Travels of Pete

The last four years for New Years we have booked a hotel room in downtown Minneapolis. This is kind of fun, we have dinner, have some drinks, usually end up at Brit's enjoying the band. We get up the next day and have breakfast at Hell's Kitchen. Not too terribly exciting but it works for us. We have been going Salt Lake City the last three years to visit Karen's brother and his family and we usually try to ski one day while we are there. We decided to change up our new years routine this year and spend new years in Park City and visit Jerry and his family after skiing. We flew into Salt Lake on New Years Eve day. I love Hotwire.com, I have gotten great deals on hotels over the years and I have also gotten great deals on rental cars. I booked the rental car through Hotwire, it was about $130 for four and a half days. We got a little Corolla, with the floor mats removed of course, because of the Toyota recall. We felt kind of bad because we tracked a lot of dir...

It was a busy personal travel year for me; Salt Lake City in February, Puerto Aventuras in February, Puerto Morelos in July, Isla Mujeres in November and Park City over New Years. I am a very lucky person, three dive trips and two ski trips in a year. On the other hand work travel was minimal, until the end of the year. I went to Charleston South Carolina in April to install equipment and LA in August for a seminar. Then all hell broke loose; the beginning of November I was diving in Isla Mujeres, followed by a seminar in Dallas. In December I went to Hawaii for a seminar and maintenance on equipment. I ended the year with trips to Bolivia and Parks City UT. The La Paz trip was offered to someone else but they declined so I was offered the trip and unfortunately I had very time to decide. I was a little unsure about going to Bolivia after I read the warnings on the state department website. The warnings about La Paz were mostly were about not taking  gypsy cabs ...

The  no- Dive  (almost) Dive Vacation Another year and another of my wife's shopping weekend at our house. If you have read any previous posts you will see that most years Karen’s aunts, cousins, nieces and girlfriends come to our house to get together and do a little early Christmas shopping. It just so happens that I love to dive so I go diving for four or five days, usually Mexico but I did go  to Key West one year. It works out well, they don’t have to worry about having one male in the house with twenty five or so women and I get to go diving. I love Isla Mujeres, the diving is good, North Beach is beautiful and it is flat out cheap to stay, dive and eat on Isla. This has been one of the quietest hurricane seasons in recent history so I thought I was not going to have a problem with the weather. Oh well, there is always next year. I used frequent flier miles to book my ticket and the only option I had was first class. ...

I love my job, I got the Hawaii training again, I flew down a couple of days a head of time so I could squeeze in a dive. I had a direct flight on the way down, I opted to pay the extra $25 to get an exit row seat and it was worth it. I left Minneapolis at 11:30 AM and arrived in Honolulu at 4:10 PM. Once I collected my luggage I was off to find the rental cars. I was stumped for several minutes until I saw the wiki wiki buses, then I remembered from my last trip here that they will take me to the rental car location.  I feel sorry for first timers to the Honolulu airport, they must wander around for hours trying to find the rental cars.  I fired up my GPS and headed to the Doubletree Waikiki, I had stayed here last time and it is definitely a nice hotel for the money. My room was $120 per night, of course I had to pay a parking fee for my rental car. I unpacked and headed out to explore Waikiki. I eventually ended up at Cheeseburger in Paradaise for dinner, just down the ...

I like teaching the service and maintenance seminars. Fly in on Monday and set up, first class Tuesday and Wednesday, second class Thursday and Friday. Pack-up and fly home on Friday. Easy and fun! The hotel for this seminar was better than most, close to the airport. It appeared to be new, I believe it wasn't but it was recently renovated. The front desk people were great. The banquet people were extremely professional, and the food at the restaurant was good. The rooms were nice; big flat screen TVs.  What I like most about the the hotel was the large foyer area (I am not sure what else to call it) outside the banquet rooms. It had free wifi and there were a dozen very comfortable computer  stations with up to date computers. The area had couches and chairs strategically placed to allow a large group of people to sit together but still have privacy. The hotel was an unbelievable $120 per night, the cost of living in Texas is lower than most major metropolitan areas. Th...

I like flying to the west coast I had a 11:35 AM flight and I was in LA by 1:30 PM, as opposed to when I fly east, I will have a 7:30 AM flight and I won't land until almost noon. Unfortunately the return trip isn't as nice, the last flight out of LA is at 5:00 PM. Too early for me to finish class, pack up and make it to the airport. My only alternative is the red eye, leave at 12:30 AM and arrive in Minneapolis at 6:00 AM. My company rented with Avis for years but several years ago they started renting with Hertz, for some reason I was booked with Avis again, which is fine with me. My only complaint with Avis was the last time that I rented form them (I am Preferred) they did not have my car ready and I had to go to the rental desk to get my car. It happened again in LA, I was dropped at the Preferred building, I checked the board for my name and once again there was not car space indicated on the board so I had to stand in line at the Preferred desk. I was doing a slow bur...