For the last couple weeks Mary has been treated to a countdown: “Exactly two weeks from today we will be in an over-the-water bungalow.” “Exactly one week from today we will be on a plane to Tahiti” And exactly 48 hours from this very moment that I am writing, we will be at the Hyatt Place Hotel LAX/El Segundo, perhaps figuring out what to do for dinner. This trip is a bucket list trip. When I turned 60 I became very tuned into my mortality and Mary and I agreed that I we better get a move on with all the things we’ve always wanted to do. We wanted to take a cruise in French Polynesia on the Paul Gaugin for our 5th anniversary. That was 20 years ago. Couldn’t afford it, planned for our 10th. Couldn’t afford it, the Paul Gaugin was sold to another company, we kind of forgot about it and, in the meantime, read about over the water bungalows, where you can snorkel right off your deck and look at the fish through a window in your floor. This became the dream and last October we committed to making the dream happen.

I love to plan our travel and I spend hours figuring out every detail and how to do things for less money than they normally cost. This trip involved multiple calls to Costco Travel, several re-bookings, and opening three new credit cards (Alaska Airlines, Hyatt, Southwest Airlines) so we could fly Premium Class on Air Tahiti Nui from LAX, get free flights from PDX to LAX, and stay at the Hyatt airport hotel in LAX before the redeye to Tahiti. It was pretty much perfect.

Until last Friday when I got an email from Air Tahiti Nui saying they had canceled our Saturday night flight and moved it to Sunday. This had me up until 2:30 am trying unsuccessfully to figure out how to reconfigure everything. I spent about six hours on it the next morning and it’s pretty much fixed, except for the most messed up thing, which is that the airline split up Mary and me. We were originally in a row of 2 with just each other. Now we are in two separate rows next to people we don’t know. Half of the reason I worked so hard to get us Premium Class was so that we could sit together just the two of us. On Saturday, I called Air Tahiti Nui and was told there was nothing they could do. I called back hoping I would talk to a different person, but I got the same guy with the same answer. I wrote an email talking about our 25th anniversary, bucket-list trip, etc. They promised they would get back within 72 hours but they haven’t and I’m pretty sure they really don’t care why we want to sit together in a row of 2. I’ll see what I can do at the airport. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s a bummer.

So here is our new plan:

Friday we fly to LAX where I have booked 3 reward nights at the Hyatt Place. Originally it was 2 but I had to add a third because of the flight change. The 3rd night we won’t actually sleep there but it will allow us to stay in the room until Sunday night when we need to go to the airport for our midnight flight.

We arrive in Papeete at 5 am on Monday morning. I’ve booked 2 nights at a hotel across from the ferry terminal where the rooms are tiny little sleeping pods with no windows. We will sleep there from whatever time we get there from the airport until 1:30 pm or so when we will take the ferry to Moorea. Basically it’s $190 for 6 or 7 hours of sleep, but it’s worth it because we don’t want to arrive at our dream destination and go right to sleep. I had to book Sunday night so we could get in to the hotel first thing on Monday morning, as well as Monday night, so we could stay in our pod past checkout.

At the Sofitel we will stay in a Garden Bungalow for our first 2 nights and an Overwater Bungalow for the last 5. The day after we arrive we will go on a food tour of Moorea. Our only other plans are to snorkel and read and eat and not have to scoop cat poop and clean up cat vomit three to four times a day (Our fosters and our own cats have been suffering from some gastrointestinal problems.)

So could be kind of boring to read about, but I’m sure we’ll have some adventures to report.