I Know What You Did Last Summer...
Oct 10, 2015, 9:21 pm
#1
Moderator, Trip Reports
Original Poster
Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: Denver, CO
Programs: UA GS-2MM, Marriott Ambassador
Posts: 3,715
I Know What You Did Last Summer...
Actually no I don’t.
I think I may have told some of you last year that I hate summer. As in detest it. I have no idea why. I wasn’t locked in a Turkish sauna as a kid with a plump girl called Violet. At least I don’t think I was. I don’t have nightmares about sand. And I’m quite fond of swimming in the ocean. This morning even, I went for a run along Manly beach. If you could call what I do running. I look more like a stoned porcupine shuffling along and the worst thing is that as a soon as a pretty girl skips past in her yoga pants like a beautiful gazelle, I attempt to speed up. But at my age, when you try and run faster, all that happens is a lot more air and gas escapes from the most dreadful of places.
Anyway.
It was with a little fear and trepidation then, when this summer rolled around and my family decided that we should all head down under. As in Australia. My wife missed her best friend and my daughter wanted for some strange reason to climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I haven’t the foggiest of ideas why. But a bigger lark you have not seen. We can talk about that later perhaps.
I told the 2 women in my life that I missed my best friend too - Jessica Alba. And more than anything in the world I wanted to visit France and spend 3 weeks wandering aimlessly around the wine region, washing my face in Chablis and eating way too much cheese. But my daughter has begun to respond to anything I say about women with “Dad, you’re being creepy”
So apparently it was settled then. I had to move the 4 of us to Australia and back and none of the family would even think of sitting “down the back”. Me included.
My son wandered in the room in that typical teenage stupor and said,
“What, what I have done?”
“Nothing, were’ talking about going to Australia for the summer” quipped his mother
“Dad, which way are we going?”
I think I have also written about how we travel as a family. Not as a unit. But as 2 separate groups. One group is highly organized, can navigate an airport quickly, doesn’t wander aimlessly around for hours on end and hasn’t yet caught some mildly irritating sexual disease by sitting on public toilet seats. And then there’s my wife and daughter. They would be in the other camp. The camp which can destroy even the best laid plans or itineraries. The camp that thinks you can book mileage tickets on a whim. As in when you want.
So my son and I decided that we would head to Japan again, stop for a few days and then head to Melbourne via Sydney. Now for those frequent flyer junkies, the US summer is quite a good time to redeem miles heading to Asia. There are flights up the wazoo to Tokyo and Haneda. And it wasn’t difficult to find onward seats to Australia. Within minutes, I had grabbed 2 seats to Haneda on United, and then cajoled the woman at AA to find me 2 seats on JAL from Narita to Sydney, with a final hop to Melbourne on QF.
My wife and daughter on the other hand presented a bigger challenge. I don’t know if your wife or partner is any different to mine (strewth I hope so) but my wife on all but 5-7 days of the month is relatively rational. The PMS bomb hasn’t yet detonated in my 12-year old daughter but when it does, my son and I are moving countries.
When I started to talk about flight possibilities, my wife would respond with:
“No those dates don’t work for us”
“But honey, we have to be governed by what’s available” I pleaded
“But that’s not when your daughter and I want to go” she insisted
“What about these dates?”
“Nope” she says defiantly
“These?”
“Look, you’re not listening moron. We want to leave Denver on this date and come back on this date. End of story”
So, fearing that I would be sleeping in my car for the rest of my life I poked and prodded with the silly airline booking engine, swore multiple times and went through about 3 bottles of Tanqueray Ten.
Actually I lie. What I did was call Lucky and outsource the whole thing to some geeky airline nerd. The problem was that we could only find flights on Virgin Australia from LA to Brisbane, and then to Sydney. We would need to work out the domestic flights from DEN to LAX on our own. Piece of the proverbial cats pee if you ask me. I could even handle that. Drunk or sober.
So I did.
Because my wife shares my 1K status with me, I thought it prudent to put them on UA from Colorado to the state of Crazyfornia. I would worry about the internal Aussie flights later. That is but a minute’s task.
But it wasn’t prudent at all.
As you would expect with our family, things rarely go to plan. My son and I on the other hand, well our plans run like a swiss watch. Mainly because he is 14 and lets face it, 14-year old boys aren’t that intelligent. He wouldn’t know if the house was on fire, if we were burgled he’d probably help carry the stuff to the criminal’s car and he certainly couldn’t care less about the actual logistics of travel. I told you before, all kids do is “follow the money”. To be honest I’m being a bit harsh. He does have one care - and that’s the speed and health of our internet connection.
We moved into a new house about a year ago. Wisely, my wife and I decided to put our son in the basement, which is furnished. Sorry, finished. He has his own bedroom and bathroom. Once a week, I see my wife dressed in a full biohazard suit, with a bucket of commercial cleaning product and a large pair of tongs. And she even went to Home Depot on her own and ordered a 100-foot heavy-duty hose for the pressure washer. We are way beyond toilet brushes and bottles of Clorox.
“Honey what are you doing?”
“I’m going to clean your sons bathroom”, she says in a muffled voice through the facemask
“I’ll see you in a few days then”
And off she goes, deep into the bowels of hell as she calls it.
Because our eldest child has been temporarily taken from us by those morons who make a game called Counter Strike, Global Offensive (or CS-GO for short), he wouldn’t have a clue what day it was. We yell at him to come up for meals. Nothing. Zip. Nada.
We can leave to go out for dinner, come home and he’ll still be playing with 1 kid from the Ukraine and his best mate Harry in Brisbane. Christ, we could leave for days and he wouldn’t even notice we’d left.
The only thing that will move him away from his keyboard is if the internet connection died.
One day, as a joke, I pulled the plug from the Wi-Fi thingamajig and within 4.2 seconds, our teenage mutant was breathless at the top of the basement stairs, yelling obscenities at me and saying that we needed to call 9-1-1 because the internet had in fact had a coronary.
I told him that we needed to speak to him and that I had disconnected the thing on purpose. He was literally gob smacked at how an adult could be so stupid. He would have been less offended if I told him that I was looking for volunteers to help me empty my colostomy bag when I got older and his name was 1st on the list.
Moving on then. Or not.
When we moved into the new house, I made the fatal mistake of telling Number One son he could put a screen and projector in the main room of the basement. I think we’ve used it 3 times since we’ve been in the house. Mainly because no one can work out how to use the bloody thing.
Anyway, I left him in charge of deciding what to do equipment wise. Probably not the smartest thing I have done. You see his Uncle is in the smart home business and the phone call went something like this.
“Uncle Vince, its eight black junior”
“Hello favorite nephew” came the reply
“Dad said we could get a screen and projector for the basement. Can you send us the best you have. Money is no object”
And then he promptly hung up.
I was in the room when he made the call. Thinking he was being a smart alec and because he is now my size and too big to Homer choke, I sort of nervously chuckled. His mother did not. We both thought that his Uncle would surely want to talk with us about such an important purchase, and I expected the phone to ring again and for the adults in the room to have a normal conversation.
I waited. And then I waited some more. Donuts. As in nothing.
2 days later, the first of many FedEx trucks started to arrive. My wife and I watched in bewilderment at box after box being carried down to the basement by our oldest offspring. We had a contractor at the time doing some work on the house. Our son quickly intervened and re-directed the paid labour to help him assemble all this crap and install it.
To my amazement, the dimwitted worker we had hired to help us do stuff which was actually important, dropped everything and thought that installing a 100-inch screen and a rear projector was much more fun.
Anyway, where were we? That’s right. Wife and daughters itinerary.
So my son and I head off to the Land of the Rising son, on United F to an airport we’ve never been to before (Haneda). As far as United F flights go it wasn’t bad at all. Even the 14 year old was mildly impressed. We had a great crew and it was one of those rare occasions where the Captain came around and said hello to everyone. Well not everyone. Just the people at the pointy end. I think the food was even edible. Just. The wine was dog wash.
Our flights went off without a hitch. Bellissimo in fact. Got to Haneda. Jumped into a cab within minutes of arriving and in no time at all we were eating room service udon noodles at the Hyatt Regency. We did try and use something called an Uber, but that all seemed too hard for the person on the other end and each time I try and use the amazing ride sharing app, my son says that those sorts of thing are really for people under the age of 30. But I digress.
Moments after we had settled into our room, the phone rang. Violently.
It was Her. She Who Must Be Obeyed.
Their UA domestic flight was late out of Denver and she was worried that she was going to miss her Virgin connection.
The third Asahi must have started to calm me, so I attempted to reassure my better half that all would be well. Except for the fact that it wasn’t. We had left 3.5 hours as a connection between the UA flight arriving in LAX and the VA flight. Stacks of time you’d think.
The delay dragged on. It pushed to an hour. Then 2. Then 2 and a half. My wife was apoplectic. The language was ungodly.
Which is normal really.
I will attempt to remember the rest of the trip as I calm my nerves in the QF First lounge in Sydney. I’m heading to London. I have no idea quite why. But I thought it was a different way home. Their champagne is going down rather well and some nice lady promised to give me a massage only if I keep my underpants on.
Which will be a first for me.
Back in a minute.
I think I may have told some of you last year that I hate summer. As in detest it. I have no idea why. I wasn’t locked in a Turkish sauna as a kid with a plump girl called Violet. At least I don’t think I was. I don’t have nightmares about sand. And I’m quite fond of swimming in the ocean. This morning even, I went for a run along Manly beach. If you could call what I do running. I look more like a stoned porcupine shuffling along and the worst thing is that as a soon as a pretty girl skips past in her yoga pants like a beautiful gazelle, I attempt to speed up. But at my age, when you try and run faster, all that happens is a lot more air and gas escapes from the most dreadful of places.
Anyway.
It was with a little fear and trepidation then, when this summer rolled around and my family decided that we should all head down under. As in Australia. My wife missed her best friend and my daughter wanted for some strange reason to climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I haven’t the foggiest of ideas why. But a bigger lark you have not seen. We can talk about that later perhaps.
I told the 2 women in my life that I missed my best friend too - Jessica Alba. And more than anything in the world I wanted to visit France and spend 3 weeks wandering aimlessly around the wine region, washing my face in Chablis and eating way too much cheese. But my daughter has begun to respond to anything I say about women with “Dad, you’re being creepy”
So apparently it was settled then. I had to move the 4 of us to Australia and back and none of the family would even think of sitting “down the back”. Me included.
My son wandered in the room in that typical teenage stupor and said,
“What, what I have done?”
“Nothing, were’ talking about going to Australia for the summer” quipped his mother
“Dad, which way are we going?”
I think I have also written about how we travel as a family. Not as a unit. But as 2 separate groups. One group is highly organized, can navigate an airport quickly, doesn’t wander aimlessly around for hours on end and hasn’t yet caught some mildly irritating sexual disease by sitting on public toilet seats. And then there’s my wife and daughter. They would be in the other camp. The camp which can destroy even the best laid plans or itineraries. The camp that thinks you can book mileage tickets on a whim. As in when you want.
So my son and I decided that we would head to Japan again, stop for a few days and then head to Melbourne via Sydney. Now for those frequent flyer junkies, the US summer is quite a good time to redeem miles heading to Asia. There are flights up the wazoo to Tokyo and Haneda. And it wasn’t difficult to find onward seats to Australia. Within minutes, I had grabbed 2 seats to Haneda on United, and then cajoled the woman at AA to find me 2 seats on JAL from Narita to Sydney, with a final hop to Melbourne on QF.
My wife and daughter on the other hand presented a bigger challenge. I don’t know if your wife or partner is any different to mine (strewth I hope so) but my wife on all but 5-7 days of the month is relatively rational. The PMS bomb hasn’t yet detonated in my 12-year old daughter but when it does, my son and I are moving countries.
When I started to talk about flight possibilities, my wife would respond with:
“No those dates don’t work for us”
“But honey, we have to be governed by what’s available” I pleaded
“But that’s not when your daughter and I want to go” she insisted
“What about these dates?”
“Nope” she says defiantly
“These?”
“Look, you’re not listening moron. We want to leave Denver on this date and come back on this date. End of story”
So, fearing that I would be sleeping in my car for the rest of my life I poked and prodded with the silly airline booking engine, swore multiple times and went through about 3 bottles of Tanqueray Ten.
Actually I lie. What I did was call Lucky and outsource the whole thing to some geeky airline nerd. The problem was that we could only find flights on Virgin Australia from LA to Brisbane, and then to Sydney. We would need to work out the domestic flights from DEN to LAX on our own. Piece of the proverbial cats pee if you ask me. I could even handle that. Drunk or sober.
So I did.
Because my wife shares my 1K status with me, I thought it prudent to put them on UA from Colorado to the state of Crazyfornia. I would worry about the internal Aussie flights later. That is but a minute’s task.
But it wasn’t prudent at all.
As you would expect with our family, things rarely go to plan. My son and I on the other hand, well our plans run like a swiss watch. Mainly because he is 14 and lets face it, 14-year old boys aren’t that intelligent. He wouldn’t know if the house was on fire, if we were burgled he’d probably help carry the stuff to the criminal’s car and he certainly couldn’t care less about the actual logistics of travel. I told you before, all kids do is “follow the money”. To be honest I’m being a bit harsh. He does have one care - and that’s the speed and health of our internet connection.
We moved into a new house about a year ago. Wisely, my wife and I decided to put our son in the basement, which is furnished. Sorry, finished. He has his own bedroom and bathroom. Once a week, I see my wife dressed in a full biohazard suit, with a bucket of commercial cleaning product and a large pair of tongs. And she even went to Home Depot on her own and ordered a 100-foot heavy-duty hose for the pressure washer. We are way beyond toilet brushes and bottles of Clorox.
“Honey what are you doing?”
“I’m going to clean your sons bathroom”, she says in a muffled voice through the facemask
“I’ll see you in a few days then”
And off she goes, deep into the bowels of hell as she calls it.
Because our eldest child has been temporarily taken from us by those morons who make a game called Counter Strike, Global Offensive (or CS-GO for short), he wouldn’t have a clue what day it was. We yell at him to come up for meals. Nothing. Zip. Nada.
We can leave to go out for dinner, come home and he’ll still be playing with 1 kid from the Ukraine and his best mate Harry in Brisbane. Christ, we could leave for days and he wouldn’t even notice we’d left.
The only thing that will move him away from his keyboard is if the internet connection died.
One day, as a joke, I pulled the plug from the Wi-Fi thingamajig and within 4.2 seconds, our teenage mutant was breathless at the top of the basement stairs, yelling obscenities at me and saying that we needed to call 9-1-1 because the internet had in fact had a coronary.
I told him that we needed to speak to him and that I had disconnected the thing on purpose. He was literally gob smacked at how an adult could be so stupid. He would have been less offended if I told him that I was looking for volunteers to help me empty my colostomy bag when I got older and his name was 1st on the list.
Moving on then. Or not.
When we moved into the new house, I made the fatal mistake of telling Number One son he could put a screen and projector in the main room of the basement. I think we’ve used it 3 times since we’ve been in the house. Mainly because no one can work out how to use the bloody thing.
Anyway, I left him in charge of deciding what to do equipment wise. Probably not the smartest thing I have done. You see his Uncle is in the smart home business and the phone call went something like this.
“Uncle Vince, its eight black junior”
“Hello favorite nephew” came the reply
“Dad said we could get a screen and projector for the basement. Can you send us the best you have. Money is no object”
And then he promptly hung up.
I was in the room when he made the call. Thinking he was being a smart alec and because he is now my size and too big to Homer choke, I sort of nervously chuckled. His mother did not. We both thought that his Uncle would surely want to talk with us about such an important purchase, and I expected the phone to ring again and for the adults in the room to have a normal conversation.
I waited. And then I waited some more. Donuts. As in nothing.
2 days later, the first of many FedEx trucks started to arrive. My wife and I watched in bewilderment at box after box being carried down to the basement by our oldest offspring. We had a contractor at the time doing some work on the house. Our son quickly intervened and re-directed the paid labour to help him assemble all this crap and install it.
To my amazement, the dimwitted worker we had hired to help us do stuff which was actually important, dropped everything and thought that installing a 100-inch screen and a rear projector was much more fun.
Anyway, where were we? That’s right. Wife and daughters itinerary.
So my son and I head off to the Land of the Rising son, on United F to an airport we’ve never been to before (Haneda). As far as United F flights go it wasn’t bad at all. Even the 14 year old was mildly impressed. We had a great crew and it was one of those rare occasions where the Captain came around and said hello to everyone. Well not everyone. Just the people at the pointy end. I think the food was even edible. Just. The wine was dog wash.
Our flights went off without a hitch. Bellissimo in fact. Got to Haneda. Jumped into a cab within minutes of arriving and in no time at all we were eating room service udon noodles at the Hyatt Regency. We did try and use something called an Uber, but that all seemed too hard for the person on the other end and each time I try and use the amazing ride sharing app, my son says that those sorts of thing are really for people under the age of 30. But I digress.
Moments after we had settled into our room, the phone rang. Violently.
It was Her. She Who Must Be Obeyed.
Their UA domestic flight was late out of Denver and she was worried that she was going to miss her Virgin connection.
The third Asahi must have started to calm me, so I attempted to reassure my better half that all would be well. Except for the fact that it wasn’t. We had left 3.5 hours as a connection between the UA flight arriving in LAX and the VA flight. Stacks of time you’d think.
The delay dragged on. It pushed to an hour. Then 2. Then 2 and a half. My wife was apoplectic. The language was ungodly.
Which is normal really.
I will attempt to remember the rest of the trip as I calm my nerves in the QF First lounge in Sydney. I’m heading to London. I have no idea quite why. But I thought it was a different way home. Their champagne is going down rather well and some nice lady promised to give me a massage only if I keep my underpants on.
Which will be a first for me.
Back in a minute.
Last edited by eightblack; Oct 11, 2015 at 3:13 pm Reason: Typos as usual...
Oct 11, 2015, 12:05 pm
#8
Join Date: Jan 2013
Location: California
Programs: AA EXP 2MM, HH DIA, Hertz PC, GE + Pre✓, Amazon Super Special Prime
Posts: 1,008
HE LIVES! Last week I re-read your TR's of past for a nostalgia boost. It seems that the FT gods have smiled upon us and given us another gem from eightblack.
Looking forward to the rest of this adventure!
Looking forward to the rest of this adventure!
Oct 11, 2015, 8:20 pm
#15
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: A metal nomad
Programs: Mucci des Delices Exotiques,Order of the Platinum Hairbrush,Her Royal Diamond
Posts: 23,728