The paper shredder I got Lillie for her 28th birthday had set a pretty high bar for gifts.

So for Lillie's 30th, we're heading to Cape Town, South Africa for the next several days.  Making it all the better, we're heading there via Hong Kong in first class on Cathay Pacific--no more of this business class nonsense!

We'll be celebrating the big day with Krug champagne and caviar on the 16.5 hour flight from JFK to Hong Kong.

Stay tuned for the trip report...in the meantime, happy 30th birthday Lillie!

Since we all (Ziz included) work at the same place, we all had 11 days off between Christmas and New Year.  So naturally we embarked on a 3,100 mile road trip.

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December 24, 2009 | Missoula, Montana

Christmas Eve was spent in Missoula, Montana at the Holiday Inn (on Priority Club points, of course).  Dined on some excellent buffalo and elk at a cozy dinner across the street at the Pearl Cafe.

December 25, 2009 | Victor, Idaho

Our Christmas destination was an awesomely stylish cabin in Victor, Idaho with our college friends Cully and Rew.

As you might imagine, Victor is a small town so we didn't have any dining out options.  Luckily we grabbed some generic pizza crust and beer at the Wal-Mart in Missoula.  Never has Christmas dinner been so classy.

December 26, 2009 | Victor, Idaho and Jackson, Wyoming

On Boxing Day, we came to the realization that Zizou was incapable of laying down due to some sort of pain in his chest area.  We picked up some aspirin from the store in hopes of it reducing some inflammation.

Then instead of snowshoeing in the Grand Tetons, we did a little cruise in the Highlander through the National Elk Refuge outside of Jackson, Wyoming.  We saw some elk from several hundred yards away, but the real stars were bighorn sheep.

Also great views of the Tetons…

December 27, 2009 | Driggs, Idaho and Salt Lake City, Utah

"Woke up" after a very long night with a dog in considerable pain.  The only way I could get him to lay down through the night was to scoop him up and flip him like a Tetris piece onto his side.  Horrible stuff.

Of course things were further complicated because it was a Sunday, but I was easily able to get ahold of the Driggs Veterinary Clinic to line up an "emergency" vet visit.  After some poking, prodding, and x-raying, the vet agreed there must be some sort of pulled muscle in his chest area.  The sad part about that diagnosis is that he hadn't done anything but sleep in the car to injure himself.

So with some good anti-inflammatory drugs in hand (Rimadyl), we crossed our fingers and set course for Salt Lake City.  Half way through the drive, Ziz laid down independently for the first time in almost two days.  Huzzah!

By the time we arrived in Salt Lake City, he was ready to hang out with his buddy Oscar…

December 28, 2009 | Salt Lake City, Utah

Showing off the diversity of the specie…

Great to see Adam and Juliette, our friends and former roommates in Chicago.  As touristy as we got in SLC was a stroll around Temple Square to check out the Christmas lights and some ice skating.  Next time we'll visit the Mormon food bank that purportedly serves the best chocolate milk on earth at the end of the tour.

December 29, 2009 | Las Vegas, Nevada

The drive down to Vegas was amazingly our first poor road conditions of the trip (and the last stretch it was a concern).  Most of our friends will be horrified to know that we spent zero time on the strip and just went straight to our hotel west of the strip—Element in Summerlin, the eco-friendly version of Westin.

This turned out to be a really great hotel, and earned lots of Starwood points in the process.  From my research, this and the Westin on the strip are the only two (decent) hotels that allow big dogs.  Our night in Vegas consisted of running around with Zizou at a giant park (Gardens Park) and then eating a bunch of sushi at Lahaina Grill.  Easily in bed before midnight.

December 30, 2009 | Red Rock Canyon, Nevada and Los Angeles, California

After breakfast, we popped over to Red Rock to get a little hike in.  Some cool scenery that's very different than anything in the Northwest.

Our only family photo from the trip:

The 250 mile drive to Los Angeles was our worst leg of the trip, by far—terrible traffic and rain when we arrived in LA!  No matter, we had a great dinner with family and friends at my parents' house

December 31, 2009 | Los Angeles, California

Arun was kind enough to score Ziz (and us) an invite to an exclusive/hipster loft New Year's party.  A great way to celebrate our fifth anniversary since picking him up from Idaho.

Check out this handsome dog at the party:

January 1, 2010 | Pasadena, California

Time for the Rose Bowl!

Good news: we had grandstand tickets for the Rose Bowl Parade.  Bad news: we had to be there before 7am—not ideal the morning after NYE.  It was surprisingly entertaining as we saw: Jack Hannah (Columbus Zoo), Jackie Chan, and Jared from Subway.

The weather was perfect for the game—not to mention a great stadium, loud fans, TBDBITL, sunset over the San Gabriel mountains, and an excellent win by the Buckeyes.

O-H-I-O.

Big thanks to Naveena for securing a boat load of game tickets, and my parents for scoring the parade tickets.

January 2, 2010 | Stockton, California and Portland, Oregon

After the Rose Bowl, we made the late night drive to Stockton so we could knock out ~330 miles from the 1,100 mile drive back home.  It would be mostly all-business just to hustle back home in time for work on the 4th.

We thought about trying to just plow all the way to Seattle from Stockton, but we sputtered out after 630 miles and decided to crash at Hotel Monaco in Portland.

January 3, 2010 | Seattle

3,100 miles later, Ziz took in the smell of home.

At the end of this trip, the states visited scoreboard for the Klugusamys looks like this:

• Vinod – 42
• Lillie – 36
• Zizou – 9

Lillie and I will get to 50 eventually, but Ziz will probably have to settle with just cracking double digits.

(Catching up on some old stuff…)

For a little change of pace this year, the Ponnusamy family rented a house on the Deschutes River in Bend, Oregon to celebrate Thanksgiving 2009.  Whoever's idea it was, it was brilliant.

Zizou enjoyed staring down the hissing swans from the dock.  While he never jumped into the water to attack them, when we were canoeing on this same water he did jump out of the canoe and swim to shore.

A highlight was a loop hike around Smith Rock State Park—an especially popular spot for rock climbers.  Some nice views of Mount Bachelor in the distance:

A couple shots of the appropriately named Monkey Face rock—complete with rock climbers:

More rock climbers:

Email and RSS subscribers will need to click over to klugusamy.com to view the below photos--sorry 'bout that.

I'll write a separate post on logistics on the ground for those interested.  This post will be more meat and potatoes.

First, a map to illustrate exactly where Churchill, Manitoba is.  Still south of the Arctic Circle, but this trip really put into perspective for us how massive Canada is.  Look at how big Hudson Bay is alone!
       

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Overall, it was a highly productive 27 hours we spent in Churchill.  The polar bear excursion kicked off at 7:30am with a motel pickup, and we were on board the Tundra Buggy at 8:30am.

Within 30 minutes of setting off, we saw two males sparring on the ice (imagine two bears on hind feet punching one another).  Sadly these guys were super far away, so there were no photo opportunities.

Speaking of photos, here's a selection of the better ones.

At the end of the day, it was definitely amazing to see these beasts in their natural habitat.  Remaining observations will be in the next post…

We just got back to Winnipeg from Churchill after a day of polar bearing.  From a quick look at the photos, there are a few keepers.  But those will wait until a proper post and trip report upon return to Seattle.

In the meantime, here's some Where's Waldo? action.  It's a glimpse of what a partially frozen Hudson Bay looks like on a 4 degree cloudy day.

More to come soon…

Anyone who knows me should be aware of my affinity for frequent flyer miles.  i.e. hair transplant consultations, renting three cars every weekend for two months to park on our driveway and immediately return, flying to Boston to pick up lobsters for dinner, et cetera.

However, I'm sorta at the point I've stopped creatively collecting because we just don't have the vacation time to even spend what we currently have in the bank.  That's a sad statement on many levels, but also a testament to the extent of earning opportunities out there.

Anyway, if you have 20 minutes to spare and are curious about this weird hobby, I highly encourage you to watch this little film.  It's a great glimpse into the mindset that leisurely flying to Singapore for a short weekend (and racking up oodles of miles in the process) is totally normal  Also it served as a reminder to me of just how minor league I am in this game.

Happy frequent flying!

Frequent Flyer from Gabriel Leigh on Vimeo.

Well, this one sorta miraculously fell together.  For a quick few days this November we'll be in Churchill, Manitoba to check out some Polar Bears.  Then later in life after they've all drowned, we'll be able to tell our grandchildren: "Back in our day, we had Polar Bears…"  And then we'll all have a cry together.

Anyway, the rest of this post is all about the logistics behind the booking of this trip as I'm sorta proud of it.  So that's a warning to most that this is going to get boring real quick…

In an economy where people are actually employed, these trips cost several thousand per person and are booked solid with old people and photographers.  To view the polar bears in Churchill you cruise around in these big ol' Tundra Buggies. 

No chance we'd be paying those sort of prices, though.  There are three parts to the puzzle to see Churchill polar bears independently/cheaply:

• Tundra Buggy reservations – sent an email and got a list of available dates for independent travelers.  The only downside was that they didn't have any consecutive days.  So we'd only be able to do one day out on the tundra.  Better than nothing, I'd say.
• Motel reservations – combed the internets for email addresses for all the lodging in Churchill.  The number of rooms in Churchill is actually very small, so I got a totally mixed bag of responses regarding availability and dates.
• Flights – you can fly any number of major airlines to Winnipeg and then you can hop Calm Air up to Churchill.  This Winnipeg to Churchill flight alone is $1,000 USD round-trip per person.  (of course we didn't pay that much!)

End of October through early November is when you want to be in Churchill, so after looking at Buggy and motel availability I was happy that November 4 turned out to be the sweet spot.  Also, keep in mind I started this process in August—so I wasn't really planning too far ahead.

Flights from Seattle to Winnipeg were a cinch.  I snagged award tickets on Northwest with my first choice of dates and flight times.

Now how to get those $1,000 Calm Air tickets on the cheap?  Brace yourself.  The only avenue to redeem tickets with Calm Air is through a Canadian scheme called Air Miles (generic name, eh?).  So I signed up for an account with them.  Now I just needed to scrounge up 850 Air Miles for each Winnipeg-Churchill roundtrip.

I then discovered that with Priority Club (Holiday Inn, et al) you can convert 10,000 PC points into 250 Air Miles.  So I needed 70K PC points to get 1,750 Air Miles—enough for two tickets.  That sounds like a lot of points, but PC points are cheap to acquire. To start out, I already had 15K in my account from a single night stay in Bend, Oregon that cost a whopping $90.

Next thing you know, I had a Priority Club Visa in my wallet that earned 45K points for a $59 annual fee and then I straight up purchased 10K PC points directly for $60.  Now I had the 70K PC points I needed.  Just a short wait after redemption with PC, my Air Miles balance jumped to 1,750 and I immediately redeemed those for our Calm Air flights to Churchill.

Got it?  For a glimmer of transparency (as I think readers might be curious), here are the price breakdowns for this trip:

• Winnipeg to Churchill flights: $353
  • Again, this would be $2K total if booked through "normal" channels—my new all time favorite redemption of points!
    • To acquire PC points: $119 (not including the cost of points earned incidentally from the Bend stay)
    • To redeem the Air Miles I had to drop $234 in "taxes and fees"
• Seattle to Winnipeg flights: $94.02 plus 50K SkyMiles
  
• Tundra Buggy: $700
  • That's for a full day of two people out scouting Polar Bears—including hot cocoa and soup. 
• Churchill Motel: $188
  • No points redemptions available in Churchill, sadly!  And prices are high across the board.
• Winnipeg Hotel (2 nights): $90 plus 5,600 Starwood Points
  
• Car Rental in Winnipeg: $32
  
• Vacation days: 2
  

Grand Total: $1,457.02 plus misc points (which were earned on the cheap)

Everyone values their pesos differently.  And many people might not even think Hudson Bay in November sounds like fun.  But for our money, this is great bang for the buck on a once in a lifetime trip.  Plus I'm not going to lie, it was a very fun puzzle to put together.

Again emphasizing that it's very possible to travel in a style well beyond your means while staying within your means.  Any questions?  (And props to anyone who read this far.)

Otherwise, expect the full trip report and photos here the week of November 2nd!