Cat Delivery

I was up excessively early this morning so that I could drive Cheryl to SFO to catch her early-morning flight to New Orleans, where she's attending a professional conference. But I don't mind, because I need to be up even earlier tomorrow to catch my own early-morning flight to Columbus for SMOFCon, and I should be time-shifted two three hours forward anyway.

( The SFO Parking Shuffle )

I just got a text message from her a few minutes ago saying she was on board and ready to go. It was foggy this morning, but as I recall, planes can take off in near-zero visibility. Landing is more of a problem, so flights can get scrambled on account of equipment not being where it belongs, but it sounds like she's okay.

Travel Planning

I'm dithering over a trip I plan to Montreal to attend an Anticipation planning meeting scheduled for April 18-19. I have just over 50,000 Northwest Airlines miles, which I intended to use to travel to the meeting. I've already taken Friday, April 17 off as a vacation day so I can travel out there, so I don't have to deal with a red-eye flight. The question is whether I should take another vacation day and fly back on Monday, April 20, and thus take an extra hotel night (three instead of two).

There's another factor influencing my choice. Both directions on the Northwest flights are a minimum of 25K miles, so I'll use my entire points balance for this trip. However, if I fly back on Monday, I can fly first class for the same 25K miles. (Oddly enough, on the flight in question, there are no coach seats, just a 25K mile first class seat.) So is it worth an extra $100 worth of hotel room and a vacation day to fly back in first class?

Addendum: The first-class flight requires two plane changes (MSP, SLC), whereas the coach flight is only one change (either DTW or MSP).