This was NOT child abuse!
Creating memory dividends with my grandson
Yes, I know, it’s kind of a strange title. But read along, and I think you will agree with it.
Where do we travel today?
This is a travel, financial planning, and trackchasing newsletter. Today, we’re going to focus on travel. Where should we travel?
How about Indianapolis, Indiana, and Tokyo, Japan? Is that an odd combination?
On the road again.
I love to hear Willie Nelson sing On the Road Again. In 2024, I traveled away from home on weekends forty-five times. Does that seem like a lot? It’s pretty routine for me.
Buy one, get one free…sort of.
Because I travel so much, I am always looking for efficiencies. I have learned to combine one weekend of travel with another.
I found there is not always a need to return to our modest seaside cottage in San Clemente, California, from one trip to the next in the middle of the week. I can enjoy travel during one weekend and then spend the middle of the week getting to some faraway place to enjoy weekend number two. This plan reduces trips to the airport, packing, and more from two to one.
He who travels fastest travels alone.
When I say “I,” I commonly mean “I.” Carol is a homebody. Left to her own devices, she would probably never travel away from our house a single day. On the other hand, for whatever reason, I am a road warrior.
As a kid, I never traveled. When I started in business, I traveled a couple of days each week for my entire 30-year business career. When I retired 23 years ago, I stepped things up a notch. Now I travel 160-180 nights a year.
Carol is invited on every trip.
What about Carol, the homebody? She still travels on average 60 nights a year. What does this tell you? I am a good salesman. Sixty nights compared to 160 nights isn’t much. But sixty nights, compared to most people we know, is a lot of travel.
Ready?
Ready to go to Indianapolis and then Tokyo? Me too.
Indy, here we come.
Why Indianapolis? They were holding the Big Ten basketball tournament in Circle City. Our favorite team, UCLA, joined the Big Ten conference this year. The Big “10“ conference has 18 teams, but just 15 of those 18 teams make it to the end-of-season Big Ten tournament. I guess this is the new math we are dealing with.
Why do this? Memory dividends.
I have mentioned to you many times the benefits I see with the “Die with Zero” concept. Die with Zero means it’s a great idea to create memory dividends to enjoy life to the fullest. While you’re doing that, if you can create memory dividends for others, that’s even better.
Often, that means spending just a little bit more money than you might’ve thought you might spend. That’s no problem, right? DWZ funds are above and beyond what you have set aside for your basic needs. DWZ funds are those funds that will rot away in your investment accounts until you kick the bucket, and those funds are released to your heirs if you don’t use them.
Basketball is my sport.
I’m a big basketball fan. Carol and I are UCLA basketball season ticket holders. We drive three hours round-trip to each home game.
Let’s meet Mitch!
Our grandson Mitch is a big sports fan, too. He lives in Texas. Mitch would be joining me in Indianapolis. He’s 16 years old. Mitch and I will be creating lots of memory dividends this weekend. I would fly him up from his home to Indianapolis. We would watch basketball games, eat fun food, and do anything else that came across our travel landscape.
Where would we stay?
We would stay at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Indianapolis. As you might imagine, the Hyatt Regency is a preferred hotel for teams and fans during a big week that includes the Big Ten basketball tournament.
You paid how much?
When demand is high, prices are high. I would be at the Hyatt Regency for five nights at $550 per night. Does $550 a night for a hotel in Indianapolis seem expensive? It does to me.
Let’s learn from others’ mistakes.
They say you can only see 10% of the iceberg if you’re a passenger on the Titanic. It’s the other 90% that provides the intrigue.
It’s all about the benefits.
I’ve told you in the past about credit card arbitrage. Yes, I would be paying more than $550 per night for five nights at the Hyatt Regency. However, our stay came with benefits. Benefits make the difference.
At those rates, I earned a lot of Hyatt frequent stay points. How many? My five-night stay, where the bill was just over $2,700, not only paid for five nights at the Hyatt Regency during Big 10 basketball week. Those points paid for an additional TWENTY-TWO NIGHTS at a Hyatt Place or Hyatt House hotel in the future.
That meant Hyatt gave me 27 nights of hotel stays for a $2,700 spend, including five nights at one of their top properties during one of Indianapolis’s biggest weeks of the year. I would average about $100 a night for 27 nights of hotel stay. The best retail price for those hotels would be around $6,000 (5×550 + 22×150). That’s a fantastic deal.
But wait! There’s more.
In addition, the Hyatt Regency gave me and my guests a $90 daily credit for appetizers (yes, that $90 worth of appetizers plus the beer) at the hotel bar and a $90 breakfast credit at the hotel restaurant. We pretty much maxed out on those credits. $180 worth of credits over five days is a $900 benefit.
Let’s hear you say it.
My lifelong mantra has always been, “I don’t want to buy cheap stuff cheap. I want to buy good stuff cheap.” That was accomplished at the Hyatt Regency.
Enjoy, enjoy, and do it efficiently.
When I travel, especially with friends and family, I want to maximize the vacation’s enjoyment and minimize the trip’s logistical part so that logistics don’t slow us down.
No need for a rental car.
Right now, renting a car costs me about $100 a day. Rental vehicles used to be a bargain at $30-40 a day, but that’s no longer true.
Parking at the Hyatt Regency was another $59 per day. I would not be paying for parking. I wouldn’t need a rental car for this trip. I would use rideshare.
Do I always need to get a deal?
I get 10 times the cost of a ride in Hyatt points when I rent with Lyft. A thirty-dollar ride is worth 300 points. Each point, to me, is worth 3.2 cents, so that’s more than nine dollars in Hyatt rewards with one $30 rideshare. Every point counts!
Each time I needed a rideshare, I first compared Uber’s and Lyft’s rates and then calculated in my head whether or not Lyft would be a good value, considering the extra points. Lyft is commonly less expensive than Uber, but not always. As Carol would tell you, there’s always a lot going on in my head.
Do the work; get the rewards.
Because I flew six million miles during my business career, American Airlines gave me their top frequent flyer status of “Executive Platinum”…for life. That status gave me a first-class ride from Los Angeles to Indianapolis.
This is the Big Ten.
The Big Ten basketball tournament is a five-day event. Over those five days, they play 14 games. I would be at the games for the last four days. Mitch would arrive later and get the chance to see the games on the last two days.
You know this as ticket scalping.
I have spent much time perfecting my “sports ticket arbitrage” hobby. What is sports ticket arbitrage? Ticket scalping!
As you know, I used my “need one” sign for years to get extra special prices on sports tickets. This method was a great way to meet people of all demographics.
COVID-19 has done a good job of disrupting the world, including using paper sports tickets. Today, most ticketing is handled electronically. People have their tickets on their phones rather than in their pocket. Of course, they might have their phones in their pockets as well. I guess you could say your phone has actually added another step. Lots of people aren’t up to speed with technology. They aren’t as comfortable selling a ticket to me from their phone as when the world went with paper tickets.
Seat Geek to the rescue.
That being the case, I use sports ticket apps…from my phone. My go-to ticket app is Seat Geek. When I check ticket availability and prices on Seat Geek, I see that all fees are already included.
On Thursday, day two of the tournament but day one of my stay in Indianapolis, I bought a ticket on Seat Geek for seven dollars. I saw two basketball games…for seven bucks.
Tickets to the tournament were expensive.
The face value of the tickets for the nosebleed seats in the Gainbridge Fieldhouse started at about $100 each. As the tournament progressed, the prices went up.
For the remaining three days of the tournament, I paid $40-$50 per seat on Seat Geek. Despite the face value of tickets sold at the arena being $100 plus, I spent less than half of that for our daily tickets.
No nosebleed seats for me.
Would I want to come all the way from Los Angeles to Indianapolis to sit up in the upper deck to watch a basketball game where the players who were 7 feet tall looked like they were 3 1/2 feet tall? I would not.
I have theories.
Yes, I bought the tickets on Seat Geek for seats in the far upper deck. I have theories, often different from prevailing wisdom, on many subjects. I also have a different philosophy regarding reserved seating.
I always listen to a recommendation.
You may or may not feel comfortable with this approach. When I buy a ticket in the last row of the upper deck, I know that I have a reserved seat. I take that seat location as a “recommendation” from the arena management. They recommend that I sit in the last row of their 17,000-seat arena. I appreciate that recommendation, but I consider it only that: a recommendation.
There are lots of mouths to feed.
At a basketball tournament like this, with 15 schools participating, each school gets an allotment of tickets. The organizers divide the entire stadium’s capacity by fifteen and add another allotment of tickets for the general public. The Cambridge Fieldhouse has a capacity of about 17,000.
Don’t support a loser.
Some schools don’t “travel” very well. Which schools are those? First, the losers, the bad teams. Their fans don’t want to make the trek to support their team and see them lose in the first game.
Also, the schools located furthest from Indianapolis will likely have fewer fans. In the east, that’s Rutgers and Maryland. In the west, that’s UCLA, Washington, Oregon, and usc. I saw very few people wearing the colors of those schools. UCLA is not a school that travels well to support its teams.
Rabid fans.
Purdue and Indiana were the two Big 10 schools nearest the Gainbridge Fieldhouse. They have good teams and rabid fanbases. For ticket availability, it was important for those schools to lose early in the tournament to free up seats when their fans went home. Luckily, Purdue and Indiana did lose early. Less demand meant lower prices for the later games.
When school #1 is not playing, nobody occupies those seats reserved for school #1. Multiply that reality by fifteen schools, and there are always going to be a lot of empty seats at a basketball tournament. Few fans go out of their way to watch the games if their school is not playing. This leaves a lot of open seats for opportunists like me. I am very comfortable being described as an opportunist.
I ended up seeing seven basketball games in four days. I sat in the lower level pretty much at center court for those games. Those seats were not occupied…until I showed up.
I sort of think of this as driving into a shopping center parking lot. Don’t you try to park in the very best open spot that you can find? I’m doing the same thing.
Only one school practices under 11 NCAA basketball championship banners.
UCLA has won more NCAA basketball titles than any other school. Eleven. They haven’t won all that much lately. Their last national championship was in 1995. I would simply ask this question. Is a national championship any less valuable whether it was earned in 1960 or 1995 or 2024? They all seem the same to me.
We couldn’t beat the Badgers.
UCLA’s first opponent, the afternoon before Mitch arrived later that evening, would be Wisconsin. UCLA had beaten Wisconsin during the regular season. However, in the tournament, Wisconsin would smother UCLA Bruins by making 19 three-point shots and shooting 60% from the three-point line.
Later, in the tournament championship game featuring Wisconsin and Michigan, Mitch was uncertain who to root for. His dad graduated from Wisconsin, and both his mom and dad graduated from Michigan law school. Wisconsin would lose to Michigan and shoot 25% from the arc after being close to perfect against UCLA. Go figure.
Here comes Mitch.
UCLA lost on Friday afternoon. Grandson Mitch arrived late on a plane from Texas Friday night. He wouldn’t get a chance to see UCLA play at all. That was a bummer.
Mitch, like any healthy 16-year-old, likes to eat. There was a Steak ‘n Shake restaurant located between the Hyatt Regency and the Gainbridge Fieldhouse. I grew up in Illinois with Steak ‘n Shake, but this chain was new to Mitch. The Steak ‘n Shake outlet attracted our personal attention multiple times.
It was a fun sport to watch Mitch eat a double steak burger, a large order of French fries, a chili Mac, and a large Nutella chocolate milkshake. Even he said he was full when that was finished.
Life is all about first-time experiences.
I saw something for the first time on this trip. The SnS in downtown Indianapolis had a soda machine like most places do. Customers had to scan a bar code from their restaurant receipt to operate the soda machine. What will they think of next?
With UCLA losing, Mitch would only get a chance to see three basketball games over the two full days that he was in Indianapolis. Not a problem. We would fill the rest of our time with lots of Indianapolis tourist attractions. There is and was a lot going on in Indianapolis.
We stopped to see Victory Field, where the Indianapolis Indians (don’t ask me) minor-league team plays. I saw a game there at a very lovely AAA baseball stadium.
Greatest coach of all time?
We visited the Johnny Wooden statue in downtown Indianapolis. Coach Wooden grew up just outside of Indianapolis. He coached UCLA to ten of those national titles. Many people don’t know that Coach Wooden was the college national basketball player of the year at nearby Purdue University.
Learning to be street smart.
I introduced Mitch to some ticket scalpers hanging out around Gainbridge Fieldhouse. Interacting with ticket scalpers was a cultural experience. He could learn a lot of life lessons!
Indianapolis Convention Center…one big place.
We checked things out at the massive Indianapolis Convention Center. That place is enormous! It encompasses 1.3 million square feet and is the 8th-largest convention center in the United States. One of the biggest convention center attractions is held in December: the PRI show. What is PRI?
“The annual PRI (Performance Racing Industry) Trade Show features more than 1,000 companies exhibiting in more than 3,400 booths and showcasing the latest products, services, machinery, simulation and testing technologies, and trailers for the racing industry at the Indiana Convention Center and Lucas Oil Stadium in downtown Indianapolis.”
I was a featured speaker at one of the seminars at that show a few years ago.
What was going on?
There was a huge cheerleading competition in the convention center this weekend. But the main attraction was something called “Comic-con.” Maybe you’ve seen their billboard ads when they came to a bigger city near you.
This is what Wikipedia told me about “Comic-con.”
“A comic book convention or comic con is a fan convention emphasizing comic books and comic book culture, in which comic book fans gather to meet creators, experts, and each other. Commonly, comic conventions are multi-day events hosted at convention centers, hotels, or college campuses. They feature a wide variety of activities and panels, with a larger number of attendees participating with cosplay than for most other types of fan conventions. Comic book conventions are also used as a method by which publishers, distributors, and retailers represent their comic-related releases. Comic book conventions may be considered derivatives of science-fiction conventions, which began during the late 1930s.”
I am always up for trying something new.
I had heard about Comic-con, but it never reached my radar screen strong enough for me to think about attending. Mitch had been to a couple of Comic-con-type events. From him, it came highly recommended.
Many people in my age range would have zero interest in something like Comic-con. Too bad. That would be their loss. I’m all about trying everything once, even when I think I have little or no interest. Pro tip. It helps to enjoy this experience with a sixteen-year-old!
When we had about three hours to spare, I bought some tickets and went to the Comic-con show.
What was Comic-con really like? I’ll try to answer this question, but consider the source.
First of all, Comic-con is huge. Think huger. It’s somewhat expensive. Tickets were $35 each. Comic-con attracts a very large number of folks wearing outfits/costumes that, even at your wildest Halloween parties, you would never see. These outfits represent things, at least to me, that I didn’t even know existed.
You don’t have to dress up. I came as a college basketball fan. Mitch was dressed in a Dallas Cowboys Troy Aikman quarterback shirt.
A true sight to see.
There were hundreds, if not thousands, of people roaming around just to be seen or to see the myriad of tradeshow booths selling all manner of things, most of which I was unfamiliar with. Comics and light swords and lots of strange stuff. They even had seminars you could pop into and hear authors describe the motivation behind their trilogies and maybe the intricacies of Star Wars movies. We even caught a live wrestling match with some characters in outrageous costumes. This was definitely an event and fun. I want to take Carol to a Comic-con show! She will think she won’t like it, but she will.
You’ll get to meet celebrities.
It was a surprise to me—well, most of this was a surprise—that they also had many TV and movie celebrities (Priscilla Presley – above) making guest appearances. They were available to take your picture, get an autograph, and spend a moment or two meeting your entertainment idol. Again, coming from my world, I wasn’t familiar with many of these folks, but the lines were long for fans wanting to meet these celebrities.
One of my favorite TV characters.
We saw Rainn Wilson from the Office, Tony Danza (who looked about 100 years old), Priscilla, Presley (who didn’t look much better than Mr. Danza), and many other folks familiar to Mitch.
A picture and an autograph cost $80-100. Mitch got his photo taken with a hero of his, Ernie Hudson. Ernie, age 78, appeared in the Ghostbusters movie series. Mitch was pretty stoked about that. I figured he could do whatever he wanted since it was his 80 bucks. Now, I’m kicking myself because I didn’t meet Rainn Wilson, who played “Dwight” on The Office.
Cash only!
By the way, the payments to the celebrities were “cash only.” I wonder how much of that money went into their TurboTax program.
Going to Comic-con was outside of my wheelhouse. I’m glad I did it. I’m gonna bring Carol to one of these. If this is out of my wheelhouse by one standard deviation, it’s gonna be out of hers by three or four SD.
Skyline Chili, here we come.
I brought Mitch to one of my trackchasing trips to the Midwest last summer. He got a chance to visit Skyline Chili in Ohio. He loved it. That meant we had to visit Skyline on this trip as well. Have you ever taken an Uber to Skyline Chili? We did. We left the hotel on the way to the airport with a stop at Skyline. With today being St. Patrick’s Day, Skyline was offering “GREEN” noodles. Why not? Mitch loved it (one large chili 5-way and one regular 4-way) just as much the second time as he did the first. He did acknowledge that the Chili Mac offerings at Steak ‘n Shake were also superior.
You never know which memories become lifetime memories.
I have fond memories of doing things with my grandparents long ago. I grew up living next door to them for the first fifteen years of my life.
I will never know which memories of this trip will stick with Mitch for a lifetime, but I do know this: These trips are about making memories. They are Die with Zero memories.
We spent some money on this trip to see a few basketball games and a Comic-Con show. But then we got a chance to talk during our walks all around the city and in our hotel room. The memory of whatever money we spent has already faded. The rest of the memories might never fade into the sunset.
Newscast worthy, really?
Not every trip goes perfectly. You wouldn’t want it to, right? However, you might not like one of your experiences to be worthy of making the evening’s local newscast either.
I’m going with “hiccup”.
We had a bit of a hiccup at the end of the trip. Hiccup? Yes, I’m going with “hiccup.”
How? Why? Who?
When it was time for Mitch to fly back to Texas, we took a rideshare to the airport. Mitch used a kiosk to get his boarding pass. He has traveled all over the world with his parents, but this was the first trip where he had flown all by himself. He and his twin sister Astrid flew to New York to meet Carol and me a couple of years ago. We had a “hiccup” picking them up, but that is a story for another newsletter.
Always teaching.
I made sure Mitch pushed all the buttons to get his boarding pass from the kiosk. Nobody learns anything when other people do stuff for them.
He got his boarding pass, which included his departure gate. We checked the flight boards and walked down to the gate where his Southwest Airlines plane would be leaving. We were early, so we grabbed a seat at the airport in a less congested area and waited. We were probably 50 yards from his gate.
Stop!
Stop reading. Remember the hiccup I mentioned? Remember the title of this post? Right now. Try to predict what that hiccup could possibly be. Finished? Continue reading.
When it was time, we went back to Mitch’s departure gate. As Southwest Airlines does, but won’t do much longer, passengers lined up based on their boarding priority. Mitch was in line. Just a few feet away, I was chatting with an older lady, maybe younger than me, about her open heart surgery.
My phone eats first.
I like to document everything with photos and videos. I’m famous for saying, “My phone eats first” because I like to take pictures of my food in restaurants.
He was waving. I was waving.
I was taking an iPhone video of Mitch boarding his Southwest flight. He was waving. I was waving. Everyone reading this has been there.
The hiccup happened when he got to the boarding agent and was just three feet from the jetway! Mitch made that first step into the jetway. The agent pulled him back. Why? It was the hiccup!
Say what?
Unbeknownst to us, Southwest had changed the gate from what was printed on the boarding pass. Mitch was headed to Texas, but the flight he was attempting to board was headed to Florida. The lady who had open heart surgery was going to Florida. She hadn’t mentioned that. These things can happen, right?
Have you ever?
Haven’t you ever taken one of your grandchildren to the airport and tried to put them on a plane going somewhere other than where your grandchild lived? I now have.
No signs in the immediate area showed where the plane was headed. That’s one of my excuses.
Not my best choice.
Then, possibly not one of my brightest moves, I forwarded a text message of the video of Mitch being rejected to the family. I tried to explain away our, yes, I’m going with “our” mistake.
Luckily, Mitch’s flight to Texas hadn’t left yet, which would have been a big problem. We walked nearby, and Mitch got in line for the flight to Texas. I was all over the gate agent with just one question I repeated a few times: “This flight is going to Texas, right?”
There are worse things.
Let’s try to put this in perspective. This wasn’t the end of the world. If Mitch flies to Florida, Southwest will fly him back to Texas. He will get a great story out of it, and life will go on.
Mitch wasn’t going to Russia!
Southwest isn’t going to fly him to Russia. They don’t even do much international flying. The chances of him staying in the U.S. were pretty good with Southwest.
Child abuse? Really?
And yes, the local news would have a field day with this story. People sitting in their recliners (we don’t own any recliners) all over the greater Indianapolis area would say things like, “Martha, did you see what that grandfather did out at the airport? They ought to put him in jail for child abuse!”
Mitch makes it back to Texas.
The next day, I had to call his mother and explain our “outage.” She took it well, which was good. It was nice to get a text message from Kristy telling me Mitch arrived back in Texas with his share of memory dividends.
One more night in Indy and off to Japan.
With the basketball tournament finished Mitch headed back home. I would stay one more night in Indianapolis and then head to Tokyo, Japan.
When I combine two weekends of geographically diverse travel, I often have to wash clothes in the middle of the trip. I do whatever I can never to check a bag. My 22-inch rolling carry-on bag can’t handle enough clothes and other stuff for a two-week trip.
Why does all of this stuff happen to me?
I stayed at a Hyatt Place hotel near the Indianapolis airport for the last night of my trip. It wasn’t located in the best of neighborhoods. Luckily, the Hyatt Place shuttle driver could take me from the hotel to the laundromat.
The laundromat wasn’t in the best neighborhood either. Most of the time I was in the place I was the only person there. It was nighttime. What could possibly go wrong?
Don’t do it.
On my ride to the laundromat, I saw a Waffle House. The hotel desk clerk and the shuttle driver had warned me against trying to walk the mile and a half between the hotel and the laundromat. They told me just to call them, and they would come and pick me up. They said not only would I be walking through a bad neighborhood, but there were no sidewalks and a four-lane road with high-speed traffic to navigate.
However, I am a big fan of Waffle House. I figured I could walk half the distance to get there and, if needed, call the shuttle driver to pick me up.
I had been to this Waffle House during Covid-19. Back then, they were only serving pick-up orders. Trying to eat at a Waffle House in their parking lot is not my idea of a good time.
I was shocked to learn that when I arrived at 9 p.m., this particular Waffle House was only open for pick-up orders. I don’t know if they couldn’t get the help or if it was in such a bad neighborhood that they couldn’t allow people to enter their restaurant after dark or what. I declined. Then, I made the executive decision to continue walking back to the hotel.
Another questionable decision.
It was then that I learned that the hotel people had been right. This was a bad neighborhood. It was especially scary walking in the dark with my laundry under a freeway overpass where a couple of unsavory characters were hanging out. Why do so many strange things happen to me? The sidewalks were limited and muddy, but I made it back.
No elevators. What?
When I checked into the Hyatt Place, one of the two elevators was broken. A sign said it was not expected to be repaired for a few days. The other elevator wasn’t working when I returned from the laundromat. I was staying on the top floor, the sixth floor.
I had just come from the upscale Hyatt Regency in downtown Indianapolis. It didn’t sit well with me that, with both elevators broken, they expected me to walk up six flights of stairs, which I could easily do but didn’t want to.
Do you know who I am?
I went to the front desk clerk and politely explained that I was credited with 161 Hyatt stays last year. I was a Globalist. In the points and miles world, I was an “elite,” but that does sound a little pretentious.
I didn’t fancy walking up six floors of stairs, so I told the young woman that I expected her to comp my stay. I don’t know if my age, height, or Globalist status intimidated her to some degree.
I’m a peon, but even being a peon, I will try to help you.
She told me she had no authority to give me my room for free but that she would call her boss. It was 10 p.m., and that didn’t sound too promising for my request.
Ring, ring.
I walked up the steps. Five minutes later, my hotel room phone rang. The hotel front desk clerk told me I would not have to pay $150 for my room. It would be free. I thought that was fair. I had been polite but firm. Another of my lifelong platitudes is “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.”
Next up? Japan. But wait.
It was time to head to Dallas and then Tokyo, Japan. But wait. We are out of word space. I can’t ask you to read too many words. We’ll call what you just read “Part 1”. In a few days, I’ll come back to you with “Part 2” and tell you about a very eclectic visit to Japan. See you then?
Randy Lewis
Just a normal grandfather…with 161 Hyatt stays in 2024.