has won best campus food 2+ years in a row. All the food we had was really good.
Then it was time to shower, shave etc. It was time for my holidays and as I had a few minutes I thought I should was my hair and shave etc. (Please note I did shower during IC, it was just usually done quickly as it was a busy time – this was more relaxed). I then packed which was a bit problematic. This is the same issue I ran into last year. When I have a car it’s fine. If I’m driving around I don’t have to fit everything into my suitcase, I can take backs of things, keep my dirty clothes seperate etc. The problem is going to a new place, where I have to fly, I have to refit everything into my suitcase. I also tend not to have as much room for food etc that I’ve bought. I had quite a lot that I had to go through – some of the things I throw out included a bath mat (another this UMass doesn’t provide) paper tower, a wine glass, chips and other food I hadn’t eaten yet – you see the problem! Anyway I got that all together and sorted.
Then I had a relatively early night – did I mentioned my bad planning with flight bookings. I had a 6am flight so I had to get up at about 3.45. Thankfully, the airport was literally less than 5 minutes from my hotel so that was all relatively easy and returning the rental car was no problem (even though no Hertz people were in attendance). Anyway, that the next post – see you there!
Oh, I’m not sure if I ever showed you the car I had in Massachusetts – here’s a picture of the Mum van I was driving!
I can’t complain – it was actually very nice to drive. Also, as you might notice – front number plates, often not a thing in the US.
This should be pretty short (though whenever I promise that it never seems to happen!) I woke up earlier that I would have liked, it wasn’t especially early, I just hadn’t had a lot of sleep over the past few nights. I drove down to Mullins Center again for the closing ceremony and again sat with the Australian Crew and Suz,.
It was a pretty standard award ceremony, not quite as long as I thought it would be. Australia did pretty well, but we were definitely beaten by New Zealand. You can see the Australian success and results at FPS Australia’s Facebook post.
After the it was goodbye to Suz, Dylan and some other Australians who I saw at the awards ceremony and were leaving. Then it was back to North. Unlike last year I hadn’t had a chance to pack yet, so I did that. This was one of the easier trips as I was driving back to Hartford, and had a night there I could take bags with things in them as well as my suitcase.
I packed my car, had some goodbye chats in the lobby. I found out that Julie, the AD from NZ is going to be at Disney, staying in the same resort as me, at the same time, so we’ll see if I run into her! Then, with sadness, but having had a good time I left UMass Amherst. IC 2023 (and my 3rd IC) done. I’m looking forward to the 50th IC next year and hope I can make it to Indiana.
Well, it almost over, we’re up to Saturday arvo. In my experience the end of conferences, camps, conventions are always sad, you’re so energised my the event and the people that the end can be a let down. That was true, but maybe less so this time. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.
I headed down to the Campus Centre again for, you guessed it, coffee! At least that was my plan, but sadly the coffee place was closed 🥲 However, my second purpose, which I did achieve was to grab an early dinner – some chicken & some Mac & Cheese both of which were very yummy. Then it was off to the variety show. Compared to last year I think I was a little disappointed. Don’t get me wrong it was very enjoyable and I had some good laughs, but overall I think I enjoyed last years acts a little bit more. I think one of the disappointments was the act that was so good last year (see this post) were back. When I heard they were doing Defying Gravity I was so excited, but it wasn’t quite what I expected and I don’t think they had quite as much time to rehearse.
As the choir was performing I raced off to the dance, which I was again chaperoning. I had to dig through my phone to find the Crowd Manager certification from last year. I had spoken to Paige earlier and she said that she was doing the DJing as the person we lined up had fallen through, so I agreed to help her out with that. The night was good fun, we spent a lot of time taking requests and then looking up lyrics to see if they were appropriate – a lot weren’t. But, there were a lot of good songs and plenty of Taylor Swift which kept me happy. We had all the classics too, Macarena, YMCA and the like.
One of the Variety Show acts that included AustraliansA shot from the dance
The ride back on the golf cart wasn’t quite as impressive as last year, but we still got 6 of us on it (down from 7) with me standing and holding on the whole way. When we go back there was a party in progress. Apparently, this is the first time in many years at IC that all the results were organised and done before midnight.
We had quite an enjoyable time in the lobby of North A, lots of IO people with other evaluators and BoT members. For me at least, it involved light beer, tequila and red wine. It was great to chat with people, Damien and Erwin among others. I kept planning on going to bed but got held up, especially when April came out with red wine! But I eventually made tracks for bed. I think this last little party was what made the post-conference blues that I referenced at the start of the post less acute. I want to put in a few more photos, so I’ll do one more IC post after this. Below are a couple of photos I took of the campus as I walked to the dance.
