Chicken or beef?

On Wednesday, after what seemed like an age of travelling I arrived back home from Waukesha, USA after visiting James and co. All in all it was a great week, so thanks are due to James and Gerwyn for putting us up for the week, and special thanks to Becky for driving us around places when we were there, as we wouldn’t have seen half as much without her help :)

I’ve never been to the USA before, and before that I’d not been abroad (do we count Wales?) since I think 1996 to Cyprus, so it was great to have a break in somewhere new.

On Sunday evening I drove down to Chris’ then on to his Nan’s house as she lives taxi distance from the airport, made quite good time, getting down to Chris’ within 50 minutes, and then 1 hour 45 to his nan’s.

Monday

Next morning, our taxi arrived on time after the driver initially phoned to say that he was going to be a bit late due to traffic, strange, but then again I suppose it is London. Checked in on arrival, went pretty much straight through security, then had some time to kill airside for a while, browsed the expensive shops and drank coffee in Wetherspoons, it being late morning it was a bit to early to start drinking overpriced beer.

Plane was a 747-400 affectionately named “vomit comet” as it was one of the ones with the old BA tail-fin designs that looked like someone had had an unfortunate accident all over it. Being my first long haul flight I was quite imtreagued/impressed with things overall, the Seat back LCD TVs are funky, I must have spent several hours just staring at the amazing GPS map with things like current altitude, speed and time of arrival etc. Enjoyed the food too, had the nicest chicken korma I have had in a while, not to mention the free bar :o)

Made good time and arrived at O’hare at I think 3.30pm, wandered down to immigration and wondered why exactly the guy who directed people to the available desks needed a handgun, but I suppose this is America.

We wandered outside following the “unique” map that James had emailed us, the weather was freezing with snow about 4” deep across the road from the airport exit, hadn’t seen this much snow in a long time. Sure enough the bus arrived, then we made our way up to Milwaukee General Mitchell airport, bus was $37 for a return which I suppose wasn’t bad!

Arrived at Milwaukee, and hung around in the terminal at the place we were supposed to meet jimmy and becky, but then for various reasons decided to walk up to the bit where people were being picked up from outside arrivals, which meant that when they arrived to pick us up they didn’t see us, as they parked up and walked over and not drove to the pick up point as we guessed they would, if only I had taken notice of the other map James sent :)

Anyway, here we were, and we made our way to the uni via subway as Chris and I needed something to eat, I was completely knackered as I was reaching the end of a 32 hour day, so don’t remember all that much! We had a campus tour from James once we had got our stuff inside, also had a nice latte… hmmm vanilla caramel.

Tuesday

First full day in the USA :o Went for a walk to downtown Waukesha, saw all of the “sights” (Waukesha is kind of a more spread out Malvern, but without the excitement of the hills). We wandered into the salvation army “thrift store”, which is kind of like a UK charity shop, but with the American touch of being a huge shop full of people’s old crap, as opposed to a small shop filled with people’s old crap, didn’t buy anything, surprisingly.

After lunch at the college canteen type thing, Becky took us to the Mayfair mall which I think was about 20 minutes away. It was quite a big place, say about half the size of Merry Hell (Hill) I think, It also had the first Apple store that I have ever been to. Spent a while looking over the new powerbooks, and also at an iPod that I have been considering for a long time, didn’t in the end as I realised that it was only say £40 cheaper than in the UK and it would have the wrong power adaptor, guarantee etc so would not be as saleable if I ever wanted to sell it on. Had a good browse of the shops including the cool massage chairs that almost all the electrical shops seemed to have, ended up not buying anything, but then again anything I did buy I had to get back to the UK. Saw some real in-the-flesh Oingo Boingo albums that you would never see in the UK, but didn’t buy them because “little girls” wasn’t on there…

Wednesday

James Chris and I went to Brookfield mall on the bus, which is perhaps a little too much shopping within the space of 24 hours, but it turned out that the journey itself was entertaining enough. We caught the bus from downtown Waukesha, and after a while we turned a corner past a petrol station, only to have a car pull into the petrol station in front of the bus requiring the driver to slam on the anchors. Normally this wouldn’t have been so much of a big deal, but a small girl travelling with her mother on the back seat fell on the floor and started crying quite loudly, at which point the driver got worried and made sure the girl was ok, and radioed back to base to tell them what had happened. The driver was then informed to get the passengers to fill in incident report cards, of which there were none where they should be on the bus, so we were asked to fill in details of what we saw and contact information on the back of bus timetables, fun eh? I presume that this was so if someone sued, the company would have a record of what happened.

Anyway once we arrived, we spent some time looking around the shops, yet more massage chairs in all the electrical shops. Didn’t get much apart from a T shirt ($4) and a jumper ($3) , very much doubt you could find all that for £5 in the uk. bargain.

In the evening we went to Becky’s aunts house for dinner with Becky and Chris, had a very nice roast chicken dinner and watched TV for a while. Was quite unique to see an American home, something that I don’t think would really have been a possibility on a more conventional holiday.

That evening we watched a video and went on duty with Becky on her rounds around the halls, something I shall probably write about later

Thursday

After getting up relatively early we got the bus to ‘Goerke's Corners’ which is a park and ride centre type thing and a stop for good old Coach USA (who we seemed to see quite a bit of during our stay) Which took us down to O’Hare so we could get the CTA Train thing, which is kind of like the tube, but more overground than underground, it also runs on the central reservation of what I think was a freeway for some of the way, which was fun.

We got to central Chicago and headed roughly in the direction of the Sears Tower, which took us a bit to find, but got there relatively quickly. Was $9.50 to go into the Sears Tower, was quiet it being midweek, we were lucky that by this stage the snow had all thawed and the weather was getting warmer and it was a perfectly clear day. The lift to the top was very fast, and they had a cartoon thing for the duration of the ride with some information about the tower, where they make the interesting claim to be ‘the world’s tallest building’ which is an interesting claim, I was sure it was those towers in Singapore. But its probably due to an intricacy of the wording and the rules governing building record attempts, for example the sears tower most definitely has the highest occupied floor. Did the Japanese tourist bit and took * loads * of photos, some of them came out ok and will follow on the web somewhere, but not necessarily public.

Walked around for a while trying to find Chicago Rock Café so Chris could by a T shirt, however, ended up giving in and getting a taxi. Also had a Starbucks at some point, hmm Coffee.

Friday

Today we decided to “do” Milwaukee that I though was a really nice city, and would quite like to go there again someday. After lunch Becky decided that she would come with us and after a sneaky phone call rescheduled a meeting that she had due that afternoon – naughty girl ;)

The weather by this stage was getting quite warm and an interesting comparison to the 0 degrees snow when we arrived. We all got the bus from central Waukesha into town. We saw the art museum(www.mam.org) which was designed by the guy who designed the Sidney opera house it has “wings” that open out, unfortunately we didn’t see them open, but even so the building was amazing. Went for a walk down the shore of lake Michigan, it was quite strange to be on the coast of a lake that seemed more like an ocean. After that we wandered around a mall and a few shops and had something to eat, however this time there wasn’t an apple shop : (

After returning that evening we went to the cinema and saw “Phone Booth” almost a week before it came out in the UK * gloat * (ok, ok I’ve never done that before so it was a novelty for me, ok) I thought it was a good film, if perhaps a tad predictable, reminded me of a cross between Speed and Swordfish, I was gripped throughout the film and the fact that it had ended came as a bit of a shock. Afterwards we went to this place that serves frozen custard, which I think is just like smooth ice cream, a bit like a thicker version of Mr Whippy but flavoured.


Saturday

Saturday was a bit of a quiet day, didn’t do much apart from Chris, Jimmy and I went to K-mart and Pick n’ save to pick up some supplies (namely Hershey’s and a few other bits). Random Rip-off Britain rant: Ben and Jerries was $3.50 in pick-n-save, checking yesterday the same stuff was £4.39!

Sunday

On Sunday we went to Wales, yes Wales WI, wholly for the irony purposes, but I did get a good photo of us all under the sign on the way in that I shall have to put up soon. Also took some cash out at a machine, got a reciept with “Pick n’ Save, Wales” on it, OK so call me sad, but I think it’s amusing. We then had lunch at a nice restaurant somewhere, sort of log cabin type affair thing, did a really nice chicken grill sandwich thing. I also tasted Becky’s Root Beer, which I expected to taste of ginger ale, but in fact was more like… Mouthwash.

Burt’s Secret Root Beer recipe: Take one glass of Coke, add two tablespoons of Plax antibacterial, hey presto.

After dinner we went to a place called “Pewaukee” which is a small town by the side of another lake (a much smaller one this time, we could see the other side )again the weather was great and we spent some time wandering around and skimming stones, took quite a few pictures.

Monday

Me and Chris went for a walk around Waukesha while James was reportedly going to do some work, we walked down to the river and there were loads of people out as the weather by this stage had got to 25 Degrees!

Later that evening we went to a Baseball game at the Miller stadium, which was very new and big. It was the first non-school sporting event I have ever attended, and I don’t think that it has made a sports fan out of me, but it was a good few hours to admire the architecture of the stadium which has a very funky closing roof. Oh yes, also spent quite some time smirking at the prats on the front row who didn’t support the Brewers or the other team playing (I forget the name and the ticket is back home), so they came to heckle (they couldn’t be bothered to go and support the team they actually supported) and they were both pissed and annoying. You could say a lot like a stereotypical football supporter in the UK, they were being loud and smoking when it’s a non-smoking stadium and such, they got a few choice sarcastic comments from the older couple sat behind us. But they did behave better once the cops had a “word” with them : )

Tuesday

Last day in America :/ Got up relatively late, and didn’t do particularly much before Becky took us to Milwaukee General Mitchell airport to catch the coach down to O’Hare (thanks Becky). Journey took a bit longer than expected and arrived at the airport 4 minutes before the bus was due to depart so goodbyes were a bit rushed, but we made it.

Coach got us to the airport in good time, so we went straight to check-in, asked if we could have emergency door seats, but the counter lady said they were not available, instead she said that we could have a window, aisle and vacant seat in the middle as the flight was so quiet. So we went through security, which I have to say seemed like it was an add-on at O’Hare, as a lot of the stuff that would be behind the scenes at Heathrow (for example initial baggage checking) was at the front in areas cordoned off with tensa-barriers, quite possibly recent extra security measures were not designed into the terminal or something.

When we sat down to wait in the gate area, I got called to the desk, thinking that there was a problem with my luggage or something I was a tad worried, but it turned out that the checkin desk woman had remembered we had requested the emergency door seats, and when they became available – Another Brownie point for BA.

Flight back was pleasant, managed a couple of hours sleep, we had the GPS map on the spare centre seat monitor to save switching all the time. We arrived in Heathrow at 11am after flying right over Windsor castle.

Drove back after getting a taxi back to Chris’ nan’s, the taxi cost £5 more then the diesel for driving to London and back via Bristol! When I finally got home was completely knackered but stayed up to avoid screwing sleep patterns too much.

Well after typing all that I’m starting to lose some steam and I’m already seeing things I’ve written that don’t make sense so I am going to stop there. What I will say is thanks to everyone for a great week, see you all soon!