Graeme (our CTO) and I spent the day planning out the last little issues on the itinerary and then the first major bump in the road …

There basically are no seats left from Alaska to anywhere the week before Christmas, not even first class. It seems no one wants to be in Alaska for Christmas …

We tried literally hundreds of permutations to/from Anchorage, Juneau and Ketchikan we just couldn’t get 2 seats for less than 2k and that was going to break what little bank there was. A quick check of prices to Hawaii after Dec 18 showed the $1500 roundtrip range on every non-stop anywhere in the country.

I’ll be honest — I was crushed.

I had just purchased the first three days of tickets on Sunday and the next 5 days earlier this morning and in hind-sight we should have took on Hawaii and Alaska first while the prices where reasonable right now - after some soul searching we decided the contiguous 48 + DC would have to do.

Besides we never really recognized the entry of AK and HI into the union (just kidding - send your flame e-mails to Graeme)