FlyerTalk Forums - Sorry About That...

Well that’s a bit embarrassing then. Some of you people need to get out more. Or move out of your parent’s basement. Or stop sleeping with your cousin. But seriously, thank you for all your comments up thread.

Anyway.

This is a bit of a first for me. Having a travel hiatus for so long. I’m not sure if I actually missed it because after 15 years it was becoming a grind – but there are certain things about travel which I will never tire of.

Talking of grind, wait until you hear this.

So there we were, my wife and 2 kids having lunch at the local hamburger joint. It’s an acceptable place to eat but more importantly, I have trained them to let me order Gin and Tonics in pint glasses, which is how every cocktail should be delivered if you ask me.

“Dad, what’s your email address?” quizzes no 1 son
“Why?”
“Just tell me”

There’s a sly smirk on his face…

“We need it for school” he says innocently enough
“Ok”
“Can you fill this out?

He then hands me his phone and I fumble for my reading glasses and then proceed to fill out the box on the impossibly small screen with my Gmail address. Think nothing of it. We finish lunch and move on with our laid back Colorado lives.

Apparently, Grindr is an app for the male gay community. I’m sure it is a lovely website and does an admirable job of connecting Hamish and Robert for an innocent weekly tryst.

As soon as I got to the car, my iPhone had gone Super Nova and even Google’s Gmail tech support center had started to leave messages along the lines of “are you sure you should be getting this much email from a man called Edward with a lot of photos of his tackle box”

Son was AWOL. Daughter had gone shopping. And wife was rolling around the floor laughing her you know what off.

Have you ever tried calling a gay dating website. It’s a challenge.

“Welcome to Grindr, this is Patrise. With an S”
“Hello is this Grindr?”
“Yes Sir how may I help you?”
“This is Mr Eight Black. My moron kids signed me up for Grindr. I just wanted to let you know I appreciate all you do for the gay community, but I really am not gay”
“I understand Sir, all married men say that before they join our tribe”
“But I’m serious. I’m not gay. Ok, I like Elton John but that’s as bad as it gets”
“Uh huh”

I could just feel Patrise With An S rolling his eyes at this point.

“Can you take me off your list? And tell some guy called Edward to stop sending me pictures of his thing. As impressive as it is, it’s getting old. I went to an all boys school when I was a kid so I have seen plenty of them. And besides I’m about to have my Gmail account closed down”
“Sir I thought you said you weren’t gay”
“For the love of God, and for the fifth time, I’m not”
“But you just said you went to an all boys school”

I was now starting to lose the will to live…

“Why don’t you just calm down. A lot of men, when they come out of the closest feel what you are feeling. Lonely. Confused. Slightly nervous…”
“Patrise With An S that’s called marriage. And I’ll show you calm. I’m going to throttle the life out of my son when I see him next”
“Sir we can’t remove you from the site. And please don’t beat your son. It’s not nice”
“What!”
“Your account will simply become inactive after 30 days if you don’t use it”

So here we are then. 6 months later, I’m still getting emails from Grindr every 11 minutes asking me to complete my profile and that I am but minutes away from finding my perfect match. I’ve tried moving house, changing phone companies, switching internet providers, and changing my name to Doris. But no joy.

I’ll be sitting in meetings and receive those stupidly annoying pop up alerts that iPhones deliver. The Grindr alert thingy literally has tourettes. My wife and I were sitting with our mortgage guy not long after this drama occurred and I remember him looking down at my phone after he saw these “Hamish has a new photo for you” message. About 4 times in 30 seconds. And then pictures of Hamishs tackle box fill the screen.

My silly wife then attempted to explain to the very conservative mid west mortgage guy that I was in fact straight and that this was nothing but an innocent trick our kids had played. Needless to say we never heard from the guy again.

So back to travel. This is actually the first trip I have taken solo with my daughter. Which I am reminded of constantly – by her and by my wife. You’d think I had run over their dog by the way they carried on.

The good thing with boys is that they are very simple creatures. There’s a lot of empty space in their brains. Ok lets face it, they aren’t that intelligent. For one, they cant multi-task. If you ask a boy to do 3 things when he wakes up, his head will literally explode. Our son can barely get dressed in the morning.

If you have an argument with your son, within 5 minutes he has totally forgotten about it and is your best friend again. Which is the way it should be.

Daughters on the other hand are a different animal altogether.

When this trip was all confirmed, my daughter starting lobbying my wife and giving a list of instructions and asking 100 questions.

“Is Dad going to embarrass me?”
“Do I have to sit beside him on the plane?”
“Why can’t I go on my own?”
“How come I can’t have a credit card?”

Don’t believe for a minute that trips like these will bond you together for the rest of your lives. The problem modern parents have is that you are actually only renting your kid for a finite period of time. Because the rest of the time, actually no, for most of the time, they are connected to a lot of ones and zeros via their silly phones.

To annoy me, my daughter has her headphones in all the bloomin time. Everywhere she goes. Which makes it impossible to have a conversation with her. She knows it drives me crazy. Which is why she does it. This is something women learn from the moment they arrive into this world.

The flight from Denver to LAX was uneventful enough. I had to laugh though because even though I was on an award ticket, I still managed to clear the First Class upgrade. But my daughter didn’t because of the way UAs computer splits the res into 2 when you check in.

Its funny – when you don’t want the system to work (or you just don’t care) it seems to. And that’s the good thing about summer travel to Australia. There’s award and upgrade space up the wazoo. Every man and his dog is in Europe. Not many people want to head downunder for an Aussie winter.

Which made the planning of this trip a piece of cake. Actually the reason it was a piece of cake was because I outsourced the whole thing to someone else. It would be remiss of me not to thank him publicly. If you need award or travel planning help, and your wife barely speaks to you and your kids keep signing you up to dating websites, then fellow FT’er Jasper2009 is your go to guy. Best service I have used.

It was actually fun to see how UA’s product had changed. Forget about the domestic segment because if you ask me, that’s always going to be nothing more than a shuttle. Although the FA was completely perplexed when she handed me my First Class boarding pass and I said it was ok, I would sit with my daughter in coach. She was confused.

“Are you sure you don’t want this seat?”
“No it’s fine”
“But it’s a First Class seat”
“No it’s all good. Is Amber Heard my seat mate?”
“Umm no”
“Then its fine. I’m all good. I’ll sit with my daughter”
“Dad you’re being creepy”
“Give it to someone else. Give it to a crew member. You can buy me a drink”

The FA was slightly taken back at this gesture but nonetheless she waltzes off, talks to someone else, they point to me as if I had just had a mental breakdown and then she gives the seat to a deadheading pilot.

About half way through the flight – the same FA comes back with a full size bottle of white wine (for me) and some desert for my daughter. Thinking it rude not to accept it or consume it, I proceed to drink the entire contents by the time I got to LAX. Even my daughter started to ask questions about whether or not I should be allowed to travel alone anymore.

We head to another first for me. The new UA Club in LAX. Not a bad place at all. I actually went to the new UA Club in London about a year ago so I know the UA team are trying to do more than run a feather duster over their lounge network.

I ask The Small One where she would like to sit. Being the teenager that she is, she chose a seat far away in a corner and I chose to sit close to the bar. Not for the reasons you would expect, but it seemed more comfortable sitting at the workstation thingy with my laptop. I was super impressed that you could in fact buy the tiny bottles of Moet and they were in fact bitterly cold.

Thinking it rude again not to support the bar - I promptly ordered a bottle of champagne and had a pleasant time just doing nothing for a few hours.

I had forgotten to tell my daughter that we had in fact, a decent amount of time to kill. This did not please her. I think we got to the lounge around 5pm ish and we didn’t board until 945pm.

But give any teenager their phone and a wifi hotspot and they will literally sit there for days. I did not hear a peep from her until it was time to go.

I had selected 1A and 1B – because I like the fact that you can put the trays up on the top of the unit in front when you’re done eating.

So yet another 15 hour trek downunder. I’ve done so many that I stopped counting a long time ago. The new menus looked good, the TV worked, I was semi hungry and definitely could use a drink. And then it started…

Dad, do I have to sit beside you the whole way to Australia...?