Air:
I still regret not getting a flight I saw on Bing late July to Fort Lauderdale for $239. I thought it was too soon to buy a ticket and that it would go down. All I knew is that prices will go way up as of three weeks before the departing flight, so I thought I had time. And so I waited ... and I saw the prices go up, then stay steady, then go down but not to $239, then up, and then, with about three weeks before I wanted to leave, it was at, like, $309. (I checked both FLL as well as Miami; I think they're about 25 miles away, but FLL was cheaper, which makes sense, I guess.)
I was determined to go to Miami to catch the last baseball games for the Florida Marlins at Sun Life/Joe Robbie Stadium. But I didn't want to pay $70 more for a ticket I should've bought five weeks before. (And why was I afraid of buying it too early? If the price drops, there are ways to recoup the difference.) Then I remembered my trip to St. Louis. Rates were so expensive that I decided to use my credit card points. So I did the same thing for my flights. However, in checking through all the airline websites for the lowest prices, I saw that the Southwest flight going out was early enough for me to get in to town to possibly catch the penultimate Marlins game if I hit the ground running, and that the AirTran flight coming back touched down at around the time my parent should be done with working (at the store? Who knows these days?). Also, I wanted to come back in the evening in case I could see my alma mater play on TV; unfortunately, they didn't tell me what time that game was going to be on by the time I absolutely had to book my flight.
Normally, I think, people would just bite the bullet. They would either forego the Marlins game or come back while or after their university's game. But no, not me. I think that through the hour or so of frantic final price-checking I said to myself, "What the fuck," and did what I have done once, maybe twice before: Build an itinerary with two airlines. I take Southwest out and AirTran coming back. That way I get the times I want and I get to take advantage of the points I've accrued on my credit cards. I did this when flying out to Zurich to see my sister get married; a flight from here to there on one grand itinerary was expensive, but breaking it down to domestic and international got me a very good deal on a flight to ZRH from Newark Liberty. So I pay for the whole thing on the Southwest side (because that airline does not do credit card rewards programs) and use enough of my points to knock down the price of the AirTran one-way to something palatable.
I kind of felt like MacGuyver if he was a travel agent.
Car:
I knew I could reserve a car online without needing to pay for it; usually, you don't get charged until after you return your car, or at least when you pick the car up. That's why I jumped on the cheapest rate, about $90 total, for an Economy.
But I have never heard of the name of the rental car company: U-Save. Ugh. What kind of reputable rental car company would name themselves U-Save? This is like a company for immigrants who have no money and can't spell. And I reserved a car with them.
It didn't sit well with me. I really, really thought this was some fly-by-night ripoff operation that would take my money. So when I saw that Hotwire had in their newsletter a deal for a car for ten bucks a night out of MIA, it seemed like a no-brainer to jump on it. Better to not drive down to MIA and use public transportation down instead. Besides, any rental car company that works with Hotwire has to be reputable.
Thank goodness U-Save reminded me of my reservation. That way I could cancel it in time.
Hotel:
The big problem is that I've never been to Miami, which means I don't know what to expect in terms of traffic, construction, streets, and airports. But, I was scared at how far away FLL was from all the places I wanted to go to, in particular South Beach, which seemed, at least on the map, a good 30 miles away.
So what I figured was that being stationed at a hotel in the middle of the city of Miami will situate me centrally located to all the attractions I wanted to go to. Any markup in hotel price from one I could get in FLL would be offset by the gas I would save driving so close to the places I wanted to go to. Yes, I've never flown into what essentially is Minneapolis and stayed in what you could consider St. Paul. And being in the hard part of Miami could be dangerous, and it would be hypocritical to do that after complaining about how dangerous it is to fly into MIA. But I thought that in the long run, it'd be worth it.
(I singed up with Priceline, the company I usually go to get hotels on the cheap. They "gave" me "five extra bucks" when I tried bidding for, I think, the seventh straight day. I jumped between MIA and FLL with the thinking that if Miami hotels are expensive enough, it would go the other way, and it would thus be cheaper to stay close to Lauderdale and just drive down, no matter how far. Well, I should say that I preferred MIA, and $35 a night was good enough to win a hotel just north of the airport.
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So what happened?
First of all, there is a shuttle called Tri-Rail, essentially a commuter rail line that goes from FLL to MIA, that I decided I would use. I knew when booking my flight that the MIA station, the one I needed to reach in order to get my rental, closed two weeks before my flight. In its place was a shuttle, what I imagined would be a short hotel/rental car shuttle, that would take us from the next-closest station to the airport. Then I realized that I had just created a long sequence of chaos right after I was going to get strung out on a long three-hour flight from Chicago Midway, and I would have to build in a long time before I get on my flight from Ft. Lauderdale to Milwaukee when all I want to do that last day of vacation is wake up and go directly to the airport as soon as I wake up, shower and pack. I'm saving money this way, I kept saying to myself.
Then, when I touched down in Lauderdale, I realized another thing: This Tri-Rail doesn't stop at the airport. No, it stops close to the airport, then there are buses that take you from the station to the airport. So after landing, I had to take a bus to the station, then take the rail to another station, then take another bus to the other airport. Why couldn't the commuter rail connect to the airport directly? What a red state thing to do.
That built in a lot of time. I got in on time, around 5, which meant I only had two hours to get to the stadium -- wherever that was -- in time to take in the second-to-last game. I built in time for getting the rental as well as figuring out how to get around the city and fighting through traffic. But I realized I had forgotten one other important lesson I learned in the past about transportation: People like cars because they have control of their time. You can use public transportation, but then you're at the mercy of someone else, and if they're late, you're late, and you can't do a fucking thing about it.
I got into my rental, a silver Dodge Caliber (I don't think that's an Economy) at 6:40, a half-hour before the Marlins game was supposed to start. I got lost getting out of MIA (which had also closed some roads for construction) and the traffic was more horrendous than even I thought.
I got to the area at around 7:30. I saw it was like a shiny beacon on a hill, regal yet remote. I had researched parking; Joe Robbie is essentially surrounded by spots that you have to pay $20 for, but then there's nothing but trees and vegetation and walls for dozens of yards after that. The closest things to Robbie Stadium was a Wal-Mart and a very dodgy neighborhood that I kind of got lost in after dark. I was not going to park my car there, especially after dark. And, I wanted to park at Wal-Mart, buy a bottled water, then just leave my car there as I walk to the ballpark, but this being the dangerous South, there was a security guard in his car idling yards away from me when put my bottle in my car.
This was my first time I went on vacation with the main intent on seeing two games of a baseball team at the tail end of their stay in a stadium and only saw one game. I feel bad, I feel like a failure. But later in the evening I encountered another Miami staple: The spontaneous rain shower. While driving around it started raining -- for a spell, but it rained, and hard for a couple minutes or so. If I were at the game, I'd be pissed that I'd have to run to a concourse to avoid getting wet. So it turned out it was a good thing that I didn't make it to the game on time.
But then I realized one final thing: I drove north from MIA to Robbie. Towards FLL. Looking at the map, Joe Robbie is just about halfway between the two airports. If I had just flown into Fort Lauderdale, I would have picked up my car easily and had time to even get to my hotel before the game. (I checked into my hotel after driving up to Robbie.)
In fact, there are many places I went to on vacation that was equidistant between the two airports: Seminole Hard Rock Casino, nude Haulover Beach, and of course, Tootsie's Cabaret. I did feel like I rallied Thursday and Friday when I drove just south of the airport to watch a women's soccer game at the University of Miami and a women's volleyball game at Florida International. But driving to South Beach became a slog. The beach felt pretty far away from where I was, and I added extra driving to avoid all the tolls.
So in retrospect, maybe my idea of flying into FLL but basing myself in MIA didn't save me money. All I did was waste time I could have used. And that regret is also why -- shit, maybe even the only real reason why -- I have to go back.
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