Tag Archive for '72nd KA Convention'

Robert E. Lee, Two Speech Videos

During the course of convention I managed to capture on video two videos about Robert E. Lee.  The first is from Dr. Idris R. Traylor, Jr. a retired Vice President of Texas Tech University and Former Knight Commander.  His address:

The second is a toast to Robert E. Lee given by the newly elected Senior Councilor William Dreyer in which he recounts the thoughts of John Temple Graves in 1923:

Convention Photos

I have 234 photos and 38 movies from convention. I’ll upload them soon but I need to go through and put tags / comments on each one. It might take me a while but I’m all for doing things right the first time. The videos will all go on viddler. I’ve got two of them up so far. I’ve got a bunch of videos from the KA rodeo that I need to hook together in iMovie before uploading. I’ll continue to slowly but, surely get it all online. So keep your eyes peeled!

San Antonio Riverwalk and Convention Night Life

The Riverwalk is the night life of San Antonio. It is the place that most of us went to after convention to find bars and taverns to chill at. The the day we arrived, Vu and I ate at the Lone Star Cafe, just a little bit away of the hotel Convention was at. It was pretty good food and pretty cheap. That’s where we met Ben.

The first night, Ben, Vu and I were too tired to do anything so instead of heading up to the Riverwalk we just took a quick dip in our hotel’s 4′6″ deep pool and then went to bed. On the way home though we met a crazy street person who wanted to sing us a song. He demanded that we give him a subject to sing on and so Ben told him to sing about Atlanta, this is the result:

On Friday night, Vu, Ben and I met up with the boys from the Cal Berkely chapter (Albert and Joe) and their alumnus advisor while walking on the riverwalk and made our way down to an irish bar to spend the rest of the evening. The bar had a jovial singer who worked for tips. The highlight was getting him to sing Dixie to a bar full of southern KA’s as we all sang along.

On the way back to our hotel on Friday night, Vu and I bumped in to a pack of KA’s including Mr. M. Tom Faircloth. We spent a few minutes chatting with them and discussing the proposed changes to the KA laws. Most of the KA’s went back to their hotel but one brother (the Province Undergraduate Chairman for the Ammen province of whose name I forgot), another guy (who was really drunk), Mr. Faircloth, Vu and me. We walked in to the ground floor of the Hyatt and Mr. Faircloth in his infinite wisdom with words was able to convince the Ammen PUC that a piece of legislation was right even though many of the undergraduates disagreed with it. All the while, the extremely drunk guy kept interupting Mr. Faircloth in an attempt to support him and saying rediculous things like “You have to comprise, am I right?”, “You just have to listen, am I right?”, “It will be better in the end, am I right?” I wish I could capture the comedy of the situation better in writing this but, I fail.

Saturday night was pretty mellow too, Vu, Ben and I met up with another KA, Colin Cruser White and he took us to a cafe on the ground floor of the Hyatt (the Convention hotel). They had a live Jazz group there and we were able to make the aquantence of Executive Directory Larry Stanton Wiese’s mother, Sydney Wiese. We spent a couple of hours there listening to Jazz and drinking Lone Star Beer (wasn’t bad either) until they closed.

Larry’s Mom, Sydney with Vu and me the next morning at breakfast

After they closed Vu and I were walking back to the hotel and we cut through the basement of the Hyatt. On the way out we saw two guys, one was standing smoking and the other still in a tuxedo from previous festivities was sitting on a bench also smoking a cigarette. We approached them and talked to him for a minute and the one in the tux said he was hot. He then proceeded to take off his tux and jump into the man made river a few feet away from him. He got out of the water and stood there in his boxers dripping wet smoking another cigarette for a few more minutes before about 4 girls walked by. As they got close, the clothed guy ran toward the dripping wet one and pulled his boxers down leaving nothing but a naked body save for a shoe in his right hand placed in front of his genitalia.

My really bad camera phone pic of the guy with the Shoe

The girls thought it was very funny and kept walking and eventually it was just the five of us again. A few minutes later, two more girls walked by, one drunk one not so much. The guy with a shoe had at this point tied it around his waist and it was the only thing he was wearing. The clothed guy, not wanting to be outdone, climbed to the top of a waterfall, waited for the girls to get close, got completely naked and jumped from the top of the waterfall into the water below. The drunk girl loved it, the sober girl not so much ;).

Overall, the night life in San Antonio proved to be amazingly fun. I think this was largely due to the company of KA’s in the area to enjoy the craziness that is San Antonio night life.

KA Convention Chorus Video

Vu and I and several other KA’s, including many executive councilors, former knight commanders and the executive director take up song in several KA songs. The video has comments at the beginning of each song which include all the lyrics, enjoy!

I’m in San Antonio, TX for the 72nd KA National Convention

For the 72nd KA National Convention. So far its pretty exciting. Vu and I caught a red eye at 12:30am from Portland and flew to Houston, a 4 hour flight with minimal sleep, and then had an hour layover before our 1 hour flight to San Antonio.

We changed into our formal wear in the lobby bathroom at our hotel and then trecked over to the hotel where the convention was at. We had several hours to kill so we checked out the San Antonio Riverwalk and the Alamo. Pretty nifty.

We ate lunch at the Lone Star Cafe (I think that was the name). I got a steak for $7 and Vu got a country fried steak for $6, good food for the money. While we were eating another KA walked in and we invited him to our table. We found out he got into town and didn’t have a hotel room so now he’s staying with us. He’s a pretty cool guy from Oglethorpe, Georgia his name is Ben.

After lunch we headed back the the Hyatt hotel where convention is being held. Convention orientation started at 1:00pm and the actual convention started at 2:00pm. It was pretty formal, lots of speeches and recognition and stuff. It is cool seeing all of the KA national leaders in one place. I’ve met most all of them before at various venues like province council, the crusade roundtable and NLI but, having them all sitting in front of you in a formal setting is pretty intense.

After the convention session was over we went to a rodeo at a ranch outside of town. It was pretty cool, there were couple of cute cowgirls there and they had several events including bull riding and things like that. I took lots of pictures and videos (which are presently downloading to my PC and will shortly be in a gallery on this page).

I’ll try to update some more as convention continues. We’re having a great time!