How Does Our Garden Grow?

A stretch of sunny weather in Birch Bay WA has finally validated our decision to stay close to home this summer.

We’ve accomplished some fairly serious yard cleanup and gardening. Here’s the view from our front door this morning.

The boat trailer in the background is empty because we finally launched our old Bayliner, thanks to our boat mechanic and our next-door neighbors’ kind loan of their pickup truck (again!).

Our back yard features our raised mini-gardens. We’re looking forward hopefully to bumper crops of  tomatoes, garlic, apples, and Shishito peppers, having already enjoyed an abundance of asparagus and sugar snap peas, along with enough sour cherries for one delicious pie. We also harvest basil, oregano, and thyme. 

Our back yard, nestled along the shore of majestic Thunderbird Lake, described cruelly but more accurately as an artificial holding pond in our gated community, is our refuge and our delight at this time of year.

Sitting out in the twilight is one of life’s simple pleasures.

We plan some travel in August. For now, there’s no place better than home.

Mending Nets and Planning Travel

 

A Time to Fish and a Time to Mend the Nets

Since our last post exactly one month ago, we’ve been figuratively mending nets at home.

We wish we could say we’ve been enjoying glorious weather, but that’s been a mixed bag in Birch Bay, some sunny days but interspersed with rain and clouds and dreariness.

Nonetheless, our garden is planted, our yard is weeded, our boat is ready to be launched, and we’re generally up to date with household chores and responsibilities.

Almost before we knew it, we were credited by Alaska Airlines for flying 100,000 miles in 2024, thus qualifying us for one more year of top tier OneWorld Emerald status in 2025. Does this mean we put all thoughts of travel aside? Of course not!

First of all, we have to keep an eye on our Alaska Airlines account. Partner airline flights can be slow to post. A prime example is Condor, a carrier that’s good to fly but but not so good to deal with on the ground. We’ve been waiting for our outbound SEA-FRA flight with grandson Jace to post since we flew it March 23.

A helpful Alaska phone agent finally added it manually to our accounts this past week. That added not only 5,109 EQMs (Elite Qualifying Miles that count toward status) to our accounts, but the paid business class fares gave us a total of 22,991 miles, a significant amount well worth pursuing. We each have more than 110,00 EQMs in our accounts.

Second, we help relatives, friends, and neighbors with their flight plans. Some of them read our blog and they know who they are. Kathy provides the majority of expertise, but both of us enjoy assisting others and simultaneously armchair traveling. It also keeps us in practice for our own travels.

Finally, we continue to monitor air fares and hotels on trips we’ve already booked, looking for price reductions and better alternatives. We think that is one of the most useful tips we can offer fellow travelers. That's currently an easy task, because we have a surprisingly short list of upcoming trips on our travel agenda.

The first one is a flight to Albuquerque in August, and a rental car drive up to Colorado.

The second is a flight to Europe followed by a transatlantic cruise from Lisbon to Miami in November.

Third, we’re hoping to attend the next Oz Fest in Adelaide,Australia, in May 2025. We already snagged separate outbound business class award tickets (shades of our separate 2022 flights from Fiji homeward), and just this morning we booked business class award tickets together for a return flight, all on points (air miles). We consider such flights to be “placeholders,” and we (Kathy) will continue to look for improvements.

Remember the New Yorker’s reply to the tourist who asked “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?”

“Practice.”

We keep in practice by helping others with their travel plans, and mending and minding our own nets by spending upwards of an hour most days at the computer, reading travel blogs and forums, and checking our paid Expert Flyer subscription for flights to Australia. as well as a few other destinations on behalf of family and friends.

Once the mending has concluded, we'll be "fishing" - traveling again - almost before we know it. 

 

Carefree in Cairns at ‘Oz Fest 20’

It’s gotten to be an annual habit for Kathy and Brian.

Oz Fest is the name of a “FlyerTalk Do,” or get-together, organized by Australian members of the FlyerTalk internet forum for other members from around the world. The two of us stumbled upon the fourth one, held in Melbourne in 2007, and have been returning annually ever since.

For us it was 13 consecutive Oz Fests until Covid got in the way for two years, and three more since then, for a total attendance at 16 of 20 Oz Fests.

We’ve met a lot of great people, made some lifelong friendships, and have seen more of Australia than most Australians have (according to Aussies).

Our second visit to Cairns was at least as much fun as our first.

The Hilton was a decent property in a terrific location. We never tired of our waterfront view.

Our first “official” FlyerTalk dinner was Friday night at Dundee’s, around the corner from the Hilton.

The evening included a surprise birthday cake and a round of Happy Birthday for Kathy and our friend Sue, both of whom were celebrating birthdays.

Saturday featured a one-hour ride on the Kuranda Scenic Railway, originally built in the 1880s as a mining train.

We visited the town of Kuranda long enough to get a (drum roll…) tourism complex. Check out the sign.

Then it was a ride back down on the Kuranda Skyrail gondola system.

A dinner cruise featured good fellowship and good food Saturday evening.

Sunday afternoon a number of us took a 45-minute catamaran ride out to Green Island, with plans to view the Great Barrier Reef by snorkeling or (our choice) a glass-bottom boat ride. 

The trip out was so choppy that we contented ourselves with walking around the highly developed island for awhile. 

Fortunately the trip back was considerably smoother.

Our farewell dinner Sunday evening took place at the Cairns RSL, Australia’s Returned & Services League, a benevolent organization for current and former members of Australia’s military forces.

Almost before we knew it, another Oz Fest had come to an end. 

Volunteers have already stepped up to organize next year’s Oz Fest in Adelaide, and we’ve signed up.

Our trip home featured flights at reasonable hours, starting Monday noon with a two-hour flight to Brisbane on Qantas.

We stayed at a reasonably swanky Pullman, part of the Accor hotel chain, where our room featured a great view of the BNE control tower.

We could barely make out the air traffic controllers moving around. Are they peering back at us?

Two of our Brisbane-based friends, Bevan and Ross, joined us for drinks and dinner.

Tuesday morning we boarded a United 787 and flew Polaris business class to SFO.

The flight was fine, although we found the United business suite a little more crowded than those we’ve experienced on other airlines, including most recently Fiji.

It was also possibly the bumpiest transoceanic flight we’ve ever experienced.

Once landed at SFO, we took the familiar walk across most of the terminal to reach our domestic UA connection to SEA. 

The TSA checkpoint was somewhat chaotic and crowded, featuring a longer wait in the PreCheck line than the regular line.

A friendly line-minder confirmed that “it’s always like that.”

Sadly, we were seated in economy for the short SFO-SEA hop, but had plenty of room in Row 21 exit row seats.

We stopped for the night at the SEA DoubleTree, giving up our usual tower room for a fairly dingy room near the pool. It was worth it for a nap after our nearly 20-hour trip from Brisbane.

We tried out Sharp’s Roaster House for an early dinner one block up and across International Boulevard. After two disappointing visits over the past decade, we were happy we’d read the many positive reviews and given it another chance. The Happy Hour menu suited us nicely. 

After a few hours of sleep, we particularly appreciated the Alaska Lounge barista-made Cappuccinos before boarding our noontime flight to Bellingham.

We even got upgraded to first on the regional jet for the 25-minute SEA-BLI flight. Whoopee! It was one of the bumpiest short flights we’ve experienced. What is it about the weather in late May?

One Birch Bay Village neighbor picked us up and drove us home. Our garden looks terrific, thanks to another neighbor’s efforts.

It’s always great to be back home, especially when the sun is shining.

The Trip to Cairns

We enjoyed a pleasant onward journey from LAX to Nadi, Fiji (NAN)!to Sydney (SYD) to Cairns (CNS).

Fiji Airways offered us our choice of OneWorld or Star.Alliance Lounge at the Tom Bradley International Terminal (TBIT). The best news is that Fiji (FJ) is now participating in TSA PreCheck, so we zipped through an empty line, bypassing at least of couple of hundred passengers queued in the regular line.

As our flight was departing just before Midnight, we didn’t eat or drink, other than one token glass of Champagne.

It’s a fair walk of 10 minutes to the hoarding gates, and Fiji annoyingly requested passengers to be there 90 minutes before the flight completely unnecessarily. We were waiting at least 15 minutes before the crew arrived.

Eventually we boarded the A350 and settled in.

Kathy went straight to sleep, but Brian savored a pastrami sandwich first.

We both got several hours of sleep in very comfortable flatbed seats on this 11-hour flight. We enjoyed blintzes for breakfast.

Fiji is 19 hours ahead of Pacific Daylight Saving Time, so we landed at NAN in the dark around 6 AM. We love the views from the two cameras. The green shape is the forward landing gear down.

Soon we were parked at the gate.

The transit line for connecting flights was empty, and within a few minutes we were seated in the pleasant Fiji Premier Lounge, with its striking wall of (real) plants.

We felt no need of showers or anything to eat, so just relaxed before boarding the very same A350, this time bound for Sydney.

About four hours later we were landing at SYD.

Immigration was a breeze with its photo ID gates, our room at the Rydges Hotel across from International Arrivals was ready before noon, and we relaxed in comfort.

The next morning we walked across the street to the free Qantas transfer bus, preferred our boarding passes, cleared security, and stood for the 10-minute airside bus ride to the Qantas domestic terminal.

After a visit to the Qantas Business Lounge, and a queue for excellent Cappuccinos,we boarded our QF flight to CNS.

Three hours and an Uber ride later, we arrived at the Cairns Hilton, our home for the next five nights.