Around this time in 2012, I had been watching all the tweets going on for the OshKosh EAA AirVenture and was totally jealous of all the Avgeek good times that were going on. I couldn’t stand it any more after a solid week of it and decided right then and there, I HAD to go. I set it in stone that in 2013, come hell or high water, I was going. What is AirVenture? It is the largest gathering of General Aviation in North America, if not the world. Put on by the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) based in OshKosh Wisconsin, it is a week long Avgeek mecca where you can learn all about how to build your own aircraft or just sit back and watch the airshows happening daily.

The hardest thing I knew from the outset would be arranging accommodation for a week long trip to the middle of no where for a giant gathering like this. Thankfully I had a boat load of Club Carlson Points thanks to their promos last year. I made the booking for what accommodation I could get during the festival and was happy that from the Sunday to the Saturday I was covered, but there was a downside. The closest I could get was in Fond Du Luc which was a good 20 miles to the South, but to be honest, a 25 minute drive each day where I wouldn’t have to pay for a room, or camp (like so many people prefer to do) would make my life so much better. So I ended up booking the Country Inn & Suites Fond Du Luc and set about to make the following drive every day for a week:

After that it was pretty much sit back and wait, the rest I would deal with after a while. I ended up booking the accommodation at a good time, because a couple of months later I wanted to see if i could add an extra night once I had some more points with Carlson, yeah nope! Nothing left at all, so I guess I was going to have to find alternative arrangements. I left the first & night of my trip unbooked (as why go Sunday to Saturday only for vacation when I have two other days free) and waited till I could get flights.

Fast Forward 6 or so months and some airfares are starting to drop in price for my dates. So it’s time to get searching. I used the ITA Matrix and a few other tools to try and work out the best way to get to Oshkosh. Now Oshkosh is a small town in the middle of no where, so I figured I wouldn’t be able to fly in directly. Instead it meant flying into an outlying city and driving in from there. So I was looking at Milwaukee  Madison, Green Bay and Even Chicago, but the fare difference vs driving distance from Chicago just made it pointless, so that idea was scrapped. In the end Delta had the best fares (I was comparing Delta & United) but it wasn’t just cost I was looking at (since they were just extortion on any airline to that area). I wanted to try and get new airports obviously, since I am an avgeek after all. In the end i went with into Madison and out of Green Bay. I did however have to come home a day early. The map isn’t so impressive as I was connecting in Minneapolis in both directions.

So with the flights all booked and when broken down look like this:

27th July 2013 – DL2314 – Seattle to Minneapolis St Paul – 757-300 – 0655-1207
27th July 2013 – DL725 – Minneapolis St Paul to Madison – MD-90 – 1315-1415
03rd August 2013 – DL4828 – Green Bay to Minneapolis St Paul – CRJ-900 – 1715-1824
03rd August 2013 – DL996 – Minneapolis St Paul to Seattle – 767-300 – 1930-2115

It was a good variety of aircraft with my first domestic 767 flight with Delta and my first 757-300 in quite some time.  I love these ultra long birds!  For some reason I was able to assign an exit row at booking for no extra cost.  Unsure why, as they don’t normally let me do that but hey, who cares!

With that all booked and having to forgo my final night of holiday and return home on the 3rd (which was probably a good thing as it meant I could clean up and do stuff before having to go back to work on the Monday without an issue.  But where to stay on the Saturday night?  Since I was getting in Mid afternoon, do I drive straight to OshKosh?  Do I stay in Madison for the first night and have a real vacation night, before driving off the next morning.  Madison it is!  I might as well have a day of rest right, before all the bedlam begins.

With that I searched around for where to stay in Madison.  Most places around downtown were around the $100 a night mark but that didn’t include any food, or parking.  Hrmmmmmm.  Since my Hilton Gold status was still floating around, and my Club Carlson status was still Gold as well, I figured that it would be easier to just target those two chains.  The Radisson included breakfast but no parking.  The Doubletree downtown (in a good location) had free parking and my Hilton Gold would give me breakfast.  I waited before booking to see if there was going to be any special promos or anything but sadly there was not.  So I used a promo that came out for a new service called Pointshound which allowed you to double dip as they would provide you with extra points for just making a booking with them, and still keep your program benefits with Hilton.  Sounds good to me!

So that was all my hotels arranged and the car was booked with National (though there isn’t an Emerald Aisle at Madison Airport, so this would be interesting experience at the least).  The rate on the car was not to bad for a solid 8 day rental so I can’t really complain.  With my passes to OshKosh arranged via the Media desk thanks to my work with AirlineReporter it was all settled, now it was just time to wait.  The emails coming in from the Media announcements did not help with the excitement and pretty soon… It all began!