Travel days are hard to get excited about when you make a point to get the lowest mileage fair humanly possible. Not looking for pity, it is a deliberate approach to allow us more travel. In our case today this leads to a 3:00 am departure and an eleven hour layover at one of our least favorite airports (LAX). Since we have a few of this sort of trips planned for the year, we splashed out for a credit card that gives us lounge access. We don’t know if it makes any sense to put the money into the layovers instead of the plane seats, but we are about to find out.

The American Express lounge in Seattle for breakfast was perfectly civil, saved us whatever the meal would have cost us in the concourse, and provided respite from the mob. Their lounge in Los Angeles was a weirdly subterranean affair in the international terminal, but we had plenty of time to embrace it. We both took advantage of free food and drink, and Theresa doubled down with a free manicure, massage and shower. Brian, meanwhile found a spectacular room of chaise lounges and fell into a very deep sleep for hours. At 11:30 pm we reluctantly climbed back aboard Alaska Airlines for our last leg.