Swimming Habits in Zurich and Munich Highlight How Sheltered American Kids Are

Posted on by David Cox

On our last day in Zurich we walked along the Limmat River and we watched as hundreds, if not thousands, of young men and women thoroughly enjoyed the river, They were swimming, floating, and even jumping off bridges into the river.

A couple of young people preparing to jump in the Limmat River from a pedestrian bridge

As an American, I was taken aback. Where are your parents? Is this even legal? Well as it turns out, not only is it legal, but the City of Zurich actually owns a platform with diving boards from which people jump into the river. In spite of this, I saw no lifeguards, no police, no safety measures of any kind. The water was definitely deep enough to drown in, but there didn’t appear to be any precautions whatsoever.

In the foreground, swimmers catching sun on the deck while across the river people are enjoying a couple of barges set up as diving/swimming platforms. The area is called Flussbad Oberer Letten.

I thought maybe this is some kind of aberration, until just 2 days later we found ourselves in the English Garden in Munich. I wanted to see the surfers that I had seen on YouTube who surf in the rapids of Eisbach. I was not surprised to see the surfers on a day where the temperature was over 90 degrees, but what did surprise me was the hundreds of teens and young adults floating down the superfast current of the Eisbach.

Surfing on the first set of rapids in the Eisbach

It looked like so much fun, that I had to try it myself. I stripped down to just my shorts and gave my stuff to my daughter and jumped in. Guys, this isn’t safe. I’m not a great swimmer and this current is strong. It grabbed ahold of me and pulled me down the river much faster than I had expected. I honestly struggled to float and there were a couple of times where I caught some water in my mouth while struggling to stay above water. Once I had gone about a quarter mile, there was a rope to grab and you could shimmy your way to a ladder to get out. If I had missed the rope I would have floated into a second set of rapids where other surfers are catching “waves”.

Had I not exited on that ladder, my fate was up to those rapids.

After I was done floating, we walked around the park some more and came across the beer garden where we grabbed a couple of take away beers and continued to walk through the park. There were thousands of teenagers and young adults walking around the park laughing, playing, swimming, sunbathing, and some were even drinking.

Floating down the Eisbach

What did I not notice? Police, fighting, lifeguards, drunken disorderly conduct, or even bullying. I didn’t even see litter. Hell, I even saw empty beer bottles on top of the trash containers because they didn’t want to throw them away, and they knew someone would come by to collect the bottles for recycling.

Swimming, wading and sunbathing in the Schwabinger Bach, a calmer offshoot of the Eisbach in the Englischer Garten

And how did these thousands of teenagers arrive at the park? They walked, rode their bikes or took public transportation. Like really, parents are letting their kids ride on public transportation by themselves? <gasp> Oh, the horror!

Swimming isn’t permitted in the Eisbach, but it’s also not enforced. This guy desperately clinging to a sign that’s basically saying, “don’t swim or you’ll die“ is a bit ironic.

Nothing I mentioned here could happen in the United States. The first time someone got hurt in the river, we would have police patrolling the river and arresting people by the dozens. Selling beer in the park is absolutely out of the question and walking around a park with an open beer? Are you nuts? And the drinking age is 16, you heard me – 16! Can you imagine a 16 year old legally drinking in a park? It’s a recipe for disaster, right?

The Beer Garden at the Chinese Tower is a huge beer garden in the English Garden.

But where was all the fighting, the lewd behavior, surely at least one ambulance was called? Isn’t there broken glass strewn around the paths in the park? Nope, there wasn’t, just a bunch of mostly unsupervised kids having fun.

The Limmat River is a pretty large and fairly deep river, but yet there were tons of people floating in the river, not an inner tube in sight.

We always talk about America being a land of freedom. However, we always frame those freedoms in terms of our First and Second Amendment rights. Does that really make us free? In America, I have more of a right to carry a gun down the street than a beer. That just doesn’t make sense. And could you even imagine the hellstorm that would await anyone who proposed lowering the drinking age to 16? Also, what age would you allow your kid to ride the New York City subway alone? At what age would you allow a kid to go to a park with friends, unsupervised?

Surfing in the second set of rapids on the Eisbach.

Many of our freedoms are restricted by laws and ordinances and others are self-imposed. A kid could easily be taught how to take public transportation by 10 years old but would anyone let them? I mean, it’s legal but, c’mon, in America? Would you let your teenager swim in a river with a strong current and no lifeguards? We definitely wouldn’t allow our children to jump into a river off a bridge and if we knew that was happening somewhere, we wouldn’t allow them to go.

These boys jumped from a fairly high bridge into the Limmat.

We have locked our children in a jail of safety, attempting to prevent even the slightest accidents, but are they safer? We have ridiculously high traffic fatalities as well as off the charts gun deaths. We litigate every accident that causes bodily harm or death and it’s absolutely paralyzing us. We’ve built ourselves a nanny state and I pray for the sake of our kids we can unravel some of this. Its not just physical danger either. Any time that someone even does something in front of a child that a parent doesn’t agree with, whether it be a public prayer, teaching Critical Race Theory, or God forbid seeing a drag queen, we demand that it stop immediately. Our kids aren’t going to explode by seeing something different, by experiencing something different or by just being allowed to have some real, actual, unscheduled spontaneous fun. We need to start allowing our kids to be kids again. <End of rant>

Points Check June 2023

Posted on by David Cox

So it’s about that time. The flights, trains, buses, hotels and Airbnbs are all booked. Our passports are in our hands. In some respects, this is crazy. I’ve always wanted to go to Europe, it’s been something that I’ve dreamed about since I was a kid. It was just always unreachable or impractical. I’m sure we could’ve made it work at different times, but it probably would’ve been crippling to us financially. I could never justify it. Now that we’ve figured out how to make this work, it seems unreal that it’s actually happening. All we have to do now is wait and of course, pack.

A Change in Flight

We changed our flight from a two-leg flight from Chicago to Zurich with a 12 hour layover in Brussels to a direct flight from Chicago to Zurich. That cost us 28,000 United miles, of which 22,000 came from Jenn’s United accounts and 6,000 came from transferred Ultimate Reward points. There was a whole ordeal where Jenn had merged her business and personal United accounts and because of that the plane tickets she booked for Alex and I somehow became completely unreachable for customer service. It was some kind of insane glitch that ended up taking about 4 hours on United’s customer service to unravel when Jenn was trying to change our flights. Customer service felt so bad about the mix up that they upgraded us to economy plus, which at the time they were charging over $200 per ticket for an upgrade, so 4 hours on hold for $800 worth of upgrades, sure I’ll take it (especially when it wasn’t me on hold). Ironically, Jenn was considering upgrading her and Emma to business class which would have cost an additional 80,000 points, but because we had been moved to economy plus, the upgrade didn’t make as much sense to her. It’s one thing to spend 40,000 points per ticket to move from basic economy to business class, it’s another to spend 40,000 points per ticket to move from economy plus to business class.

The bad thing about this flight change is that we aren’t going to see Brussels, but the good news is that if we’re exhausted from the flight, we will now be able to take a nap once we’ve checked into the hotel. Also, this ends up giving us an extra day in Zurich, which I felt like we weren’t going to be in long enough. Also, since it’s now a direct flight, that means much less time spent in airports. This is going to make the trip simpler and I’m sure, better.

Jenn’s New Card is the Same as My New Card

Jenn applied for the US Bank Leverage Card and her application was accepted. This is the same card that I am still working on a sign up bonus for. The US Bank Business Leverage Card is a cash back card that gives 2x on your top 2 spending categories each month and 1x on everything else. It has a $750 bonus after $7,500 in spending in the first 4 months. It also has a $95 annual fee which is waived for the first year. It’s not a very exciting card, but with our points stacking up nicely, it seems more important right now to accumulate some cash for those expenses that points can’t cover. $750 is a pretty nice sign up bonus, even if there’s a fairly hefty spend requirement to get it. Essentially this works out to 11 to 12 percent cash back on everything we spend up to $7,500. I’ll take that.

On to the Point Check!

I spent over $3,200 on my US Bank Business Leverage and earned around $51 in cash back. Jenn spent over $200 on her Wyndham Business Earner card and earned 1900 points. She also spent over $300 on her Chase Ink Unlimited Card and earned 500 Ultimate Reward Points and $1000 on her Chase Ink Cash card and earned 2,900 Ultimate Reward Points.

With the redemptions and the earnings, we finished the month with 25,400 Citi points, 23,700 United miles, 80,200 Delta miles, 5,200 American Airlines miles, 58,300 Marriott Bonvoy points, 1,600 Hyatt points, 272,300 Chase Ultimate Reward points and $525 in cash back. Using the monthly valuations published at The Points Guy this brings our total to over $10,400 which is down a couple hundred dollars from last month because of the extra points and miles used to change our flight.

A Moment of Gratitude

We’re about to embark on a trip which Jenn and I have been planning for the better part of a year and a half. It’s not lost on me just how amazing it is to live in a time that I can just hop on a plane and overnight be transported to another continent. I feel incredibly lucky and privileged to be able to make this journey and be able to do it while my kids are at an age that they should be able to appreciate what they are experiencing. It also is not lost on me how much information we are able to digest in order to make this trip possible. I learned how to use points and miles by reading blog posts and listening to podcasts. I’m learning how to speak different languages by using an app on my phone. We have even gotten all kinds of travel and packing advice from watching YouTube videos. All of the information is readily at my fingertips which makes this trip possible and will hopefully enhance our experience. This is an incredible age that we live in and I’m very grateful to be able to take advantage of this opportunity.

The Passport Office Will Drive you Insane

Posted on by David Cox

We recently had to get passports for our kids and the process was, as my daughter would put it, batshit bananas. We probably waited a touch too long, but with the kids in extracurricular activities and school, it was difficult to set up a time at the post office where all four of us could be together to sit for a passport application appointment. We all had to be there because with Alex being only 14, that meant that both parents had to be present at the appointment. That’s apparently to keep one parent from leaving the country with a child without the other parent knowing about it. Emma was close enough to 18 where they didn’t care if a parent ran off with her.

Our appointment was set 15 1/2 weeks before we were to leave, and at the time, they were saying that normal processing was taking 8 to 11 weeks. When asked if we wanted to pay for expedited service for $60 extra each or have normal processing, we thought that we had plenty of time, why spend the extra money? That turned out to be a mistake. In the time between when we sent the application to the time that it arrived, they changed the processing time to 10 to 13 weeks. If you figure in a week on both ends for shipping, all of a sudden, we were cutting it super close.

We filed the applications and were given a website to check on the progress of those applications. After a couple of weeks, I checked the website and Alex’s passport was showing up on the site as having arrived at the office one week after it was sent but we couldn’t find Emma’s application. I thought, oh, that’s weird, but I was sure it was nothing.

Incorrect Data Hides the Application

We waited a while longer, and I checked every once in a while, but I still couldn’t find Emma’s application and with about 7 weeks before we were to leave, I was starting to get nervous. I decided to call the passport office so that we could locate her application. The passport office told me that there was no other way to look for it other than how the lookup works on the website. The website looks up applications based on the last 4 digits of the social security number, last name and birthdate. I suspected that one of those things were entered into the system incorrectly and that’s why we couldn’t locate it.

Lets back up a second. When Jenn filled out Emma’s application, she wrote down the wrong birthdate. This is unlike Jenn, she’s actually really detailed and she absolutely knows when Emma was born, but she did, in fact, write the date down wrong. That being said, the representative at the post office was extremely thorough, caught the mistake and made the correction on the form by putting a correct date above the original date with the correction initialed.

At this point, my only option was to either wait and pray, or contact my Representative’s office. Of course, I contacted our Representative. A staffer at the office emailed me back for information that they could use to contact the State Department. The staffer then called me later to ask when her birthdate was, and I told him the correct date, and as suspected, the issue was that they entered the incorrect date into the system. Even though a correction was clearly made on the form itself, when the data got entered into the system it took the incorrect date not the corrected date (I suspect they are using some sort of optical character recognition software to enter the data which probably wouldn’t be able to distinguish a correction like that). Either way, why was it possible for a staffer from my Representative’s office able to get that information, but I wasn’t able to? The State Department offers no mechanism for citizens to inquire about a potential mistaken entry other than going through their Senator or Representative. Seriously?

Emma’s passport showed up a couple of weeks later, which indicated to me that the moment that they looked it up, they must’ve decided to process it at that time. Cool! Now we just need to get Alex’s passport.

Expediting a Passport After Applying

In the time between when I inquired about Emma’s application and when she received it, I decided that it would probably make sense for me to go ahead and expedite the passports. We were about 5 weeks from travel, and I’m not great about cutting things close, it makes me extremely nervous, so for my own sanity, let’s just go ahead and spend the extra money and make sure they’ll be here in time. I called the passport office to set that up. The representative told me that they could email me an application for expedited services and they would let me know within 27 days if they could expedite the application. I said “You mean, you’ll have the application complete in 27 days?” “No,” she said “we will tell you in 27 days if we can expedite the application.” “So you’re going to charge me $60 a person to expedite my application and you might not even get to it in time?” I said “We leave in a little over 30 days.” Then she told me “It could take less time than that, and we won’t charge you unless we decide to expedite” Ok, fine, whatever, email me the form.

At this point, I’m pretty upset. What is the point of having services to expedite a passport if it takes a month to decide if you can expedite the damn passport? Then I check for the email and get utterly livid. The instructions on the email include 16 questions that I’m supposed to email back, questions that include entering all of my credit card information. I wouldn’t consider myself to be a security expert, but I’m pretty sure that emailing your credit card number, expiration date and cvv number isn’t kosher. It’s not like this is a local bakery or something, you’re the passport office. You process over 20 million passports a year and take payment for them. You don’t have a secure web payment process? You’re just taking credit card information through email? I mean, thank God nobody ever hacks email accounts! But, of course, I need the passport so I just threw my credit card information out into the ether and hoped nobody ever hacks it.

Panic Mode

At this point, I start emailing the staffer at my Representatives office on a fairly regular basis, trying to get him to pull off whatever magic he did for Emma’s passport. Honestly, I was probably being a bit of a grade A asshole to a guy who honestly didn’t deserve it and was doing his level best to assist. The problem was that once summer hit, the State Department was getting a ton of requests from every Congressperson and Senator from across the country and now they couldn’t even keep up with those requests. He was updating me when he could but you could tell he wasn’t getting updates very quickly from whoever he was in contact with.

At 14 days remaining before your trip, you are now allowed to contact the Passport Office and ask some additional questions. I told my boss that I would be coming in late and I called the Passport Office, and as expected, it took around 3 hours to get in touch with someone. When I finally did, the person on the phone told me she couldn’t get me any information because it wasn’t within 14 days. This is Friday, and we leave in 2 Fridays. That’s 14 days away. She said “We don’t count the day of travel.” Which doesn’t make any sense, but I think what she meant was that because they could actually process the passport on the day of travel then it’s really 15 days if you count the day of travel and the day of the call. Whatever, that’s some seriously insane semantics. I took 3 hours to get connected so that I could be told that 14 days isn’t 14 days. What?!! Whatever, can I at least pay for next day shipping while I have you on the phone? “No,” she told me, “I can’t look up the application until Monday, at that time you can pay for next day shipping”

I called on Monday, which is now just 11 days from when I need the passport in my hand and asked them to look up the passport. They told me that it had been approved and would be printed and shipped within 24 hours. I then asked if I could get the shipping upgraded to next day and was told that it was too late for that and that I could expect the passport in 1-2 weeks. So then I asked what I was to do if it actually took 2 weeks and I was told that if we didn’t get it before 5 days prior to travel, then I could request an in person appointment.

To be clear, I had requested next day shipping at 5 weeks prior, 14 days prior and 11 days prior and was unable to pull that off. I really wasn’t nervous at this point, however, because I’ve never had anything take 2 weeks in the US mail. It ended up being delivered in 3 days. That’s the good news, but all I can think of is just how useless all of this was. I had over 20 emails back and forth with my Congressperson’s office, several phone calls to the State Department and about half of the hair that I started this process with. Throughout the entire process, I kept reading about peoples’ experiences and I really did have one conclusion – they were always going to make sure we had the passport. If that’s the case, then, why not just do something on the customer service side to calm me down and make sure that I’m not going to get frustrated with your customer service reps and my Congressional Representative’s office? In the end, I wasted so much time for myself and so many people and it was all really preventable.

A Modest Proposal

It seems to me that a good, modern website could fix these issues and save a whole lot of labor for both the State Department and Congressional staffers. A redesign of the website to function better for applicants would make the process much smoother. Just as is does now, after filling out your application, you should be able to go to the website and check on the status. However, instead of just seeing a message that says “In Process” it should say “Based on the service requested, and the number of applications that we have, we anticipate that your application will be processed on the week of [date range]. After processing, please allow up to two weeks for shipping. If that is not soon enough, please choose from the below options to expedite processing or shipping.” Below that should be the ability to add expedited shipping or processing to a cart and you could then pay for those additional services with a credit card on a secure payment processor. Once you paid the new information should be displayed on the page with updated dates and/or shipping times. This is fairly basic and could free up so much time and effort for the State Department.

That being said, I don’t anticipate the State Department will do anything like this soon. My take away from this entire experience is that if you allow the State Department enough time to process your passport, they will get it done and you probably don’t need to make a hundred phone calls for them to do so. They know when the date of your travel is and they know it takes around 3-5 days normally to ship something. It’ll get done. I just don’t know why they feel the need to hold back information and needlessly stress citizens out. My passport is expiring in about 8 months and I’m going to apply for a renewal soon, without a planned trip, because frankly, I can’t take the stress of having a trip planned and not knowing for sure that it’s actually going to happen. I’m never going to put myself through this again and all of this stress took away from the anticipation of taking what I hope will be an incredible vacation. But now that this is over, we can concentrate on the most important thing – We’re going to Europe!

Dos Sirenos Brewing – San Antonio Texas

Posted on by David Cox

On the last day of my trip to San Antonio, I had the pleasure of going to Dos Sirenos Brewing. It’s a brewery with a sort of nautical/mythological theme in the area around a mile south of the downtown/Riverwalk area. I walked down there along the Riverwalk (the part that to the south that is more park like and less commercial). After trying it, I probably would’ve walked 5 miles to get there.

I walked up to the building, and it’s pretty funky, with a couple of mermen drinking beers painted right on the front of the building. It’s definitely an interesting choice but I actually like it. When I walked inside there was a lot more of the theme, especially with the large mural on the back wall. This is gonna be interesting.

I sat down at the bar and ordered an Atlas Strong Ale. It’s an English Strong Ale and as usual for me, if you have an unusual beer style at your brewery, I’m probably going to order it. Now, I’m not an expert in this beer style so I can’t tell you whether it was appropriate to the beer style but I can tell you it was delicious.

I also ordered the Hera DDH IPA and again it was great, just a really great example of what a double dry hopped IPA should be. I finished my beer tasting with the Sea Turtle Stout, which is a turtle chocolate candy inspired stout and it was a great dessert beer, and capped off my meal wonderfully.

The beer was the best of any of the breweries that I tried in San Antonio, but I really don’t want to talk about that because, you see, I had a life-changing meal at Dos Sirenos. Ok, so life-changing is an exaggeration, but still, DAY-YAMN it was good.

On the menu, there was something called Pork Belly and Grits. The description was “Crispy Pork Belly, Parmesan Grits, Tomatillo Succotash, Salsa Macha.” I was confused. How in the hell do all of these things work together? These ingredients seemed to me to be completely unrelated. Ok, sure, I get the pork belly, but I’m an ignorant Yankee, parmesan grits? Grits can be flavored with parmesan cheese? And what is tomatillo succotash? I love tomatillos and it’s never occurred to me for it to be in succotash. Also, I love all kinds of salsa and I have no clue what salsa macha is.

Pork Belly and Grits

I was intrigued and asked the bartender about this dish. He told me it was the chef’s favorite dish. Ok, that solidified it, bring me this weird ass dish, I’m super confused by this and I need it to make sense.

This bowl shows up and it’s a whole heap of of tomatoes and corn in a tomatillo sauce sitting on a base of parmesan grits with a ring of this salsa macha and a few chunks of pork belly on top. The first thing I did was taste the grits and I was instantaneously enraged. It’s delicious, creamy and with a perfect amount of parmesan goodness. Why am I mad? Because I know plenty of southerners and they kept this from me. You named these grits? You know that you named this deliciousness ‘grits’ to keep us Yankees from eating this. How did you not call this dish ‘super creamy corn yum-yums’ or something? Grits? That’s what you went with? I avoided these for 48 years because it sounded nasty. Not a single one of you ever said me “psst, they’re really not gritty?” C’mon!!!

There is a massive amount of outdoor seating that was going unused that afternoon.

Next, I grabbed a spoonful of the succotash, grits, and the salsa. They went together perfectly. The succotash is bright, flavorful, and acidic with the tomatillos adding the acid. The salsa is spicy and a touch oily, which since I was unfamiliar with salsa macha, was unexpected, but it added a perfect amount of fat and spice to the bite. Overall, it felt fairly light because of the succotash and grits but the pork belly added some additional crispiness and fat to the dish to balance it all out. It was a perfect balance of textures and flavors and it was just unbelievably well done. Honestly, it’s probably the best meal I’ve had in years.

The back wall of the brewery has a massive mural covering the whole wall.

This dish was dreamed up in a mad scientist lab somewhere and it’s just off the charts. I actually went home after this and learned how to make salsa macha, parmesan grits and tomatillo succotash so I could continue to eat this, since I don’t live in San Antonio. It’s probably the best thing I cook now, but it still isn’t as good as the original. Seriously, if you are within a 1 hour drive of Dos Sirenos Brewing, just stop what you’re doing and go there now, before the chef takes this off the menu. Of course, who knows what insane thing this chef might do next. You can find out what they’re up to at https://dossirenosbrewing.com/.

San Antonio Riverwalk

Posted on by David Cox

I had the opportunity to take a business trip to San Antonio and the thing I was most excited about was revisiting the Riverwalk. It had been probably around 25 years since I had been there when my wife and I took a day trip there with my parents years ago. I had remembered it as beautiful, full of life and surprising cool on what was a pretty hot summer day. It was every bit as lovely as I remembered and probably even better than it was 25 years ago.

I arrived in San Antonio in the early afternoon and was dropped off at my hotel, the Springhill Suites by Marriott near the Henry B Gonzales Convention Center. My first impressions of San Antonio weren’t great. There are a lot of empty lots in the area directly west of the convention center. There were a lot of unimpressive buildings and surface parking lots and frankly it looked like San Antonio was dilapidated. It reminded me of so many midwestern cities that deteriorated following the closure of big manufacturing plants in those cities. My hometown is one which is still recovering from plant closures dating back to the 80s, and I am well aware of this ‘look’. Early on in the trip, I did a decent amount of walking along the sidewalks in the area around the Riverwalk and it just wasn’t enjoyable at all. There didn’t seem to be any cohesive feeling that you get from walking around a downtown area with block to block buildings like you get when walking along the downtowns of Chicago, New York or San Francisco. I think the reason for this, however, was that in San Antonio all of the energy of this city is centered around the Riverwalk.

Surface parking lots are necessary in cities, but the number here seemed excessive.
A gravel parking lot with shipping containers is not what you expect to see in a vibrant city center.

As soon as I had a chance, I headed to the Riverwalk, and it was more impressive than I remembered. The first thing that I noticed was just how close the walkway is to the water. Living in a city that is hit almost yearly with floods, this is impressive. In my hometown, we have some bike paths that are deliberately built 20 feet above normal river level, so that they don’t flood when the river rises (not all of our paths are high enough to avoid flooding). I live in the Quad-Cities, which is built around the Mississippi River. In our area, the height of the river can vary 15 feet over the course of a year. Designs of parks along the Mississippi take this into account and this makes the river feel somewhat distant, but in San Antonio, you can literally sit on the walk and touch the water.

This is the dam on the downstream side of the downtown area.

What makes this possible is some really impressive engineering, involving dams and an enormous flood tunnel. They essentially turned this section of the San Antonio River into a canal by being able to control the river level so effectively. The tunnel is 24 foot diameter bored tunnel approximately 140 feet deep that works as an inverted siphon. It’s a brilliant design that helps keep this river from overflowing.

This is the outlet of the flood tunnel, it’s a couple of miles downstream of the downtown.

The second thing that hit me is just how close restaurants and bars are to the river. There just aren’t that many places where someone can sit at a restaurant while dining directly next to a river, but there are quite a few restaurants along the Riverwalk where you can do just that. Even on weekdays, these restaurants seemed to get a decent amount of business. They seem incredibly romantic, but since I was traveling alone, I had no desire to dine in a romantic atmosphere. I instead did what any self-respecting solo man on a business trip would do, I ate at bars.

Also impressive are all of the little touches that are at virtually every point along the Riverwalk. There are art pieces, statues, and planters everywhere. Anytime your eyes wonder, they come across something interesting and beautiful. Sometimes its a bright mural sized painting adding contrast to the stone walls.

Sometimes its an enormous statue in the middle of a set of bridges.

Sometimes its a set of unique light fixture illuminating the path.

And sometimes, its a fountain making the underside of a bridge beautiful. I mean, honestly, when was the last time you were impressed by the underside of a bridge.

I was even impressed by where they stored the boats that they used for tours.

There are a lot of these tourist boats that float around the Riverwalk loop in the downtown area.
They park these things in rooms under the bridges or parking lots.

There are these storage and maintenance areas under parking lots and streets in the area where these boats operate. It is such a unique solution to use the space under the streets for what is essentially maintenance garages.

The “garage” for the boats is under the street.
Here is another maintenance area under a street.

Throughout the Riverwalk area, there are flower planters and trees that not only offer beauty, but also provide shade. I don’t know if there is an actual temperature difference between the temperature in a parking lot in San Antonio and the temperature in the Riverwalk, but I would say that it feels like about 10 degrees cooler by the river.

I also loved the fact that stone was used throughout the Riverwalk area. It seems like an obvious choice to use the same material all along the river, but it’s literally miles of stone. Maybe this is an extremely common type of stone in San Antonio, but they used a ton of it and it makes everything feel cohesive.

Oh, and there are water features – everywhere! I love these kinds of water features. They add to a cooling effect by creating some mist in the air and they also provide noise that has an amazing ability to calm the soul.

There are so many water features, they even hide some in grottos.

One of my favorite things along the Riverwalk was the Amphitheatre that straddled the San Antonio River. On one side, there is a raised stage right on the edge of the river and on the other is a seating section that looks like it had capacity for a few hundred people. The seating has a unique stone and grass layout, which means that if you were attending a show there, you would be seated on grass. I imagine that would be comfortable, but you might be a little worried about grass stains on your pants. There weren’t any shows there during my stay in San Antonio, but I hope it gets used a lot because it is very beautiful and unique.

Stage for the Amphitheater
Seating for the Amphitheater

I really love the Riverwalk area in San Antonio and I can see why so many shops, bars and restaurants have located themselves around it. The Riverwalk is one of those amazing examples of how important city planning and engineering can be to the vitality of a city. San Antonio could have easily just decided that they would build enormous flood walls or giant berms to prevent flooding and if they had done that then the area certainly wouldn’t be the commercial success it is today. Creative engineering and great design created a space that is truly unique, and it is definitely a fantastic reason to visit San Antonio if you get the chance.

Points Check May 2023

Posted on by David Cox

This was the second straight month of a huge jump in value of points, miles and cash back. In all fairness, we had probably opened way too many accounts at once. It turned out to be a lot to keep track of and it left a lot of room to make mistakes. I think at one point we had 5 credit cards that we were trying to get sign up bonuses on. That’s probably not something we’re going to want to do too often, if ever again. But it did mean that we jumped from a value of points, miles and cash back of around $1,400 in December to $10,600 in May.

US Business Leverage Card

I applied for the US Bank Business Leverage Card and the application was accepted. The US Bank Business Leverage Card is a cash back card that gives 2x on your top 2 spending categories each month and 1x on everything else. It has a $750 bonus after $7,500 in spending in the first 4 months. It also has a $95 annual fee which is waived for the first year. It’s not an awesome card, but it helps us with two things, accumulating cash we can use on our trip to Europe, and with the $7,500 minimum spend it slows down this torrid pace of opening new cards we had earlier in the year.

A Minor Redemption and a Business Trip

I had one small redemption this month and that was to buy skip the line tickets for the Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel. For that I spent $100 of cash back.

I went on a business trip this month which boosted my mileage totals. I received 6,700 Bonvoy points by staying at the Springhill Suites Downtown/Riverwalk for 4 nights. I also earned 3,440 American Airlines miles by flying with American Airlines.

Anyway, on to the Points Check!

Jenn spent $400 on her Chase Ink Unlimited Card and earned 600 Ultimate Reward Points, she also spent $500 on her Ink Cash Card and earned 2,100 Ultimate Reward Points. Jenn also spent around $900 on her Wyndham Business Earner Card and earned around 2,500 Wyndham points and the 45,000 point sign up bonus. Jenn’s United Business Card renewed and she paid the $99 annual fee but she did get the 5000 point anniversary bonus for holding the business and personal card. Jenn also spent over $3,600 on her Delta Business Card and earned around 3,900 miles and the 75,000 mile sign up bonus.

I spent less than $300 on my Citi Premier Card and earned almost 500 Citi Thank You Points. I also spent $1,400 on my USBank Business Leverage card and earned around $23 in cash back. I spent less than $400 on my USBank Altitude Card and earned almost 600 points and the 50,000 point bonus. Since, I can’t figure any reasonable way to get more than 1 cent per point on those points, I’m treating it like cash back, so I’m counting that as earning $506.

At the end of the month, this left us with 25,000 Citi Thank You points, 45,700 United miles, 80,000 Delta miles, 5,300 American Airlines miles, 58,300 Marriott Bonvoy points, 1,600 Hyatt Points, 274,900 Ultimate Reward points, 49,500 Wyndham points, 83,300 Capital One Venture miles and $470 in Cash Back. By using the Points Guy valuations located at https://thepointsguy.com/guide/monthly-valuations/ that comes to a total value of $10,650. Those points are in a number of programs and it might seem difficult to use those points easily, however, the transferable points make them more useable than it looks on the surface, as I describe in this post.

Planning for the Future

With our trip to Europe around the corner, we’re doing our best to accumulate cash to reduce the cost of the trip which will be used as soon as it’s earned. After that, we will probably be looking to pick up credit cards with sign up bonuses that can pair well with the transferable points we already have. One possibility would be any of the Chase Avios cards (Air Lingus, British Airways or Iberia) because they could be topped off with Chase Ultimate Reward points. A lot of it will probably be determined by where we might want to go for spring break next year. Whatever we decide, because of the points that we have available we should be able to have a variety of options and that’s going to make that decision a lot of fun.

We now Have $10K in Points & Miles, What Does That Mean?

Posted on by David Cox

After really pushing every angle we could for the last 17 months, we now have accumulated 25,000 Citi Thank You points, 45,700 United miles, 80,000 Delta miles, 5,300 American Airlines miles, 58,300 Marriott Bonvoy points, 1,600 Hyatt Points, 274,900 Ultimate Reward points, 49,500 Wyndham points, 83,300 Capital One Venture Miles and $470 in Cash Back. By using the Points Guy valuations located at https://thepointsguy.com/guide/monthly-valuations/ that comes to a total value of $10,650. That sounds like a lot, but what exactly does that mean? It’s a bunch of points, but it’s spread over a ton of different programs. How useable are they, really? It turns out, that they are really useful because the real power are the transferable points that total up to around $7,500 worth of value between the Citi Thank You points, Capital One Venture miles, and the 274,900 Ultimate Reward points. Those points can either bulk up the points that you have in airline or hotel programs, or they can be transferred to a program you don’t even have points in, if there’s a great deal available. Let’s examine what these points could actually do.

United Airlines

Because Chase Ultimate Reward points are transferable to United Airlines (as long as you have a Chase Sapphire Preferred Card, Chase Sapphire Reserve Card, or a Chase Ink Business Preferred Card) the 274,900 points can be transferred to United. That means that while we have a total of 45,700 United miles, it actually means we have the potential to have 320,600 United miles. With United Airlines saver rates to Europe running at 40K right now, that means the possibility of 4 round trip tickets to Europe.

American Airlines & Delta Airlines

American Airlines doesn’t have typical transfer partners. There was a brief moment when Citi Thank You points were transferable in late 2021, but there aren’t any current transfer partners. So the 5,300 miles are basically useless unless I get an AA credit card with a sign up bonus. However, Marriott Bonvoy will transfer to AA at 3:1, so 57,000 Bonvoy points could turn into 19,000 AA miles for a total of 24,300 AA miles, with which you could probably pretty easily get a domestic round trip ticket. With Delta we have 80,000 points, so that’s a usable amount, but we don’t have any points with Delta’s only major transfer partner, American Express. There is a 3:1 transfer opportunity from Marriott, so we could transfer 57,000 Marriott Bonvoy points to Delta for 19,000 Delta miles to make 99,000 Delta miles when added to the 80,000 we already have. Neither one of the Marriott transfers would be an ideal use of Bonvoy points, but it is available. That could pretty easily get us a few domestic round-trip tickets as 16K round-trip in Basic Economy is not too hard to find.

Marriott Bonvoy Points

Transferring to Marriott can be done at a 1:1 rate from Chase Ultimate Rewards to Marriott Bonvoy. This means that there is a potential of more than 330,000 Bonvoy points by combining our Ultimate Reward Points and Bonvoy points. Since I’ve been eyeballing a trip to the Canary Islands, I found this listing which is a 3 bedroom villa with a heated pool in the Canary Islands for 43K points per night. That’s 7 nights in this villa.

Hyatt

Hyatt is known for having the most valuable hotel reward points. Because of that, Hyatt has been a favorite way for people to use Ultimate Reward points for years, since they transfer at 1:1 to Hyatt. While I only have 1,600 Hyatt points, we are able to leverage as much as 276,500 Hyatt points by transferring our Ultimate Reward Points. Hyatt points are extremely valuable. For example, if you just need a clean and comfortable room, Hyatt has some pretty nice category 1 Hyatt Places that you can routinely book for 5,000 per night. If you were to use those points that way it’s a total of 55 nights at 5,000 per night. If you want to book all-inclusive resorts, they are classed from A-F. The standard night bookings for A is 15k points per night, B is 20k, C is 25K, D is 30K, E is 40K, and F is 50K. So we would be able to book 18 nights at a class A, 13 nights at a class B, 11 nights at a class C, 9 nights at a class D, 6 nights at a class E or 5 nights at a super-swanky class F. We stayed at the Hyatt Ziva Los Cabos (which recently jumped from a class B to a class D) and we thought it was fantastic. If we were to go back we could stay for 9 nights, although my liver probably couldn’t handle it.

Wyndham Rewards

Both Capital One Venture miles and Citi Thank You points transfer to Wyndham at a 1:1 ratio, so if you total all of those points up, I have the possibility of 157,800 Wyndham points. The only interesting use of Wyndham points, for me, is to use them for Vacasa rentals. The generally accepted rule on Vacasa is that the you can basically book any available Vacasa for 15,000 points per bedroom per night as long as the normal price of the rental isn’t more than $500 per bedroom per night. In other words, these points would be worth 10 nights at a one-bedroom Vacasa rental worth up to $500 per night, or 5 days at a two-bedroom Vacasa worth up to $1,000 per night or even 3 nights at a Vacasa rental worth $1,500 per night. It’s such a good deal that we recently purchased points for a rental in Nashville and it saved us around $1000 over three nights.

Flying Blue

Ok, I have exactly 0 Flying Blue miles. Flying Blue is the rewards currency of Air France, KLM, and 4 smaller airlines. Just because I don’t have Flying Blue miles doesn’t mean that I can’t redeem them for flights, though. Flying Blue is great because they have great transfer partners and occasionally have ridiculous deals. They are 1:1 transfer partners with Chase, Capital One, American Express, Citi and Bilt. They are also 3:1 partners with Marriott Bonvoy. So if I do the math on the Capital One, Citi, Chase and Marriott Bonvoy Points, I have access to over 375,000 Flying Blue miles. On top of that, sometimes they have some awesome transatlantic flight rates. Here is an example I put together from Chicago to Paris. It’s round trip in Economy, 30K miles and less than $200 in taxes and fees. I could literally book this 12 times with the available points.

Virgin

Ok, this one, honestly, I don’t even believe this exists. Bear with me on this, again I have precisely 0 Virgin miles. Virgin has a ton of great transfer partners, similar to Flying Blue. They have Chase Ultimate Rewards, Citi Thank You points, Capital One and Amex all at 1:1 as well as Marriott Bonvoy at 3:1. In this case, it would be similar to Flying Blue with us able to covert our points to 375,000 Virgin miles, however, they also right now are offering a 30% transfer bonus from Chase, as described in this post from One Mile at a Time. With the transfer bonus, we would have access to 464,500 Virgin miles if we did complete transfers from Citi, Chase, Capital One and Marriott. Here is the deal from Virgin that would be the most intriguing to me – Virgin cruises occasionally runs sales on cruises where you can get a one week cruise for 2 people for 80,000 points. The latest special, as described by Upgraded Points, has 4 different 7 day itineraries for Mediterranean cruises to choose from. With the available points, we could cruise for 5 weeks and have points to spare. That’s just silly.

The importance of Flexibility

Obviously, a lot of these examples are ridiculous. We’re not going to stay 55 nights in a Hyatt Place, fly to Paris 12 times or cruise for 5 weeks, but they are meant to illustrate a point. If you stay on top of deals and know who you can transfer points to, you can really stretch out your points. If you can also be flexible with dates and locations, you can stretch it out even more. Keep in mind though, a typical, non-saver one way fare across the Atlantic Ocean is 70K United miles, not 40K, and business class typically runs 155K so these miles can disappear quickly if you’re not shopping around. If you try pricing out a Saturday to Saturday trip to Cancun during spring break on points to stay at an all-inclusive resort, that will probably be an ungodly amount of points, if you can even book on points at all. However, flying to Europe during spring break is off-peak and can be extremely cheap by comparison. Just like with cash, your points can go a lot farther if you are a diligent shopper.

Cash

I hope this never happens, but there is always the possibility that at some point I won’t want to travel, or can’t travel for some reason. In which case, these points are useless, correct? Well, not exactly. The credit card points do have a cash value, not the airline and hotel points, but the credit card points. The Chase Ultimate Reward points are worth 1 cent each, the Citi Thank You points are worth 1 cent each and the Capital One miles we have are worth half a cent each, when redeemed for cash. That would mean all of those transferable points have a current cash value of over $3,400. Which is nice, but probably not how I want to use the points.

What do we do now?

It’s almost strange to think about, but I just consider this to be a good base of points. We finally have enough points to utilize multiple programs (this post doesn’t even scratch the surface of great transfer partners, I didn’t even mention one of my favorites, Turkish Airlines). Our strategy moving forward will probably include a decent amount of cash back cards to fill in those gaps that points can’t, like Airbnb and taxes and fees on flights. It will also probably mean getting cards that are running elevated sign up bonuses. Either way, the next vacation we book should be easier for us to get a really good deal because of the flexibility we have built with this cache of points and miles.

Back Unturned Brewing Co- San Antonio, Texas

Posted on by David Cox

I walked into Back Unturned Brewing company in the early evening having not had a proper meal all day. The place was a little dark and industrial. The color scheme is one of a lot of black, deep reds, stainless steel and grey, There was a lot of original art on the walls and the lighting was dim. Oh, this place is edgy, trendy and I most definitely am not. I’m middle-aged, milquetoast, boring, you know, the kind of person that uses the word “milquetoast.” But I needed food and I wanted a beer, so I was gonna stay, even if I wasn’t cool enough to be there.

Dark as Helles Lager – oxymoronic name, delicious beer.

I sat down at the bar and ordered a Dark as Helles Lager which they had listed as a schwarzbier. I took a sip of this an immediately said to the bartender “Are you sure this is a schwarzbier?” I didn’t mean that as a criticism, it was absolutely delicious but it was rich, malty and had lots of roasted flavor. Frankly, it was too flavorful to be a schwarzbier because they tend to be run a little more muted. Honestly though, I don’t care how they classified this beer, it was damned delicious.

Red subway tile and LED lights make for a sharp looking tap station.

I took a look at the menu and decided on a margarita pizza. I order margarita pizza somewhat regularly, especially when I know I’m going to be eating out a lot. They usually satisfy my hunger but since they’re vegetarian, they tend to not weigh me down the same way a sausage pizza would. One problem with ordering them at restaurants is that margarita pizzas are made a lot of times by people who don’t cook vegetarian very often and forget that you need to season vegetarian dishes more aggressively, because there isn’t any meat to do the seasoning for you. This was not a problem at Back Unturned, however. This pizza came out with a perfect flatbread crust, and it was properly seasoned. The chef had laid each pizza piece with a tomato slice and a leaf of basil and most importantly he put enough salt on it to balance the tomato. It was so good. It was definitely the best margarita pizza I’ve had in a long time.

Mmm margarita pizza – and look at that char, perfect!

I also had their Wrath of Marz(en). Which was a very well done märzen style beer. The bartender was extremely friendly and was willing to chat a little in between pouring drinks, which I appreciate when I’m sitting at the bar by myself. Overall, it was a great experience and I would definitely return, even if I’m not really cool enough to be there.

Pro tip: If you walk into a place with a sketch of Anthony Bourdain on the wall, order food.

For more information on Back Unturned Brewing Co, visit their website at https://www.backunturned.com/beer.

Roadmap Brewing Co – San Antonio Texas

Posted on by David Cox

I was in San Antonio for a work conference and between the flight, checking into the hotel, and standing in an insufferably long line to check in and get a lanyard for the conference, I was a touch cranky. Alas, there is generally a solution for my crankiness, beer, so I wandered over to the closest brewery I could find – Roadmap Brewing Company. It’s a little less than a mile walk from the main Riverwalk touristy area, but definitely worth the walk.

Looks like a fairly inaccurate map of Texas highways and interstates. Still a nice touch, though.

Roadmap plays up the classic road trip theme. For a microbrewery, it is a good size with a decent amount of seating. It has a industrial feel, with concrete floors and high top tables that are made of wood and black pipe. The stainless steel brewing equipment is right out in the seating area and not in the back room, which I like, but might make for some overpowering smells on brew day. The music was playing at a comfortable volume, mostly a combination of pop punk and rock. I believe there was a food truck parked outside, but I didn’t pay any attention to that, I just wanted a glass of ale.

I love this logo!

I ordered a Craven Cottage, which is a classic amber English Pub ale. It was a really solid and tasty version of the style. It’s not usually my go to style of beer, but it’s also a fairly uncommon style for American craft breweries, so of course I was going to try it. It was well-balanced with toasty biscuit and caramel notes, very drinkable. Craven Cottage is definitely the kind of beer that you could have a few. I also had the Minivan Dad, which is a double IPA at 7.9% ABV. I thought it was another well done beer, which was malty enough to hold up to the fairly aggressive hopping. I thought they did a pretty good job of balance on this one, and I definitely enjoyed it.

Sister breweries posted on the wall. The road signs look is a nice touch.

Hey Gen-Z, Did You Know?

Roadmaps were mapping systems, like Google Maps or Apple Maps, only they were printed on paper. Some of these were for cities or states and would be on large (approximately 3′ x 3′) paper that would be folded up so that it could fit into a glove box. Others would in the form of a road atlas, where a collection of roadmaps would be bound with a spiral binder. You can still find road atlases either shoved under Grandpa’s truck seat or between his WWII books and his Tom Clancy novels in his “study.” If you are lucky enough to find one, it is usually marked up with highlighters and stained with tears. These roadmaps were normally paired with the passenger in the shotgun seat that would relay instructions to the driver. Together this made up the Passenger Seat Navigation system.

Differences between Phone Navigation (PN) systems and Passenger Seat Navigation (PSN) systems:

  • While PN systems warn the driver 10 miles before an interstate highway exit, PSN systems let the driver know about their exit 300 feet before the exit, causing the driver to cut off 2 lanes of traffic.
  • PN systems can anticipate road construction and route drivers around traffic issues while PSN systems typically just scream “I told you that you should have taken [other route] but noooo you never listen to me.”
  • PN systems are typically polite, while PSN systems refer to the driver as “dickhole”
  • Unlike PSN systems, PN systems require no human interaction and frees passengers up to nap and eat Munchies.
  • PN systems give minute by minute updates on expected arrival times, while PSN systems occasionally blurt out “Ugh, I’m gonna be dead by the time we get there.”
They ordered the menu from low to high ABV, I’m detecting a little OCD.

Overall, I really liked Roadmap Brewing Company. The vibe was cool and it definitely seemed like a great place to relax. They had a really nice selection of beer on tap, not only because they had 16 taps, but they also hit quite a few beer styles on the menu. It looked like, based on the collection of cans they had on top of one of their coolers, that they probably rotate out their beers fairly frequently, which should keep their regulars coming back. If I lived in San Antonio, this would definitely be a regular customer at this brewery.

If you would like more information on Roadmap Brewing Company, why not visit their website at https://www.roadmapbrewing.com/?

Points Check April 2023

Posted on by David Cox

Whew, what a hell of a month! It feels like we were absolutely raking in points. The total value of our points rose by around $3,400. We actually accumulated 3 bonuses this month. Jenn finally finished off her spending on her Chase Ink Cash Card and received her 90,000 Ultimate Rewards point bonus and I finished off my Bank of the West cash back card for a $200 cash bonus. We also pulled off a rare wham-bam-thank-you-Capital-One by having Jenn sign up for the Capital One Venture Card to pay our taxes, and earned a 75,000 point bonus by paying for our taxes, the credit card fees and the Turbotax software.

A Couple of Travel Redemptions

I did have a couple of small redemptions for our trip to Europe. The only thing missing from our travel itinerary was train tickets from Venice to Rome. I was able to book those through Italotreno and wipe those charges out with the cash back from my Bank of the West bonus. I also used cash back to book a ghost tour in Venice, which sounds fun. We’ve done a couple in New Orleans and they always turn out to be a fun combination of history and spooky stories and as a bonus, they freak my daughter out. With just a couple months before our trip to Europe, I’m really trying to pre-book some tours before we leave so that we have some structure built into the trip. I’m a little afraid that with us visiting 6 cities in 14 days that we could easily become overwhelmed if we don’t have that structure pre-built into the trip. We normally don’t travel like this so being prepared is a little foreign to me. We also booked a Vacasa in Nashville for the fall by buying and using Wyndham points which turned out to be an insanely good deal.

Capital One Venture Card

The Capital One Venture Card is a great all around travel card. It comes with a $95 annual fee and has some of the same benefits that a lot of $100-ish travel cards come with such as TSA precheck credit, travel insurance, and no foreign transaction fees. It also does have a couple of one-time lounge passes that you might be able to use. However, in my opinion, the best thing about this card is that it allows you to earn a decent amount of points very simply. It’s 2x everything. That’s it, 2x on everything. In addition, the Points Guy values these points at 1.85 cents per piece (only if you transfer the points, of course) which means that you’re really getting a return of 3.7% on everything you buy with this card. They have 18 transfer partners which allow you to really get the most of these points. In our case, I was really looking to boost our ability to get Turkish Miles and Smiles points because they have a ridiculous deal where you can book United Airlines Saver fares for 15,000 miles round trip for all US domestic flights and 20,000 miles to fly round trip to Mexico. There are a crazy number of ways to get great value for Turkish Miles as God Save the Points describes.

Honestly, if I knew someone who wanted to get into miles and points but didn’t want to sign up for credit cards all the time, I would tell that person to just get the Capital One Venture Card and learn how to book flights using Turkish Miles and Smiles. I mean, every $7,500 spent on the card is equal to a domestic round trip ticket, every $10,000 spent is a round trip ticket to Mexico. It honestly doesn’t get much easier in the miles and points world than that. That being said, booking flights with Turkish is a pain, but it’s worth it.

Anyway, On to the Points Check!

Jenn spent over $300 on her Chase Ink Unlimited and earned 500 Ultimate Reward Points. She also spent $3,100 on her Chase Ink Cash card and earned 5,100 points plus the 90,000 point sign up bonus. I spent $1,100 on my US Bank Altitude Connect card and earned $27 in cash back. Jenn spent $1,400 on her Wyndham Business Earner Card and earned 2,000 points. I also spent a little less than $300 on my Citi Premier Card and earned over 500 Citi Thank You Points. We also paid our taxes with Jenn’s new Capital One Venture Card and with all of the fees it was around $4,200 and with the points earned and the 75,000 point bonus we earned a total of 83,300 Venture Miles. In addition to all of that I spent a little over $200 on my Bank of the West Cash Back Card earning over $2 and the $200 bonus which I quickly redeemed on train tickets in Italy and a ghost tour in Venice.

All of this left us with a total of 24,500 Citi Thank You Points, 40,700 United Miles, 51,300 Marriott Bonvoy Points, 1,600 Hyatt Points, 300 Delta Miles, 272,200 Ultimate Reward Points, and 83,300 Capital One Venture Miles as well as around $40 in Cash Back. Using The Points Guy’s points valuations, these points are worth just shy of $8,400 which is much higher than our previous high of $5,100 just before we redeemed a bunch of miles to book our trip to Europe.