Last updated on October 25th, 2012 at 07:05 am
Having followed travel bloggers for a few years now, I know that they are generally the first people to post when something bad happens to them (i.e. they try to redeem a deal and it doesn’t work, bad service, etc.), yet they will profusely give compliments when they receive great service.
They will usually “call out” an airline when a great deal or mistake fare is canceled, but I don’t read many posts about a person detailing the benefits they receive from these same mistakes. For good reason, too, because they don’t want to miss out on those benefits.
This is why I am having a little bit of a dilemma. I want to share with the world my good fortunes on a recent flight on an unnamed partner airline of an unnamed US carrier, but I also don’t want to lose out on the good fortune gained.
Sometimes you reserve stories for telling people in person or boasting with friends over a few liters of beer.
Unfortunately, most of my friends don’t really care about my travel war stories, so it would probably fall on deaf ears.
So instead I’m going to have some fun with it and tell a story about my good fortunes using completely ridiculous stereotypes.
How I got the best of Cletus and Pierre
Cletus is a very frugal man from the south. He will gladly take your money in exchange for a ride on his horse, and sometimes the horse will get you to your destination on time and without feeling violated. In exchange for your money, Cletus offers you incentives to ride his horse again. You can also get incentives to ride the horses of Cletus from your local bank, florist, apothecary and likely houses of ill repute.
Over time you learn that it’s actually easy to get free rides on Cletus’ fleet of horses. In fact, getting credits for Cletus is one of the easiest things you can do in life. Eventually you have more free rides on Cletus’s horses than you know what to do with.
One day you go to Cletus and ask him for a ride using your horse riding incentives. You are promptly told by Cletus that you will not be able to use your incentives to ride his horses today, tomorrow, the next day, next week, or the rest of the year unless you pay double or triple the previously listed incentive price. Begrudgingly, you pay the steep price for a horse ride, and feel regret when the entire stable looks at you with contempt as you ride away on the horse free of charge.
You realize that Cletus’s incentives are not as valuable as they seem to be, so you seek alternatives. You learn that you can use your Cletus horse ride incentives on horse rides all over the county! In fact, you can jump the puddle using Pierre’s horses and visit your family in the old world. So you approach Pierre’s horses and tell them that you are a friend of Cletus. While your Cletus incentives are valid tender with Pierre, they are not very happy that you are riding their horses without paying them directly, so they make things even more difficult than Cletus.
As you prepare to jump the puddle with Pierre’s horses, you get the feeling that Pierre would rather leave you behind than take you along on their trip. Even as you are accepted onto the horseback you can feel the apprehension throughout the ride, but you ultimately arrive at your destination without incident.
You realize that for a free horse ride, you are actually more than willing to put up with a little turbulence when it comes to free horse rides.
Even better, you learned that you are the last person to be able to use Cletus’s incentives to ride Pierre’s horses, because their courier pigeons no longer send communications back and forth.
After you return from jumping the puddle with Pierre, you learn that part of your trip with Pierre earned you more incentives to ride with Cletus in the future, and you are not sure that you were supposed to, because Cletus has a strict policy against earning incentives while spending incentives. Not only do you receive incentives for free rides, you are also promoted into Cletus’ Cubic Zirconium club reserved for frequent horse riders. This club gives you the opportunity to occasionally ride shotgun with Cletus when that seat is available.
You are beaming ear to ear as you realize that even though the road was rocky while riding with Cletus, your trip also created the potential for more free rides on his most comfortable fleet of horses, and you will occasionally be able to ride Shotgun on the stage coach!
You decide that maybe traveling with Cletus isn’t that bad afterall, and you can’t wait until he can start sending carrier pigeons to Pierre once again so that you can jump the puddle using the incentives you have earned. You also hope that the abacus counters Cletus employs don’t take back your incentives.
Nicely written :-)