Holiday 2019

Next stop America

This year is it was our turn to go to the USA to visit The Better Half's (TBH’s) son and family. 

The flight over was calm and smooth and we arrived early. Then it got difficult. The last time we flew via O’Hare airport in Chicago, after the usual opening of all our hand luggage to show clear transparent soap bags containing no more than a few milliliters of liquid, working laptops, tablets, phones and such, removed our belts and shoes, keys and loose change and fought the other passengers for a tray to put them in, we strolled over to the row of machines and had our passport scanned, fingerprints and photographs taken by the machine and we were on USA soil.

This time after the above process of unpacking and standing around in no shoes holding up my trousers with one hand whilst sorting and recovering all my stuff with the other, we joined the end of a huge queue, or 'line' in the local language. This stretched out of sight around a corner. O’Hare is not a small airport, so the queue must have stretched almost a hundred yards to where we saw it turn a corner. After a slow shuffle, forwards a few paces at a time with long stationary pauses in between whilst we got to know our fellow sufferers close to us, we could see the line stretched on another hundred yards until it disappeared around another corner. After another endless shuffle forward, wait, shuffle forward and wait, eventually we could see around this corner. This was the place where all the check in machines were and we could see that people were moving through in a convoluted maze of barriers which ended with three immigration officers doing a final check of your paperwork. Since about four aircraft had just disembarked all their passengers at the same time as us, this had created a line of at least a quarter of a mile. We had two hours between connecting flights, which normally is plenty of time and often pretty boring, but by the time we were half way through the maze, our flight time had passed and we were resigned to the fact that we would miss our connection. So now thoroughly demoralised, we shuffled on stoically. Eventually we were through and on USA soil, only to discover that, just for the icing on the cake, so to speak, the train that runs around O’Hare to link the various terminal buildings was not running due to a $8 billion upgrade or something and we had to wait in another line get on a very overcrowded bus to get to terminal three. Two buses filled before we could squeeze on to one. 

O'Hare's non working train service

 Once we were aboard the bus, it left the airport and went out into the surrounding roads. Because of this, it had to contend with Chicago traffic to get around to the terminal where our aircraft was, as we supposed, just leaving. We had experienced Chicago traffic before and like London or most large cities, it is not forgiving and the drivers take no prisoners. The bus was a rental vehicle with a lunatic driver and no air conditioning, prompting some passengers to complain loudly, but the driver got us there, although it took a while. We eventually arrived angry and flustered by the uncomfortable bus ride and to our surprise and huge relief, the flight had been a delayed due to storms and had been held it up long enough to be able to get on board before it finally left. 

Thus was our first three hours of our visit to USA spent. 

 Arriving in Kansas City airport after another hour and a half’s flight, we were met by the family and were taken the final hour’s journey to their home where we could relax and unwind.

Graduation

One purpose of our visit, was to see The Grandson (TG) graduate from high school. This is a big deal in the USA, unlike my end of school experience which was more or less, “Good bye and don’t come back.” 

The weather was unseasonably cold and it rained a lot but on the evening of the Graduation ceremony, despite the predictions of rain, it remained dry. The ceremony had originally been planned to take place in an open air sports arena, but the uncertainty of the weather made the organisers decide to hold it inside in the Allen Fieldhouse indoor arena. 

This sports arena has an historic link with basket ball. Kansas University's very first basket ball team, the Jayhawks, had James Naismith as their coach. He was the man who actually invented the game and laid out the rules and standards for the game. 

 Unfortunately he was not a brilliant coach and the Jayhawks did not fare very well under his time as coach, losing most, if not every game. The current men and women’s teams have long since become much more successful and are now major league players. 

 We arrived in good time and made our way up the bleachers to some of the very few seats with a back and sat and waited.   Even with a back, they were not the most comfortable seat I have ever used, which suggests that baseball fans need to be pretty enthusiastic about their sport to spend hours every year perched on these uncomfortable seats in order to see their teams play.

All the diploma folders waiting to be handed out

The arena filled up slowly and various officials and tutors started to arrive.

Some of the officials

After a longish wait the students started to arrive in the entrance to the arena floor. They then filed into their position opposite the officials and tutors and a number of speeches were made in rapid, echoey American, which was largely incomprehensible to English ears. 

One of my soap-box preaching triggers are old fashioned PA systems. It has been possible to install systems that do not create confusing echoes for many decades, but that is rarely done, so we missed most of what was said. After all the speeches, the students formed a line and went to receive their diploma and become graduates.

The names being announced

Their names were read out one by one, which was a long process because there were a lot of students that year. Each student was given a folder, followed by a lot of formal hand shaking. We assumed the folders given out contained their diploma, but in fact everyone was given an empty folder in order to avoid having to have all the folders organised in the same order as the students. I realised after a while that the correct names were read out because each student handed a card with their name on it to the person calling out the names. As a result they had no need to know in advance who was next coming off the line. 

During the presentations, Pomp and Circumstance was being played continuously, just repeating the same refrain over and over and never playing the whole thing, which I found mildly annoying. Like any true Brit, I felt that song belonged to us Brits and not to some upstart colonials and should be played properly, but this seems to be the case all over the USA as it was always played in the same manner on any news story about graduation. Mind you, they certainly had more pomp and circumstance than I ever encountered at any place of education I ever attended as a student, apart from one place I worked at.  When I taught at the Defence Academy in Shrivenham, which was also part of Cranfield University,  the graduate students there had a formal ceremony, ending with a flypast of the Red Arrows, which was a great way to graduate and great fun for us tutors and lecturers.

So the graduation was over and TGS was soon to be an undergraduate, headed for Kansas University.  The Logo of KU is the same as the Jayhawks and the team have a slogan that is chanted at matches or used as a recognition phrase when meeting fellow Jayhawks.

We made our way home just as the sun was setting and it still had not rained.