ungrateful little snit

title character = me.

karl and i are going to colorado in mid feb to go skiing with ingrid and some of her pals who all rent a condo for a weekend every winter. fun fun fun, and not soooo expensive, given that its skiing for 3 days in colorado yeah.

but we've got to fly out there, yo. so i'm doing the whole flight fare search thing, and gettin all wishful for the good ol' days.

the good ol' days were when i could fly for free (yes, free) on my dad's pass. he's a pilot for delta (used to be for pan am, may it rest in peace), and before i turned 23 i had the ultimate deal: unlimited free airfare wherever they flew. and if there was room, i got upgraded to first class. that, my friends, was the life. the only drawback was that i flew stand-by. that is, i only got on the flight if all the paying passengers got on and there was still room. needless to say, there were never any april-in-paris, colorado-for-skiing, or beach-in-january vacations. it was more of a houston-in-august, london-in-november kind of thing. still.

the current, post 23 deal, is this: i still fly stand-by, only i'm lower in the list (that is, not only do all the paying passengers get on ahead of me, but so do all the other stand-bys). AND, i have to pay for the ticket. not full fare, granted. i pay $.036/mile domestic and $.018/mile international. basically, it works out to be about $200 round trip from philly to san diego and about $330 round trip from philly to athens, greece. just to give you an idea.

thing is, one can often get a $200 ticket across the country just by carefully checking and rechecking and rerechecking all the low-airfare sites (current fav: hotwire. tell 'em that 'allmimsy' sent you, if you please). so the whole being-the-daughter-of-a-pilot thing isn't quite such a benefit, now. [bitch, whine, grumble]

so, i'm perusing the sites for philly-to-denver tickets. looks like hotwire will be somewhere between $205 and $220. thing about hotwire is that they don't tell you the actual flight time (or airline) until AFTER you purchase. and tickets aren't refundable. bumMER. and with karl having an actual real job and everything, we kinda need to know when we're going to be getting back. word.

so i'm sitting here debating: do i buy the hotwire tickets and hope they're for a good time? or do i take the chance on my dad's pass, and hope we get on the plane?

<snively little spoiled brat tone>poor me, used to be able to fly for free, now have to pay like the rest of you suckers</snively little spoiled brat tone>