Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

Each year I reunite with my two best friends from college for a few days of snowboarding, reminiscing and fun. It used to be four of us but life caught up with us three years ago and and our fourth companion, Mat Burnett, lost his fight with cancer. He's not with us in body but always in spirit. Joe, Scott and I, the three that remain, no longer take or time together for granted.

DAY 1 - Getting Out Alive

Leaving for any trip has taken on a specific ritual in my house. My older two kids act like they don't care while my younger two cling to me and cry. I think the more the younger ones protest the more the older ones distance themselves from me. It's kind of how the universe stays balanced I guess. For every person that cares about me there needs to be one that specifically doesn't. Just kidding. I know the older two love me. It breaks my heart to know that someday the younger two will stop being sad when I leave. Stephanie, as  always, just supports me in whatever I have going on. She gives me a big kiss that makes me not want to go and instead just stay and hangout with her. While I don't look forward to getting older, I do look forward to retiring someday and just hanging out with Steph.

We play a few rounds of games prior to my leaving so we can be together. There is nothing like it. The fun and laughter from my whole family playing together is intoxicating. Put aside for the moment are the dishes left undone, reminders about homework and the constant bantering that comes with a house full of children. It's Kate, the vibrant eight year old, that lightens the mood. Her constant calls of , "Boom! That's how I roll cuz I'm a Humphreys" when she performs well in the game we're playing that get the rest of us going. You'd never know from her shy facade outside of the house that she is a firecracker of comedy. She gets that from her brother I think, he's the same way. Families are the best and I believe that it's not random chance that we are born into families. I believe that it's be divine design that we are in families are only in a family unit can we receive the help we need to achieve our potential and only in families can we learn to love others more than ourselves. I love my family.

The games last longer than we intended and I run to get my gear and get on my way. Why does it always seem like I'm late in getting to the airport? I'm rushing to get on the road and I'm not outside my neighborhood when I felt a very clear disturbance in the force. You know, the kind that tells you that you've just left behind something very important. I start going through my list of essential items:

• Wallet - Check
• Underwear - Check (#1 rule of life = change you underwear every day)
• iPod - Check
• 7 in Android tablet - Check
• 10 in Android tablet - Check
• 14 in Chromebook - Check

I was at the end of my list of essentials (yes, they are the essentials) when it hit me like a ton of bricks. Where is my cell phone?!?! I follow the procedures for having a heart attack while driving. I take my foot off of the accelerator, I drift to the side of the road, I remind myself to breath. I hastily throw my car into park, jump out and proceed to empty my backpack looking for my lifeline to the world. Chromebook, two tablets, three chocolate bars (I'm kind of on a chocolate kick thanks to a recent gift of chocolate from Stephanie) but no phone. I race back to my house screaming the whole way in, "Someone call my cell phone! I need to find my cell phone!" It was in the farthest reaches of my house. I hoof it upstairs, retrieve it and get back on the road. With my gear tightly packed away, I'm off for my adventure. First stop, Phoenix airport. 

It's always fun to come to Phoenix. My parents and three siblings are all there plus I attended Arizona State for my graduate studies. I look out the windows of the airport across the various shades of brown and remember how much I love the desert. If only I had a longer layover and I could leave the airport. But that's not in the cards today. Today I just have enough time to grab a bite to eat and get on my flight to Salt Lake.

I have several options to choose from but for some reason I just HAVE to have a hamburger. I find myself at the counter ordering a burger with the works and fries. I tell myself that I'll make better choices the rest of my flight and somehow justify this artery clogging meal. As I get down to my final bites, I find myself in deep regret. I stumble out of my seat and tell myself I can just walk it off. Unfortunately, there weren't enough hours (or days) available to me to walk that meal off so I did the best I could and headed over to my boarding gate. One thing I've learned from my travels is that you never take your boarding gate for granted. Those suckers change all the time on you so you have to pay attention.

Song for this part of my trip include:

Back to the Mother Country

Being male, pale and stale (A.K.A. a 40-something white guy) I consider England to be the mother country.  There are very few place in the world where I look just like everyone else and hence fit right in.  Well, I guess that I could just as easily consider Germany or Switzerland in the same way except for the fact that I can't talk to anyone there. No, I've never learned a second language. I rack this up to my inherently lazy American attitude which precludes me from getting past the first disc of my Rossetta Stone investment. (Learning Spanish has made it to my new year's resolution list for the past three years running. Maybe 2015 will be the year)

It seems that I end up in London 2 - 3 times a year. I can't complain though, it's one of my favorite places. This time, however, a couple of things are different:

1) I'm not flying American or British airways (more on that in a moment)
2) Ebola

You can't turn on CNN without a reference to Ebola so I thought I'd include it here. That, plus I know it will start my mother on a week long fact-finding mission to see how many Ebola patients are coming from the UK, how many people from West Africa are going to the UK, ways to contract Ebola and generally mapping out how I'm going to die a horrible death. (Love you mom)

So, first on the change of airlines. Earlier this year I took my family to San Diego for Labor day to be with my extended family and celebrate my mom's 70th birthday.  We briefly thought about driving as it should be no more than an 8 hour drive. But given that we only had three days and the traffic on a holiday weekend would be terrible we decided to fly (A.K.A. I purchased airline tickets without consulting Stephanie). I am executive platinum on American Airlines so that would have been my go-to option but they had no direct routes to San Diego from San Francisco so I took the least expensive non-stop I could find. It was on Virgin America and it was FABULOUS! You get onto what looks like a night club and start to get really excited.

Even my 8 year old got excited. Everyone had their own tv screen with tons of channels. It was a great experience.

That got me thinking. What if I flew Virgin to London and Sydney and other long-haul places I go? How cool would that be? Ever see James Bond in first class in Quantum of Solace?

Yeah, that bar is in the first class area of the plane! I don't drink alcohol but I still want to fly on a cool plane like that as I'm sure the business class would rock too! And, with the traveling I do, if I do all of my travel on Virgin, I'll get tons of frequent flyer miles to take my family on super cool planes to super cool places!

So, fast forward to this trip to London. I start shopping for flights. I find the typical coach prices of $1200 - $1500. I find premium economy on Virgin Atlantic for $4500 but business class (the only one where you can lay flat to sleep) costs $6000 - $8000! What!?! Do I get to keep the plane when we get there? Seriously overpriced.

So I put my hunting hat on and start shopping. As I'm surfing site after site looking for deals, I came across a miracle. I found business class on Virgin Atlantic for $2900! I pee'd myself a bit and entered my credit card as fast as I could. Okay, I need to confess that it was business class on the flight out and premium economy on the way back. Whatever. I was going to fly the super fun, swank classy business class like James Bond. Swipe went my credit card. I was committed. I went to pick my seat and that's when my heart sunk.

I took my booking reference to the Virgin Atlantic booking site and it said that the booking code wasn't recognized. Huh? I cut and paste it so I know it was correct. I looked at the fine print. Yes, it was a booking under the name of Virgin Atlantic but serviced by Delta! What! Yes, the Delta airlines I've always knows. I don't have anything against Delta. In fact, my recent experiences with them have been quite good. BUT THEY AREN'T WHAT I WAS TRYING TO BOOK!

Anywho, on to day 1

DAY ONE

To get that super sexy fare of $2900 I had to take a 6:30 flight out of San Jose airport. That meant that I had to get up at 4:45 in the morning. When you have to get up early, you don't just get up early. You get up early and often. What I mean by that is my body won't let me get into a deep sleep due to fear of oversleeping (for the record, with the exception of every single morning class my freshmen year of college, I've never overslept for anything) so I wake up and look at the clock over and over again doing the math in my head of how much time I have left to sleep.  I pop out of bed at 4:35, get dressed and fly out the door. I get to San Jose airport at 5:30 in the morning. Who in the world would be at the airport at 5:30 in the morning?

Answer: EVERYONE! How many TSA agents were working? 3ish How many of them spoke English as a primary language? None!

Okay, it wasn't THAT bad. I've had far worse.

I get on the flight and since I'm in first I have a lot of time to just sit there while the plane fills with the other travelers. It's around this time that I panic and start to worry that I don't have enough apps to occupy my time (I'm quite ADD when it comes to apps. I can't focus on one for more than a few minutes before I want to delete it from my tablet). So I make the requisite rush to the Google Play store to get new apps:

Me looking for apps is like me in the public library trying to find a book to read. I don't know which books are good? Just like I don't know which apps are good. So I hit up my apps posse (Harrison and Olivia) to see what they recommend. For kids who text non stop you'd think they could respond to just one of mine! But no, they left me hanging so I was left to grab whatever I could before the plane took off. As luck would have it, two of the three I got require an internet connection to work. Just great.

It was all okay once breakfast was served.

Well done Delta. It's no Virgin Atlantic (like I know, I've never been on them) but very well done indeed.

I arrive at the Minneapolis airport to face my 5 hour layover. Yes, in addition to getting a 6:30 flight, I have to connect here and spend 5 hours in the airport. I'm starting to feel like Tom Hanks in Terminal.

But I must say that this is a nice airport. They have Snoopy (it's the home of Charles Shultz)

And lots of shops that make you feel all wintery and festive. Christmas must live here or something.

So here I sit with one more hour to go till I board the plane. I've spent the past four hours in the Delta lounge so I think I'm going to walk around the airport mall a bit and see what I can find. More to come.