Out of all the thousands of miles I've earned, I think I've only booked one or two award trips for me. I haven't used them for upgrades, just on award trips for others.

In April I took my girlfriend, her son, and her grandson with me to Hawaii. I paid for my DL trip, and used 60K miles per person for each of them to go. Her son's friend went with us on DL, also, for a total of 5 people.

We left the Friday before Good Friday, and we were all hoping for a bump. We got to the gate in ATL, they only needed 4 of us, so Susie went to Hawaii and the rest of us were booked on another flight 75 minutes later. This one was also oversold, so we knew we would be in ATL overnight, DL gave us hotel rooms. All set!

This was right around lunch time, so I took the gang into the A Crown Room. I wanted to go online, check seat assignments, check for bump chances, etc. Susie's 8-year old grandson was perfect, he just played with some stuff he brought. Her son and his friend took liberal advantage of the free drinks in the Crown Room. They were getting louder and louder, and talking about the rich b*****ds, and I wanted to just disappear. Then when Jeff dropped his drink on the table and it shattered, I knew it was time to disappear for real!

Then when we waited for our shuttle to the hotel, Jeff started hitting on another lady waiting for the shuttle to go to the same hotel. He kept getting closer to her and touched her innocently on the arm, and she wanted to run as far away from him as she could. I tried to tell him to knock it off, but he's about twice as big as I am, and he was in his own world.

Then his sister, bro-in-law and baby joined us at the hotel for dinner. He wanted to play with the baby but he was still drunk and just scared the baby. I had to apologize to the family for getting him drunk. Later that night he knocked on my room door, I knew it was him, I just pretended it was the cops, and I said "I'm not going to bail him out of jail!"

Next morning he apologized, we went to airport, had another chance to get bumped for $600 per person but would be stuck in ATL another night. The guys said later they considered taking the bump, but all I could envision was a rerun of the day before or possibly worse!

It was months before I dared show my face in the same Crown Room, but they didn't remember me or my company, because they let me in.