USA ’24 – Day 1 – Blowing Hot and Cold

This is the holiday that we were supposed to be taking before it got postponed by Covid, and then when we were freed from those restrictions, we did go to the US again but went to the West Coast instead. So, this holiday to see New England in the Fall has been a long time coming.

Too Hot to Board

We’ve flown a reasonable amount and so have experienced the usual delays: lack of crew, weather problems, congestion and the like but today’s reason was a first. We couldn’t board as it was too hot in the cabin! We were told, on landing in Boston, that the auxiliary power supply wasn’t working and so there wasn’t any power to supply the air conditioning (it was fine in the air as the engines could). It also didn’t help that they hadn’t finished loading our bags… The delay wasn’t too bad in the end and it was a fairly uneventful flight.

The Terrifying Global Entry Interview

As we come to the States a reasonable amount and have a number of trips planned we’d decided that it would be worth us applying for what is called the Global Entry programme. This gives you speedier access into and out of the States for five years in return for a fee. You go through a pre-approval process in the UK where you complete an online questionnaire and if you are pre-approved you then need to have an interview when in the States.

The information about the interview was all very upbeat but vague. The implication was that you could have the interview on landing as you go through security. We knew that if that wasn’t the case we wouldn’t have another opportunity and we lose our fee so we were keen to get it sorted. At passport control we asked about the interview and we were directed to a dedicated waiting area from which we were quickly called.

I think what I was expecting was that each of us would be taken separately to an interview room for a gruelling interview where all the documents we’d been asked to bring would be rigorously checked. What actually happened was we were taken to a regular customs desk and asked to confirm our address in the UK, list the countries we had been to in the last five years, had our fingerprints taken and that was pretty much us done. It was somewhat of an anti-climax but at least it was smooth and done.

What was the Point of the “Big Dig”?

Years ago, I remember the news being full of stories about the Boston “Big Dig” where tunnels were being cut under the city at great expense to help alleviate the apparently horrendous traffic issues. $8B was spent to complete the work and based on the crawling traffic from the airport last night I think that they should ask for their money back! To be fair, I don’t know whether this is normal or not.

A free shuttle bus took us to the Back Bay area of the city and a short walk to the hotel saw us finally check-in and ready for bed.