This is where we are honeymooning

Yes, I realize that I am way behind on my last trip recap, but I just wanted to bring up a few tips for booking international flights on Delta Skymiles (or any program for that matter).

Amanda and I have decided to go to Mauritius on our honeymoon.  You probably haven’t heard of Mauritius, and that’s OK – I hadn’t heard about it until Amanda told me that she wanted to go there.  From the pictures it looks gorgeous, so I had no problem saying yes!

What I wasn’t sure about was how to get there and if we could afford it.  That actually became much easier when the points guy wrote about his trip to Mauritius this past summer and how he got there on Delta Skymiles.

Last weekend I spent a good 2-3 hours researching the trip and today I spent another 3 hours finalizing the plans and booking it with Delta over the phone.  I thought it would be fun to share the process.  If you want to book an aspirational award trip to an exotic location, follow these steps:

1. Amass some miles with a travel provider. This can be done by earning miles on flights, promotions or credit cards.  Credit cards are the easiest way to earn a lot of miles quickly, because you can only travel so many miles, but if you have reimbursable expenses with your employer, you can get a lot miles in a short period of time.
2. Make sure your credit card has a big signup bonus of 50k to 100k miles/points. I highly recommend getting a branded credit card for your airline of choice and/or getting the Chase Sapphire preferred credit card.
3. Understand the rules of getting “award” tickets on your airline and how much things cost.  Some airlines are very transparent with pricing – they have a single price that is easy to understand.  Delta has 3 levels of award tickets, ranging from low (25k miles domestic in coach) to high (380k miles international in business class).  They are also always trying to screw you out of miles. However, Delta partner airline award redemptions are always at the lowest level – SCORE.
4. Learn the partner airlines that share awards with your airline of choice.  Delta is in the Skyteam alliance – which means I can fly on airlines like Air France, KLM, Korean Air, Kenya Air and many, many more.  American is part of the OneWorld Alliance.  United and Continental are in the Star Alliance.  Each alliance has benefits and drawbacks.
5. Decide on your destination.  This may be the easy part, but there is a lot to consider.  For example, did you know that you can stop over on your way to your destination for as long as you like?  You can literally stay in Paris for nearly a full year before going to your final destination – all on one ticket!
6. Find out if there is space available in coach or business class on each flight.  This is more difficult than you may think, and I had to use expertflyer.com in order to find availability on Air France and Air Mauritius flights.
7. Figure out each segment that you want to fly for your trip and write them down on paper.  Traveling internationally, you can almost never book your entire flight on an airline’s website, because they are all on different inventory systems. With Delta, you can only book these awards on the phone, so it is important to write down each segment on paper.
8. Call your airline to book the flight.  Yes, you have to call them in order to get through to someone.  Tell them exactly what you want: “I need 2 tickets in business class and I am going to read you the flight numbers for you to enter into your system.”  It pays to be explicit, or else you will not get what you want. It took me 2 hours on the phone to book my flight, but it saved me a boatload of money this way (more on this below).
9. Check in on your flight status periodically to make sure nothing has changed. While flight schedules in the US usually don’t change much (until the day of, when everything is delayed), this may not be the case internationally.  Be careful that you don’t get screwed in the process.

I followed these rules and have been able to manufacture the honeymoon of our dreams that involves 6 nights in Mauritius, Oktoberfest in Munich, the Swiss Alps, Italian Alps, Mediterranean coastline and Paris.  2 tickets for 240,000 Delta Skymiles and $500 in taxes.

This may sound like a lot of money/miles to people, and by all means it is – you could get 10 round trip domestic tickets for this price.  But to put things in perspective, this ticket would cost $8,698 EACH if we paid full price.  The street value on 240k skymiles is only $2,400.  By my math, we saved $15,000 by following these rules – (not that we would have actually spent that on a trip).

The only way we could afford to go to Mauritius in first class is through award travel, and the only way I would have known to do this is by reading every travel blog I can get my hands on over the past year.

Reading really pays off.  Maybe it will for you too?  To get started, I recommend these blogs:

• View From The Wing
• One Mile at a Time
• The Points Guy

More to come as the time approaches.

How to Book a Dream Trip to Mauritius on Delta Skymiles is a post from: Jeff Sauer Experience v8.0

Delta Business Class from JFK to PRG
Prague Day 1
Prague Day 2
Vienna Christmas Markets
Amsterdam
Delta Business Class from AMS to MSP

In October my brother told me he wanted to go on a “mileage run” to secure Platinum status.  Needing around 8,000 miles to make the next level, he had the option of flying a few times around the US or making up the miles in a single trip overseas.  Europe was the natural choice, and after some deliberation between locations in Europe, checking schedules and prices, we decided to fly into Prague for 3 nights, with a layover night in Amsterdam.

Since I already secured Platinum status for 2012 back in September, and I have amassed far too many Delta Skymiles than I can possibly spend in the short term, I decided to use my frequent flyer miles to book an award ticket in Business class.  This was my frist time in international business class, but after reading flight reviews from several aspirational travel bloggers, I had a good idea of what to expect.  I also knew the best way to spend my Delta Skypesos and receive a strong value.  I ended up getting my business class ticket for 100k skymiles on a ticket that had a $5,000 face value.  That’s 5 cents per mile, which is a very good value (you’ll have to trust me on that one).

Taking the cue from these travel bloggers, I have decided to document this trip in a format similar to what they use: break up the flights, hotels and cities into multiple posts to showcase each part.  This post focuses just on the flight, and ensuing posts will cover the cities visited.

After a 9 hour layover at New York’s JFK airport, we boarded the flight to Prague for an overnight flight that took off at 7 PM in the US and landed at 9 AM in Prague.  The first thing I noticed when I took my seat was the legroom.  There was significantly more legroom than any domestic flight you’ll see.  This is so that you can lay in your seat overnight (this particular seat was an older version that simply lets you recline at a 45 angle or so, but not lay down fully.  The seat also wasn’t long enough for my 6’2″ frame.

The seats on this plane were also fairly old by modern standards (not complaining, just pointing it out), but had a nice adjustable headrest that could be used to prop your head up before sleepy time.

The seats were definitely better than what you’d get in coach class, but from what I have read, they are not the best that Delta has to offer.  Again, I’m not complaining – just educating.

They also give a nice pillow, sturdy blanket and an amenity kit, which came in handy later in the flight.

After boarding we were given a pre flight drink option of champagne or orange juice.  I chose the Champagne of course.

We were also given a menu of the food options for the flight, and asked to give our order for dinner.

There were a lot of good looking options, but I decided on the beef tenderloin, because I love risotto.

Here is a look at the full menu

The Chilean Cabernet was quite tasty!

And here is what I ordered:

Started off with warm mixed nuts that hit the spot (I was getting hungry at this point)

The Crab and avocado appetizer was OK

The soup was very good

The salad was decent, but the sour cream and dill dressing was not my favorite

The beef tenderloin with risotto and broccoli stems was fantastic!  The risotto had an amazing flavor that was lightly sweet and savory. I have no idea what Gremolata is, but I am on a mission to find out.  The tenderloin was cooked perfectly, and the Bearnaise sauce was great on top of the beef and the broccoli.

I did not need dessert, but how can you turn down a handmade sundae?  I can’t think of a better way to end a sedentary day of travel than with a sundae.  It was as good as it looks.

About 45 minutes before the flight landed (and only 4 hours after dinner), I woke up and was asked if I wanted breakfast.  I wasn’t really hungry, but the description for the Omelet sounded good enough to try.

Good it was NOT.  It was probably one of the worst omelettes I have eaten and was just all around gross.  Fortunately, I wasn’t hungry, so I didn’t really miss it.

Landing in Prague was easy, with Customs going very smoothly and baggage claim easy to navigate.

We found out that the best way to get to our hotel was to take a shuttle into the city center for around $6 total (that’s cheap)

Within an hour of landing, we were on our shuttle into the heart of Old Town Prague for the next chapter of our adventure!

4 Nights in Europe – Delta Business Class from JFK to PRG is a post from: Jeff Sauer Experience v8.0

Have you donated yet?  http://mobro.co/jeffsauer

So far I have raised $466 to support Mens Health awareness.  I think I could do better, so please donate!

The Three Deep Brostaches have received $1,091 in donations, which is a good showing overall, but many individuals hardly raised any money.  So they grew out their mustaches in vain.  Not literally of course.

You learn a lot about yourself with a mustache.  I learned that mine grows in on each side of the lip, but there is a big gap in the middle.  How does yours come in?

http://mobro.co/jeffsauer

Mustache Update is a post from: Jeff Sauer Experience v8.0

It has since escalated to links of Tom Selleck, Ron Swanson, a mustache shaped wine opener, and a coffee mug tribute to the mustaches of the world.

All of this mustache attention is particularly funny to me, because I have always been convinced I can’t grow facial hair of any sort, let alone a third eyebrow.

This year I went all in to find the answer this question.  I committed to growing out a mustache in the name of charity by joining Movember.

The premise of Movember is simple: you grow out a mustache in the month of November and accept donations for your trouble.  The donations all go to mens health awareness, particularly cancers affecting men.

Even better, Three Deep is officially on board with employees participating in Movember, and many of the guys are growing out their mustaches as well. So I am learning about myself and raising money for a good cause without violating any presentability code at the office.

Who knows, maybe the mustache is a good look for me?  If you want to donate to the cause and help raise money and awareness for mens health issues, I encourage you to visit my Movember page at:

http://mobro.co/jeffsauer/d

I have fully committed to the cause, and even wore the 6 day beginnings of a stache to my engagement party this weekend. It takes a special woman to put up with the beginnings of a mustache, and if my future bride can put up with my attempt to grow one, she’s definitely a keeper!

You can visit that page to see updates on how my mustache is doing.  It’s already coming in better than I would have thought.

It’s not too late to join – you probably only need a few days to outpace my stache!

Once again, you can donate here: http://mobro.co/jeffsauer/d

The N in November is for Mustaches is a post from: Jeff Sauer Experience v8.0

- Brooks

Back when I was an unhappy fat bastard I never imagined a life resembling the one I live right now.  Over the years I have taken on a wealth of personal and professional responsibility, commitment and development that is downright overwhelming to think about.  In fact, I have so much swimming through my head that I feel compelled to write it all down as therapy.

My personality lends itself to obsessive behavior – I am an autodidact in all senses of the word, and have an extreme sense of commitment that makes me loyal to a fault.  I have a hard time letting go of things when I have worked hard to acquire or nurture them.  Amanda calls me a hoarder for this behavior – I just call it reality.

Over the years, accumulation becomes a juggling act that gets more difficult as more balls are added.  Many balls barely stay in the air, and the act of juggling becomes more and more difficult.

It would be really easy to simply quit some commitments cold turkey or phase certain aspects out of my life, but which ones?  I really enjoy everything that I have added to my life in the past several years.

So rather than complain about being overwhelmed, maybe it’s more healthy to celebrate the balls that I have put in the air.

Relationship – Without getting into too much detail, being in a long distance relationship has a significant impact on priorities and time management

Wedding Planning – I asked Amanda to marry me in March and while our wedding date is still 9 months away, things are bound to start heating up in the near future.  We have already planned to have a small family wedding at Kunde Estate in Sonoma Valley

Three Deep – Among all commitments, this one takes up by far the most time – but is also responsible for almost all of my livelihood.  It is also among the most rewarding things that I do – growing a company from a small start up to a great place to work and a great company.

Freelance Projects – I like to stay fresh as a marketer and web developer, so I will occasionally take on freelance projects that fall into ideal situations (developing sites in WordPress).  I always do a great job, but not always in a timely manner.  This is a ball that usually has the biggest chance of dropping each day.

Gardening – This year I started my first food garden in my yard and it’s been a fun experience.  Next year I would like to take it to another level by installing a retaining wall/garden bed and taking it to the next level.  This will take a lot of up front time (which I enjoy – need an annual house project), and will be therapeutic.

Charcuterie – I already showed you how the sausage is made.  I plan on making much more of it!

MIMA Board – I joined the board of the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association this year, and it has been a very valuable experience.  It is my first non-profit board membership, and I have learned a lot from the team.  I am also contributing by managing the website for the annual summit, the main website and the MIMA blog.  I drastically underestimated how much time this would take, but I feel a sense of accomplishment seeing it come together.

Pool N Patio – Not many people know that I also own an online e-commerce business that sells pool equipment online.  It has been a very interesting experience and I wish I could spend more time on making the store better – but for the most part I have neglected things while I work on other ventures.

Bodyguard Careers – This is a website I have worked on with Hucky for the past 7 years.  We do a lot to contribute to the education of people looking to get into the Executive Protection industry and it has been great to see it grow.

Speaking Engagements – Over the past 12 months I have averaged a speaking gig every 1-2 months.  I have presented in front of the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce, MIMA, Project Skyway, Nonprofit talk and many others… as well as client presentations with Silverpop and Google.  This is probably my biggest guilty pleasure.  For some reason, I love public speaking and evangelizing online marketing to anyone who will listen!

Mentorship – I really enjoy providing career mentorship to people who are interested in a career in marketing.  I had to learn everything on my own due to a lack of available resources, so I try to get people on the right career track whenever I can.  This includes employees at Three Deep as well as people outside of the organization.

Social Life – I still try to meet up with as many friends as possible, but I have found that a lot of my social outings have become career motivated in recent years.  I still keep in touch with most high school and college friends, but seeing work and industry friends have become my most frequent social events.

Travel – I spend around 130-150 nights a year in a hotel room or guest bedroom.  I’m a platinum flyer with Delta and Gold with Hilton hotels.  I love seeing the world and don’t want to trade this in until I have kids and need to settle down.  More than anything, this causes me to juggle the most, so I probably won’t be heartbroken when I find myself a silver elite flyer instead of platinum at some point.

Family – At times I feel like I neglect my family, but for the most part I still see everyone at the same rate I always have: 1-2 times a month.   When we do see each other, I try to make sure it’s quality time.

Photography – I began an attempt to organize all of my photos over the years and have made progress, but it’s still slow going.  I would also like to get better at taking advanced photos with my camera (i.e. not

Wine – Wine is awesome.  I love to collect it and drink it.   Heck, we are getting married at a winery!  My favorite winery right now is Wellington in Sonoma, with Ty Caton being a close #2.

Things I have virtually cut out of my life:

Casual Sports Watching – Sports are all but gone from my day to day life.  Other than my season tickets with the Twins and catching ballparks on work trips, I hardly have sports on my TV.  I have even started to DVR Vikings games and watch them on a delay!

Writing – I love writing and it pains me that I don’t do more of it.  I simply have too much brain drain during most weeks to even think about writing something to share with the world.  Most of my writing is started by a thought I have in the shower or in the car – I will get inspired to draft something, run out of time, and have the post sit untouched for months/years.  It doesn’t really seem worth it to post incomplete thoughts, and I’m not sure what my audience even is for complete articles (outside of my sisters awesome encouragement).

Weeknight Socializing – What does that even mean?

Lazy Weekends – Yeah right.  I am up at 6:30 AM most weekends naturally.  I’m getting old dude.

Idleness – Not sure I could sit idle anyway, but I have filled my time with so many commitments that guilt sets in well before I spend any time idly standing by

Television Surfing – DVR baby

This is the life I have chosen – and I like it.  At some point change will come and I very well may long for this exact moment.   Until then, I will continue to seize today while it’s here and become a better juggler.

Professional Juggler is a post from: Jeff Sauer Experience v8.0

It wasn’t until my first visit to DC in 2010 that I got a chance to visit Alexandria, and I soon realized that it was a beautiful town situated just outside of our nations capital.  Even better, a large section of the city known as Old Town is preserved from the original city settlement in the 1700′s.

During my weeklong stay in DC, Amanda and I spent the weekend in Old Town Alexandria at the gorgeous Hotel Monaco.  We booked this hotel using Jetsetter on a whim and we were not disappointed.  It was beautiful and in a perfect location.  Plus, we got a pretty good deal and nice room through the Jetsetter service.

The main reason for choosing Alexandria that weekend was a party that Amanda was invited to attend with her friends Paul and Amy.  It was a surprise party for Amy and she was very surprised!

In addition to the party, we had excellent meals at a Thai restaurant and the best nachos we’ve ever had at a restaurant called Jackson 20.  They were waffle cut fries with BBQ beef, cheese and horseradish sauce.  While it may sound weird, they were fantastic.

We also got to eat at my favorite hole in the wall restaurant, Bilbo Baggins.  Being a LOTR nerd, I had to go there when I visited in 2010.  It was so good that it warranted a return visit in 2011.  With their excellent beer choices and wood fired pizzas, I will probably go back every time I am in Alexandria from this point forward.

Most of the pictures below were taken along the harbor of the Potomac River.  I didn’t bring my camera along for much of the weekend due to laziness and 95 degree temperatures forcing me to pack as lightly as possible.  Still snapped some good photos, though, so enjoy!

A Weekend in Alexandria, VA is a post from: Jeff Sauer Experience v8.0

During my current sabbatical in Washington, DC, I decided to make time for some of the things that I had neglected the past several months/years.  Things like personal blogging and my website in general.  I also got caught up on reading and started playing around with applications that I had downloaded to my phone and iPad, but don’t use very often.

Sunset on the Lake

This is when I fell in love with the simplicity and elegance of Instagram as a photo sharing service.  While I’m not a professional photographer, I feel like I take very good photos with my Canon Powershot G12 camera.  This is due to my college training from professional mentors.

The problem is that I don’t always have my G12 with me at all times and I need to revert to using my iPhone to snap pictures.  While the iPhone is an excellent camera, it’s not quite good enough to use for prints. As such, I find myself questioning why I should take a photo at all if it’s not the best quality.

This is where Instagram comes in as the savior.  The whole point isn’t to take the best possible photo, but rather to embrace the average quality of these photos and make them feel exceptional by applying filters to make the photos take on a retro-feel.

Instagram even makes Blogging look cool

The way it works is simple: all you need to do is take a picture with your phone and add it to instagram.  From there you apply one of several filters (about 20 total) in order achieve the look you desire for your photo.  From my experience, there are at least 1-2 filters that make just about any photo look great – anything from black and white to sepia to color enhancements.

The app allows you to add a caption for the image and upload it to Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.  The whole process takes about 5 minutes to set up the first time, then about 30 seconds to get a photo uploaded after that.

I have been having a lot of fun using Instagram on my trip to DC and plan to use it more moving forward.  I am also investigating WordPress plugins that I can use to automatically add these photos to the blog as well.

Have you tried Instagram?  If so, what do you think?  Enjoy some of my photos from the weekend!

'Merica (American Flag, WW2 Memorial and Washington Monument in same frame)

Grand Finale in Alexandria, VA

The set from my favorite Wesley Snipes movie - Murder at 1600

Instagram Photography – Making iPhone Photos Sexy is a post from: Jeff Sauer Experience v8.0

Today I used it to log my run through Washington, DC as I meandered onto the national mall, ran around the Washington Monument over to the Capitol building and back.  The run was very refreshing in spite of the 80 degrees of humid air at 8:45 AM.  My only complaint was having to wait 45-60 seconds at intersections for cars to pass.

One of the cool new features on the app is that I can take photos along the way and they are automatically placed on my run map where they were taken.  Great way to remember the route.  Now I can share some of my more exotic runs with anyone who wants to see them (and even those of you who don’t care!)

Other than waiting for the stoplights (which added 5-10 minutes to the run), I made great time and enjoyed my route.  During my week in DC I am going to try and document a few more routes if they are interesting.

For you photo lovers, here are the rest of my sights along the way. There was an international themed food fare taking place on the mall as I ran by. Not a bad way to start off the day!

Morning Run Along the National Mall in Washington, DC is a post from: Jeff Sauer Experience v8.0

There is more to my affinity to the city than our nations history (although the history and monuments are appreciated).  My favorite part of the city is how accessible everything is and the great food.  Unlike New York and other metropolises, Washington DC has a rule where no buildings can be higher than 110 feet.  This means that there are no skyscrapers in town, which makes it easy to view monuments and history from great distances.

This building restriction makes the city accessible visually, while a great subway system makes it easy to get to just about anywhere in the city without much effort.  Anywhere you would want to visit (including Reagan Airport) is accessible from the metro system.

My favorite use of the metro system is to use it to get to many of the fantastic restaurants in DC.  For lack of a better term, I am a foodie, and DC is the ultimate town for foodies.  It is hard to find a bad place to eat in DC.

I plan on sharing some of my experiences this week on the blog, so stay tuned.  To whet the appetite, here are some photos from my previous travels.

Washington, DC for a Week is a post from: Jeff Sauer Experience v8.0

Over this time I have had the opportunity to taste a lot of wine.  Some I have liked immensely, and others have been merely OK.  Fortunately, wine is like Pizza and even when it’s bad it’s good enough.

In the past few years I have started to evangelize the glory of red wine to my friends and family through proximity (I’m drinking it, they ask about it) and probably the most common question is around price: “is a $5 bottle of wine that much worse than a $10 bottle?  Is a $25 bottle that much better than a $10″ and so on.

As I become more experienced and store perceived “value” of wines in my mental abacus, I have started to notice some trends and formulate some rules for future wine drinking.  Follow these simple rules and you may find yourself enjoying wine even more:

• Price of wine doesn’t really matter for everyday drinking
• You will never have a transcendant bottle of wine for $5, but you can certainly have a really good bottle for $10
• Expensive wine can be bad.  Really bad at times.  Price does not guarantee success
• Your chances of having a truly great bottle of wine go up with the price you pay
• Buy a few bottles of nice wine when they are on sale at you local retail outlet or on a site like wine.woot.com.  Drink them on weekends and for special occasions

Based on my current knowledge level and taste, the above rules work great for determining what wine to drink.  Having said that, I am guessing that in 1-2 years these rules will sound very silly and naive.

If you are thinking about trying more wine, let me know and I can give you some advice on where to begin.  For starters, I suggest joining a club like the four seasons wine club or buying bottles on wine.woot.com.

The Myth of Good Wine and Price is a post from: Jeff Sauer Experience v8.0