Checking on my Alaska Air Miles last August I was told I would lose all 45 thousand of them unless I flew somewhere on Alaska/Horizon. So I bought a bargain ticket, Wenatchee to Seattle and back the same day. It cost something over a hundred bucks, but my miles, due to expire Sept. 13, were now good for another two years.

Well, I really hate to fly commercial, there was a whooping cough epidemic in Everett and I did not wish to take a flight I did not want in order to inhale recycled germs. My wife is more flexible about this than I and I asked if she would like to use the ticket - visit a museum for a couple hours and fly back to Wenatchee. She thought that might be fun and I inquired about changing my paid ticket to her name. HA!

I was told, after being on Hold for 20 minutes, that in order to do this I would have to pay an additional 100 dollars. What the bleep ever happened to community property? “A hundred bucks?” I gasped, and the woman - unimpressed - continued, “Also I must tell you that there will be an increase in ticket price added because your ticket was purchased on a discount special we had that day.” We bagged that idea.

Today I got an email reminder to confirm my reservation. As I had no intention to go on the flight and had had to book a flight to save my 45K miles, I sent an email that read, “Mr. Spiwak must cancel his reservation because he encountered the wrong end of a chain saw.” This was absolutely true, because last week on several occasions I had slid the plastic chain guard sleeve front to back on my saw.

A screen of cancellation options appeared and the one that seemed the easiest to deal with was “Ask Jenn.” Jenn’s picture was up there, looking like a top movie star and she would help me if I typed in my question. To be fair, she did admit to being a computer.

I related all the above and she began to sort of argue with me, and only in the third exchange did I recognize, with Gloria’s help that the places she was sending me to contact had to do with THEM causing the cancellations.

So I tried once more, “Mr. Spiwak cannot fill his seat tomorrow...”

Jenn’s speedy response was to tell me that if I was having problems with my baggage (why I could not fill my seat was because my baggage was in it?) and she must have pressed a button because she sent me a form entitled REPORT LEFT ON BOARD ITEMS. It is over a page long and I printed it because it did tell me that I lost something on October 3, 2012. That happens to be today. I don’t remember flying today. I considered sending them a list of things I did not lose and maybe they could find them. I know they are here somewhere.

I still have a few hours to change direction. They refuse to accept, it seems, that I will not be gracing their fuselages tomorrow and I refuse to wait on hold interminably for a harried person to accept my reservation resignation.

I am thinking about going to Wenatchee in the morning and sitting in the waiting area to see if they will be holding the flight for me. I do fear that by not using the $140 ticket, I have broken some homeland security law and will have the feds breaking in my door some wee, small hour.

If you see no more words here by me, that’s what happened.