Well I awoke on Thursday and I definitely had a sore throat – not ideal. I decided that I was going to skip the opening ceremony and try to get some additional rest and hopefully feel a little better. I’m glad that i had packed precautionary medicine and the extra rest helped a little. It was then time for the evaluator meting. Lunch was supposed to be provided but never eventuated which was a bit sad. We did the typical FS reading, let’s call it ‘vigorous discussion’ rather than arguing and practice UP scoring. There was a fair bit of talking so the meeting when for a file but we finished just before 4pm and had to be back at 6pm for shout outs.
My evaluation had me down for 2 packets of middle team booklets (16 booklets, later down to 15 due to one critical error) due by 4pm Friday so it was quite a lot to do given that middle shouts outs take the longest so we didn’t get to start evaluating til after 8pm. So 20 hours to do 15 evaluations and get any sleep possible. I made a start but I wasn’t very productive as I was super tired. I decided I had to sleep first so I got maybe 5 hours or a bit less, though it wasn’t great sleep knowing I had work to do. At 3am I knuckled down and started working through the booklets. Knowing I could finish by 4 if I evaluated a booklet in about 50 minutes. This is usually pretty doable but the IC standard is hight or at least they wrote a lot and IC still require some comments albeit briefer than normal. I mostly got through it anyway and finished about 4.15 which Kyla, Emily and I all agreed was close enough.
It was almost time for dinner which to my delight was Chik fil a. Kyla and Emily said to take a break and see how I felt after dinner if there were any jobs. As my cough had started (but sore throat mostly cleared thankfully) I took the opportunity to duck down to Target and pickup some cough medicine. This time my Australian ID was sufficient to let me purchase it. I enjoyed my Chik fil a for dinner and then went back to see Emily. I said i thought i had about an hour of brain power if she had jobs for me. In the end I agreed to do another packet of individuals – 7 booklets. I said I probably wouldn’t have the done by the individual deadline 8pm but should have them done by 9. In the end they did my head it, they weren’t good booklets – they seemed to keep forgetting to use the FS. I suspect my tiredness also didn’t help. At any rate I got them finished around 10pm and Emily was very appreciative. My initial plan was to make a start on my remaining assignment – a packet of senior MAGICS but I was too tired to decided to go to sleep and start fresh in the morning. That takes us to Friday night.
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.
Despite the length of the last post I’m not even halfway to the destination yet! So after a bit of work in the business lounge it was time to head off for my long flight – really long. However, much to my delight I score an upgrade so business using points. I’ve always wanted to experience a long haul in business and now I get to. I settled into 11A the middle row of the 3 row smaller area at the back of business. I sipped my champagne I was offered after boarding and looked at my menu and breakfast card. Soon after, they came around with Qantas pyjamas and I was very happy!
I filled out my breakfast card (it felt weird calling it breakfast as we would be eating about lunch time, but I went with it). I went for a simple option of fruit salad with yoghurt, muffing and orange juice. You may have to suspend your disbelief but you read it right – I didn’t order coffee. My thinking was that I we land in the afternoon and I want to sleep at night so no point having more caffeine. (and I had already had 3 coffees!)
I’m not going to go blow by blow though the flight and some of the details are a little fuzzy but lets see if I can whip though the highlights. The drink were good and there were a lot of options. I stuck to red, white and champagne and even them tried to limit my intake. I had a couple of drinks in the Melbourne business lounge and wanted to sleep so after my boarding drink I only had a couple more glasses.
The food was great. I was sad to miss out on the tasting plate for entree but the skewer was still yummy. The fish for main was very nice and I enjoyed the cheese platter to finish (see menu above for details). I considered a cheeky Bailey’s but instead decided on a nice desert wine to have with the cheese platter, and it was really good.
I don’t know if I mentioned before but I started watching NCIS: Origins on my first flight and I was enjoying so I watched a few more episodes. After dinner was cleared I decided it was time to try and get some sleep. I changed into my snazzy Qantas pajamas setup my seat and popped a Tamazepam. Lie flat seats are great – I’d choose it for every flight if I could, but they’re no bed. It’s a little cramped, hard to find a comfy spot and you have a seat belt to wear. The tamazepam got me off without too much trouble and I got probably about 3 hours sleep before I woke up. I lay there and it was still restful but didn’t go back off. So after a while I took another temazepam and probably got another 3 hours so I had about 6 hours of pretty decent sleep. Not really enough but I didn’t want to sleep much longer in order to try and be in a semi correct wake/sleep cycle for arrival. Other than that flights in business are just more pleasant. I got a nnice toasted sandwich and juice during the flight. Business seats are roomy. I filled the time with more TV, music and even some work and a little bit of gaming. It was more than bearable. Breakfast came and I kind of wished for more (especially coffee) but it was nice and it meant the end was in sight! Touch down in Dallas. That post wasn’t too long and even had some pretty pictures. I’m over halfway through the travel to the us now!
