Hawaii on $20

I love it when a plan comes together.

In my crazy frantic last couple of months I began to stress over getting our annual Hawaii trip together. We have a timeshare week this year. I also realized that we both had enough miles for a place ticket each.

Since we wanted to go in September, time was now to get the show on the road. First I called the owner services in Maui. The woman was awesome -- you have to submit your request in writing but email counts. She looked at the dates I requested (based on award dates available from United's site), told me there was a few left and to email immediately. I did and she confirmed it within minutes.

On to the United site, I found good flights for our time frame and booked them. Ends up it's on 35k a ticket for reward miles. We had thought it was 60k per ticket (it's this once the reward miles run out). So total for airfare - $20! So I used 70 of my 85k miles and we still have a whole trip left on Mark's miles.

I love it! I'm dreaming of the sea and sand already. :-)

The people you meet on public transportation

I took the bus downtown a couple of weeks ago to meet friends for an early showing of Harry Potter. While I was taking the 16th Street Mall shuttle, an older woman with a cane came on the bus which was on the full side. "Ma'am", I said, "would you like my seat."

"No, No," she insisted and proceeded to tell me that once she started taking seats then she'd go downhill fast. It was bad enough she had the cane but she was going to fight it. She was pretty feisty and spoke quietly so I only got a couple of words here and there. As my stop appeared, I thanked her for chatting with me and stood up. Then she said, "well, maybe I will take a seat now."

At the theater, friend Pam who recently returned from a trip to London and Paris. In Paris, they ran into a group of obvious Americans trying to figure out where they needed to go -- without a map. She was amazed that not only were they wandering around a place they were unfamiliar with sans map, but clearly didn't speak the language to read the signs (or understand measurements -- 300m is not "just over there.")

Later as the hubby and I made out way back to the bus station we encountered the self-named "Irish contingent" from the Microsoft convention in town. They were looking for the Celtic Pub and were hoping they were going the right way. I laughed and said, you come all the way to Denver and you go to an Irish pub? The woman understood the reasoning and said, oh, they had been plenty of local spots -- including Elway's for dinner. Can't get more local than that.