Travel Plans

[jamesq]

I appear to be doing a lot of traveling this year, which suits me fine. It's not like I'm going to be needing that savings when I'm 80.

First up is Whipping Winds, an SCA event in Shelby Montana. I went last year and it was OK - I'll give it another go this time. I have the Friday off, so I'll be leaving in the morning.

Between that and Harvest Feast, I'm pretty much done with SCA events for the year. I'm OK with that. There will still be the normal weekly and monthly activities.

I have two short trips planned, the first is to the Royal Victoria ½ Marathon in October. I'll be combining that with a few days in Vancouver.

I had originally intended to book some of my hotels with Air Miles, but as a co-worker pointed out, you can't actually redeem air miles and this seems to be by design. None of the relevant hotels in Victoria had suites available. When I tried for the Vancouver hotel I wanted, there were plenty of suites left (including my favorite room), but HI-Express wanted 1800 air miles for it. Be aware that an air mile is "worth" 30¢, effectively putting the room's value at $540/night. I could rent it out in the normal way for $125, which is what I ended up doing. Allegedly this is actually a deal in geographical locations where hotel rooms are insanely expensive to begin with - Manhattan for example.

So yeah, I still haven't managed to spend any of my air miles. I am getting close to being able to fly to Cuba on air miles alone. I'm sure some bureaucratic rule will prevent me from doing so.

Anyway, while in Victoria, I'm staying at the Embassy Inn, like the last two times I ran this race. It has the distinction of being the hotel closest to the starting line. For Vancouver, I'll likely be at the Holiday Inn Express in Metrotown.

When booking the rooms, I checked the flights I had already arranged (Into Victoria on Saturday, October 9th on the 12:35 pm flight. Leaving Vancouver on Wednesday, October 13th on the 7:30 pm flight) - and it's a good thing I checked. Apparently I'd decided to stay one more day then I thought. I might have found myself at the airport on Tuesday, wondering what the hell happened.

So here is my itinerary for the October trip:

• 2010-10-09: Fly to Victoria around noonish.
  
• 2010-10-09: Get my race kit and check into the Embassy Inn.
  
• 2010-10-09: Spend the night dressed as a superhero searching for muggers to beat up. Have bacon-wrapped dates.
  
• 2010-10-10: Run the RV½M in the morning.
  
• 2010-10-10: Check out of the Embassy Inn, catch the ferry to Vancouver.
  
• 2010-10-10: Make my way to the Holiday Inn Express at Metrotown and check in.
  
• 2010-10-10: Collapse.
  
• 2010-10-11: Relax, possibly via ale and whores.
  
• 2010-10-12: Relax some more.
  
• 2010-10-13: Check out of the HIX-Metrotown.
  
• 2010-10-13: Catch my flight back to Cowtown around 7ish.

The next order of business is my November trip to Las Vegas. This was originally going to be a group trip (proposed by the group of us who went to Estrella last year - an attempt to do the Vegas thang without also being burned out from camping in the desert for a week.

Sadly most of these people are getting married in early 2011, so they've all cancelled.

Hmm. That came out wrong - it's sad that they can't make it. It's not sad that they're getting married - quite the opposite in fact. But I digress.

I'm still planning on going to Vegas, and came very close to booking the trip last night. I found a sweet-heart of a deal on flight+hotel through Orbitz and it would have came to about $650/person (by myself it's about $850). It also featured non-stop flights at reasonable times, which is rare for cheap packages - generally they force you to sit at a hub for a couple hours. I figured, buy the sweet deal now and convince someone in the next three months to go. If everything goes completely south, you could just kidnap someone.

Unfortunately, they make you name each person and the tickets are not transferable. No doubt to thwart exactly this sort of behavior from resellers. I backed out at that point because I didn't know Nick Soapdish's birth-date.

The deal doesn't seem to have gone away, but I am concerned that it will soon - it seems to depend on cheap flights from Westjet. I'm going to give it another couple weeks before I make my final decision. I might just go by myself, though if I do, I'll probably make it a day shorter - I might also push it back two weeks to my birthday. The Remembrance Day weekend was originally chosen to accommodate people who've subsequently bailed. I'd kind of prefer to have something nearer my birthday.

I'm leaning towards the Mirage or the MGM Grand.

Comments

[manyra.livejournal.com]

I used to work at the Embassy! Very weird summer that was...