I don't think she ever believed she was going on that trip to Cancun, wild sex or not, I don't think she was nuts enough to think he'd buy her a ticket for a trip that was happening at the end of the week she killed him. She knew the ticket that had been purchased could not be changed after Jan or Feb., so threatening Travis (or sexing him up) in June wasn't going to change matters.
But she was going to an event where people who knew her were going to be, and showing up with a fresh sunburn or even a tan when she was supposedly driving straight through from Yreka to Salt Lake City would have stuck out and been memorable to them.
To me, it is far more logical that she was protecting her plan in buying the sunscreen rather than thinking she could possibly sway Travis into getting her on that plane to Cancun.
We might have to disagree to several reasons. She made it known that she wasn't driving straight through, but she was making stops, visiting friends and supposedly taking pictures. It was June, she lived in California, and the Utah people hadn't seen her in months. I don't see why she'd be worried if they could tell she had a tan or not under these conditions.
I'm also not sure why she'd be expecting to get a tan or be sunburned while driving. She planned her Mesa arrival and her departure to be under the cover of night, so if she'd planned to dump stuff in the desert, she seemingly planned to do while driving through those places after dark.
I'm also not sure what's unusual about a tan or sunburn in the summer. She bought the lotion as an afterthought it seems. She'd already been on the trip, tanning for over a day at the point that she purchased it--unless of course she'd run out of her supply that day.
There was also no need for two. The receipt doesn't indicate a sale on these items. She doesn't need all that suntan lotion for plans that, of their nature, were indoors. She didn't plan to be outside with Travis, and she planned to be inside with Ryan at meetings--if she even made it to Ryan's.
The Cancun trip wasn't at the end of the week. Jodi arrived to Travis on June 4th, 6 days before the Cancun trip. Travis was found the night before the plane was to take of, isn't that correct?
Frankly, I don't think Jodi cared that a name might or might not be able to be changed on a free plane ticket, and I'm sure she told him that on June 4th. If it was a free ticket (paid for by PPL), it wasn't Travis' money anyway, and she probably thought he'd just buy her a ticket. They'd done something similar with the New York tickets Jodi had won by not using them directly as they'd been intended.
Mimi wouldn't be in his hotel room, so it mattered not to Jodi whether Mimi was going--just that she'd proved to herself that she was most important and she'd gotten him to put her before Mimi.
Winning mattered to Jodi, and Jodi couldn't stand it that another woman would go on a trip with Travis. It must have burned her up just as badly as it had when she'd driven herself all the way to Bianca that Travis would be for a whole week with another woman in paradise. And she was probably dying inside to think of him being intimate on that vacation--whether in reality Mimi would have been that way with Travis or not.
Jodi
was that intrusive and that crazy to believe she could get Travis to pay for a name-change on a ticket or discard Mimi's ticket and buy Jodi her own ticket. So far in the relationship with Travis, she'd been able to manipulate him into anything, and sex was her MO.
I was a travel agent up until about the year 2000. Back then, there were name-changes. I don't know if they cut that out post-911. Honestly, if I put myself in Jodi's shoes, I would probably think exactly what I'm writing here, which is Mimi's ticket was free, so who gives a damn if it's even used.