eightblack

Here we go then.

Where has the time gone this year? Truth be told, Xmas is my favorite time of the year. Because I get to be cold. Which I love.

Let me explain.

I married a Michigander. But some of you know that. The Big One (mother-in-law) still lives on the family farm. Somewhere near East Jesus. For some reason, every time a person from Michigan explains where they live, they say "you know the mitten. Or the hand. Well, we live near the middle finger". And then they hold up their hand to demonstrate, in case you had no clue what a mitten was, and proceed to stick their middle finger 6-inches from your nose. Even after they perform this ritual, they are still somewhat perplexed as to why you punched them in the face.

They're a funny lot these Wolverine fans.

Anyway, to keep the peace (and the eternal flame burning that I might, just one day, see my wife naked again) we make the lowly trek back to the US. All the way from Singapore. All of us. The whole damn Eightblack family.

Thankfully, my wife leaves me to handle all the travel arrangements. And thanks to FT, I have turned getting back to the US into an art form using 4 separate frequent flier accounts, a sprinkling of good old fashioned greenbacks, topped off with a dash of lady luck. And a lot of profanity down the phone to some poor hapless customer service agent who just so happened to pull the graveyard shift at the US Airways call center at the time of my call.

The conversations with the good folks from US Air are worthy of a Saturday Night Live skit. I think some are based in Salem. And the others are in Phoenix. I know this because I have probably called the US Air reservation number a hundred times in the last 6-weeks. The calls always end up the same way. With me crying hysterically. Towards the end, I didn't even call up to ask about my reservation. I just called up to talk with them. Lets put this to one side for now, shall we. It's too early. We have much to discuss between now and then.

As far as bookings go, this year was my piece de resistance even if I say so myself. An achievement worthy of a pat on the back by those maddeningly annoying 20-something mileage freaks (ie Lucky and Ung1) who make redemption bookings look easier than me falling off a bar stool.

Or something like that.

I may have told you this before but we never travel as a family. Well, rarely. We used to. But the whole thing used to end up with people waving their arms and screaming abuse at each other and. So my wife and I came up with this brilliant plan that every year, we would each take a child and head off. Separately. Much easier to go one-on-one with a small human, who is suffering the effects of too much sugared water and sleep depravation than 2 of them. Reasoning doesn't work when it comes to traveling with children. I've tried that. The only thing that works is bribery. And violence. Doesn't matter which order you administer them in. Just as long as you do both. If you don't - they will sense weakness and strike. It will be weeks before you recover. Trust me. I know.

Logically then, wife + daughter (The Small One) head off on their own. And me and Number One Son. We don't even travel on the same dates. Or the same routes. We just agree to meet in Michigan sometime before Santa arrives. And then I deviously (my wife uses that word) scheme up ways in which I can minimize the time on the ground near De-Friggin-Troit.

The excuse every year is that we are always on our way to our annual skiing holiday. Our end goal is Big White. As in Big Canada. As in a bloody Big Mountain.

We'll talk about that later too.

One of the drawbacks of being a part of the FT tribe is that family and friends alike (non FT'ers), have no clue what it takes to book redemption tickets. Especially during one of the busiest times of the year. And in premium cabins. This drives me insane. You would think that at least you would earn a pile of sex credits for achieving award travel nirvana.

My wife, who is the most down to earth person I know, and had a very blue collar upbringing (7 people sharing the one bathroom growing up ought to tell you a thing or two), knows and appreciates the value of a dollar. But when it comes to traveling long-haul, she doesn't care what it costs. All she knows is that she aint sitting down the back anymore with a kid beside her.

About a month ago she started enquiring about the state of the Xmas itineraries. She knew I was swearing more than usual and the family pets (including 2 newly acquired turtles) were were all hiding under the bed in the guest room, talking to each about when it might be safe to come out without being kicked across the border into Malaysia. Kids for once, kept quiet.

"So, have you worked out our flights?" my wife quipped. Almost flippantly
"Not quite yet" I muttered, trying to remember the number of a good divorce attorney
"Why not?"
"Because it is a little harder than it looks" I say sarcastically
"Why?"
"Because it is…"
"How hard can it be? You have the miles - just tell them the dates we want to travel. Your daughter and I need to be in the US by the 21st"
"Really"
"Yes"

About this point I was regretting selling my 45 Smith and Wesson when we left the US. I started to Google "rent wood-chipper. free home delivery. urgent need, must be able to grind something the size of a human"

Or something like this.

Months ago, when some smart alec marketing whizz kid who works as an intern for Useless Air decided to have a promotion (buy 50,000 miles, get 50,000 miles) - there was a middle aged, balding gracefully man (ie me) sitting in his underwear in Singapore, poised with credit card and 4 separate accounts, ready to pull the trigger. Which i did. With ease. Within minutes of pressing purchase, the miles started flooding into our accounts. One after the other.

Now for those of you who want the exact redemption details - here's what I did. I massaged the US Air accounts so 2 of the accounts had 120,000 miles in them. And one had 160,000. And the 4th was dry as a my mother-in-laws refrigerator.

I can hear you doing the math in your head. And you would be right. The plan above only mentions 3 accounts. Where's the 4th? That was my ace. My own UA account. I accrue miles on UA every year, typically just by looking at the damn thing. I had 160,000 odd miles there. Perfect, I said to myself. My plan might actually come together.

The next was getting the flights. Where to start? So, I fired up ExpertFlyer and starting tapping away, like a kid who drank too much Red Bull and forgot to take his Ritalin. When that didn't work I fired up another laptop and booted up KVS. Smoke started to belch from both machines. When I thought I had something, I told Skype to do its thing and moments later, I was connected to US Air's IVR.

Then everything stopped. I lost the will to live. It took 10-minutes to get 3 steps - and you know what, those stupid automated voice recognition systems don't recognize half the words I know or use frequently. You know what I mean.

Finally, after much fist banging I managed to get thru to a human. Or what appeared to be one. We got half way through the flights I wanted, when the silly woman decided that this was above her pay grade and she wanted to hand me off to the international desk. Next attempt I was right at the point of paying the taxes, with pen and paper poised to write down the record locators, when the line went dead. It was an epic. A real life saga

But we can chat about all this boring stuff later.

As you can probably conclude, I managed to work it all out. Amazingly, I actually found 2 x J seats on LH's new whale from SIN-FRA and then FRA-DTW on exactly the date I wanted. That was the wife and The Small One sorted out.

Then I transferred my UA miles to CO and then managed to get Continentals booking engine to co-operate and I pulled an F award for Number One Son, but it was SIN-BKK-MXP-FRA-DTW. There was method to this madness which I will explain in a minute. Or attempt to.

The piece de resistance as far as I was concerned was finally getting US Air to release its grip on the equivalent inventory for me. Which I did. All bar one leg.

Which brings me neatly to the end of this prelude. Or prologue. You figure out which word is correct. I'm too tired.

I'm sitting here in Thai's F lounge in BKK. Already had the massage. No 1 Son has commandeered one of the B&O TV remotes and apparently, were watching some Euro soccer game. The fact that all the other people close by want to watch CNN doesn't concern him the slightest.

We're about an hour away from catching our A340 to Milan. To eat a lot of pasta. And pizza. Wife and The Small One leave Singapore on Wednesday (I think). I forget. We may have forgotten to tell them that we boys are traveling up the pointy end and they are in the middle. Anyway, my doctor recently told me to cut back on the cheese. So I have started to consume large amounts of duck liver pate instead. I'm blaming that for my impaired judgement.

Wait - before I go. I nearly forgot. We stuff around Italy for a few days doing god knows what, and then we catch an LH puddle jumper to FRA, and then connect to a FRA-DTW service. You know that "I nearly got all the segments to marry up for my sons and my itineraries" bit - a little earlier up the page. Well, that silly child of mine is sitting in F between FRA and DTW. And I'm in J. Behind the curtain. Behind him. I'm not quite sure how it happened, but it happened.

He's refusing to switch seats. He's even threatening to not let me into the FCT.

See what I have to live with? It's going to be a long week. But I figure you may as well stick around and see how it all unfolds. After all, why should your life be any different to mine.

I need to collect my thoughts. To make matters worse, I went out last night with a few FT'ers and I must have eaten a bad prawn. I'm feeling decidedly average (the wine, beer, champagne and scotch probably didn't help either).

Be back in a minute...I need a lie down.