Inbound

For this year’s Memorial Weekend I ventured down to Clearwater Beach, Florida to enjoy the beautiful beach with my girlfriend and a couple of friends. Our Southwest direct flight from Indianapolis to Tampa Bay left early Saturday morning. Now I am not big on spending money so I used my Southwest points to fly three of us and only paid $33.60. The best part is I just earned my Southwest Companion pass so my girlfriend flies free when I fly whether I pay cash or with points. I earned most of my points through my Southwest Credit card. The flight itself went without any problems and we landed at 8:30 AM at Tampa Bay International Airport and that is where I made a rare travel blunder….

After taking Uber all the way from Tampa Bay to our hotel in Clearwater Beach I realized I had left my bag on the curb… So I took the same Uber driver all the way back to the airport and the bag was already gone but my water bottle was still sitting there. I contacted lost and found, talked with all the airline baggage attendants, and even talked with traffic officers and the bag was gone. Luckily it was one of my smaller bags and I didn’t have any of my valuables in it. I didn’t have to take an Uber back as my friend was driving in at the same time so that was fortunate as well. On the way back we stopped by a grocery store to pick clothes for myself, lunch, drinks, and food for the weekend. Despite landing at 8:30 AM I didn’t really get to Clearwater Beach until noon but my girlfriend was able to enjoy the hotel.

For my first trip of 2015 I booked a Colorado snowboarding trip over Martin Luther King Jr. weekend with some old buddies. I managed to book the flights nearly four months ago thanks to Southwest’s generous cancellation policies. They allow you to cancel and rebook flights up to 24 hours prior to flight, granted you don’t get your money back directly, the difference does become a travel voucher which is good for use within one year. With this is in mind, I was able to rebook the flights later on and ended up saving an additional $25 which I will use when I head back to Colorado later this summer. The actual flights themselves went without a hitch and got window seats both ways. I bought the early bird add-on for the return flight because I knew I would be stuck in the middle of the mountains with limited coverage in order to check-in within 24 hours to secure a decent boarding position.