Keith's Amusing Musings

Between September 12 and October 19 I will be traveling to 7 cities in 6 countries on 4 continents. In order, I will visit Orlando, Tokyo, Munich, Portland, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo and Madrid. The only personal trip in the bunch is to South America to celebrate the 10-year wedding anniversary of some of our closest friends from school. We are also planning a vacation in Thailand around Thanksgiving.

Remember how I was worrying whether I would attain United 1K status again for 2008? Umm, let’s just say that will no longer be a problem with the travel planned between now and the rest of the year.

If all goes as planned, by the end of the year I will have increased my Countries Visited list to 25 — adding Sweden, Japan, Argentina, Brazil and Thailand between May and November this year. Woohoo!

TB and I celebrated our 3-year anniversary in Las Vegas this past weekend. She booked a package deal through USAir that had us fly direct from Seattle and stay at the Wynn for 4 nights. It was a nice getaway even though I have been to Vegas 4 times in 2 years. TB hadn’t been to Vegas in 5+ years so there were a lot of things she hadn’t seen. Random notables:

1. It was hot: 105+ during the day and 80+ at night.
2. It was crowded: Labor Day weekend.
3. There are no deals left on the Strip: Food & gambling are no longer reasonably priced. You can’t beat the accommodations, however.
4. Free Wi-Fi @ the Wynn: The Sugar & Ice restaurant (located in the Esplanade) offers free Wi-Fi. Many guests don’t know about it though and they wind up paying $11.99/day.
5. I officially hate the number 7: Craps was crap for me this trip.
6. ‘The States’ produced by The History Channel rocks: This DVD set is 8 hours of some of the most interesting and enlightening information about our country I’ve viewed in a long time. A great way to spend a weekend morning/afternoon.
7. It’s easy to get in, but hard to get out: Our trip to Vegas was perfectly smooth. Our return to Seattle was fraught with delays, airplane maintenance issues and gate changes. The highlights of the return trip were the perks we received due to my 1K status on United. First, we avoided the long, post-Labor Day security line because the ticketing agent put a V.I.P. stamp on our boarding passes. Second, we had an exit row to ourselves. The plane was packed to the gills, but there was no one in the middle seat between us. Membership has its privileges.

I will stop the list at 7 since it is a number I saw all too often at all the wrong times last weekend.