We started the morning (and the year) doing the Los Gatos Year Round walk with the South Bay Striders. We took a slightly extended route, going as far as Vasona Lake Dam before turning around and having lunch at the Los Gatos Cafe.

This afternoon, I booked our tickets for our spring trip to Japan. I didn’t want to pay Actual Money for the tickets and I didn’t have enough United points to book the trip, so I had to dip into our stash of Chase Ultimate Rewards points. I thought I was going to have to use the Chase travel portal to book my flights, which would have made them worth 1.5 cents each, but it turned out to be better to exchange the Chase points for United points and book directly with United; that way, the points were worth about 2.1 cents each. The Points Guy values Chase points at 2.05 cents and United points at 1.45 cents, so I think I came out ahead!

Happy New Year!

I had three goals for this trip:

• Use up as many of our 2023 StarOptions as possible
• Qualify for United Platinum for 2024
• Visit Ray and Sarah

and two stretch goals:

• Survive the Little Drummer Boy Challenge
• Avoid being bored on Christmas Day

We succeeded in all but one – we picked the wrong time to leave Zinc Bistro on Saturday and the outside sound system was playing a jazzy, non-percussion version of the Little Drummer Boy. Better luck next year!

We had to be out of our room by 10am today but our flight wasn’t scheduled to leave until 2:25, so we had time to kill. I asked Google Maps to find a “nice walk near me” and it suggested going to the Scottsdale Nature Area, which includes a long multi-use path between the Arizona Canal and a golf course.

It was a good spot to walk for an hour before going to the airport. There was even a bathroom along the path, complete with philosophy, dueling graffiti, and spelling errors.

We got to the airport with plenty of time to spare, and had an uneventful journey home.

Expect intermittent blogging until our next trip.