It's Like We Know What We Are Doing

August 30th, 2015 I've been here before.   Not at this exact position, flying 35,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean en route to Madrid.  But the same situation.  You spend several hours in a smallish (though technically "Premium") seat, jockeying for the best position to try and get some kind of sleep, only to fail miserably.  It can't help but fail miserably.  And instead of sleeping, you poke though the In-Flight Entertainment, searching for movies that will keep you occupied for the next number of hours, or read the book that you downloaded on the iPad, preferably one set in a dystopian future (because apparently there isn't anything but a future that is dystopian).  Or both.  You do anything you can to keep your mind off of the fact that you aren't sleeping and you will be miserable when you land. This trip, though??  This trip took a long while for us to even get to this place in the sky. Spain has always been on the list.  When talking ab...

Friday, July 10th For as much as we loved our hotel in Philadelphia , our hotel in Cleveland was a bit...meh.  But it was fine, I guess.  We kept being asked, "Why are you staying by the airport??"  Our answer, we got a $50  nightly rate on Hotwire.  That's why.  Our hotel for this leg of the trip is just a place to drop our crap and sleep.  The hotel was fine. This was our last full day on the road trip, so we had to do it up right.  We met one of my stations for breakfast around the corner from our first real stop of the day.  We were going to The Christmas Story House . We had actually planned to visit the house two years ago around the holidays.  Elias and I were all set to take a road trip to Cleveland for a Bears' game.  The trip ended up being a bust on the actual day we were going to leave, because it was December.  In the Midwest.  A crazy snowstorm descended upon us and we were concerned about driving....

Tuesday, May 5th The trip home is its own story.  Mostly because it's been almost two weeks since the flight and I'm still pretty angry about the whole thing.  Well, I'm not as angry as I was.  It has been almost two weeks.  I shouldn't still be angry at what happened.  My remnant anger is at the resolution...or lack thereof. I mentioned in a previous post that I had used miles to travel First Class to Hawaii.  I had saved them up for almost 15 years and had finally decided to use them for a purpose.  I don't normally fly First Class.  I mean, I travel a lot, but I try to go as inexpensively as I can because I travel a lot.  So First Class isn't in the budget.  This was a birthday trip that was created based on flying First Class to Hawaii. This is what I was leaving.  I didn't want to leave... Fast forward to my flight home. Well, fast forward to the start of this journey.  And this journey actually star...

December 7th, 2014 I've never tried to upgrade to First Class before.  Other than just asking at the gate, I never really knew how to go for it.  So I really didn't try. Dude.  I didn't know what I was missing until today. Based on the extreme amount of travel I've done in 2014, I have Gold Status with American Airlines. And every time I booked a flight, it gave me the option if I wanted to upgrade.  Then there were talk of segments and...it just got so confusing.  Until I tried it.  And it worked. So how does it work?? As you book your flight, there is a box to request the upgrade.  Upgrades are broken out in 500 mile segments.  Flying to Orlando you need two segments to upgrade one way, because it's (slightly) over 1000 miles from ORD to MCO.  In your account, you can see if you have segments available.  If you don't, you can buy some online or at the airport.  If you have Status, you're given four segments for every 10,...

December 3rd, 2014 I've decided to structure this Disney story differently than in year's past. I mean, let's not kid ourselves. I've been doing the Disney thing long enough that the stories are mostly the same. Wake up at the crack of ass, get to the park at rope drop, then stagger back to the hotel in the late, late evening all the while complaining that your feet are like ground beef. And I can't deny, I'm writing this all up a good week (or two) after getting home from the trip and this is kind of what happened. Which...Spoiler Alert, I guess?? So instead of rehashing Trips of Disney's Past, I'm going to focus on the new stuff. New experiences. New restaurants. New hotels. Whatever seems new, I'll write about it. Which could mean more blogs and stories. Which, if you're still with me at the end, will be a bit of a miracle. But before we start on Disney, we have to get there first. My flight left Chicago at 3p. Which becomes slig...

Thursday, June 5th I've stopped writing about the trip home.  Mostly because there are rarely stories attached to the trip.  You get up, get to the airport, wait for the plane, get home, blah, blah, blah.  But sometimes you have to write about the travel home.  Sometimes, things go weird enough that the story needs to be remembered.  Unfortunately, this was one of those times. Our flight home was 1215p.  We were ready.  After the big Disneyland day two days before, and yesterday's day of mostly rest (and awful weather), the knowledge that we were a few hours away from takeoff was comforting.  The bus came at 7a.  Then again at 9a.  Then various other times in the day.  But we didn't care about those times.  We were told to board a bus thee hours prior to our flight.  Our choice was four hours early or two hours early.  We figured, let's do early.  Less of a chance for racing.  The one thing we didn'...