and for a very good reason. Part of the arrangements for our own trip to Germany in May was having our younger son, Eric, become dog/house sitter for us, and watching over Grandpa as well. Grandpa did move to the nursing home before we left, of course, so that became less complicated. Our "carrot" for Eric when we asked him in January was using my air miles for a ticket to have him go visit Scott himself later in the year.
Well, it's a done deal now. He leaves on August 5 and returns on August 24. When I first started looking into flights and such for him, I had a real challenge. Nothing for less than 60,000 miles each way from Grand Rapids. And I only have 60K miles total. Finally found Chicago to Frankfurt which would have been a 90K mile trip (on air miles.) How much to buy extra miles? Would have been another $500. So no go there.
Gave Eric the "assignment" to figure out what East Coast cities had direct flight to Frankfurt. See, the ace up my sleeve was my Citicard AirMiles. I'd been accumulating those for a long time on my original Citibank card. We'd used them to go visit my sister Judy in 2001, and those miles also got Eric out to the Naval Academy and back in 2004. The program has been discontinued, though, and the miles will expire in October. So they had to be used this summer...
Eric gave me some cities to check out on AA.com. Still nothing for less than 60K each way. In desperation, I just started entering cities. Finally found 60K total trip from Richmond, Virginia. Started looking into that and realized that the Richmond flight would go first to Dallas then to Frankfurt. Hmmm...how many miles would we need from Dallas? Sure enough, I found just a few dates that had 30K each way flights. Bingo! Put a 5 day hold on a reservation, 60K miles total. Now to clear it with Scott.
Took Scott a few days to find out for sure, but yesterday he finally got clearance to take whatever leave he wanted to within that time frame. (Not necessarily the whole time. Eric will be ok with just hanging out at Scott's some of the time.) So this morning, I finally called Citibank AirMiles to see about tickets from Grand Rapids to Dallas.
After a lot of waiting, they determined (so they said) that there was ONE seat left from Dallas to GR on the return flight, and the outbound flight was ok, too. So that was set. Then back to AA.com to confirm the reservation. All ok, other than excruciatingly slow on dialup (on dialup so I could print out anything I needed to) until I got to the purchase screen. It then informed me that there had been a price change. I knew there would be a $135 tax charge but this screen said the FARE would be $134.20. That seemed to be a new charge so I did as the screen suggested and called American Airlines directly to "get the original rate." After being transferred about four times, we finally determined that it was the TAX that was changing, not any additional charge. So then I went through the rest of the process and Eric now has tickets to Frankfurt and back.
I sigh because that 60K miles would have probably bought me a round trip ticket to Paris at the right time. Someday I will return there! I am happy, though, that my boys will get to spend a couple of weeks together. Sounds like London and Paris are in their plans.
This will be just the boost Eric needs. He found out last night that his appeal has been denied. He's going to talk to them again today but looks like his chances of getting into GVSU's School of Nursing are getting smaller each day. Basically the advisor lied to the board - she had told Eric that there were no notes from the meeting, then apparently produced full notes for the board that showed she had told him he couldn't take the Psychology class a third time. It's really hard not to get involved personally in this, but I do recognize it's Eric's battle for now. If he exhausts all possibilities, though...
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