Go West, My Friend.... (haven't you been told?)

 

Yeah yeah, I know, cheap title.  But it's been a long haul of trip planning (yes, pun very much intended), and I'm thrilled to be nearing the start of my next epic trip around the world.  It seems like just yesterday I was blogging about the last one, but that's because real life slows my posting, and so it very nearly was. 

In actuality, it's been quite awhile since I did my first and only real 'round the world' itinerary.  It was amazing, exhausting, and all things in between.  In any event, when Qatar Airways put on an even better sale this year, I couldn't say no.  I mean it, I tried, but it didn't work and now in about a week I'm off to Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and Doha again.

The flights are similar, but different.  I've traded in some of the positioning for award tickets, and am connecting to Philly, not Boston, this time around.  Sorry Beantown, I'll miss you. 

For the details and such, check out the preview post over on Altitude Consulting - Westward Bound.

Even better, I'm ending this week with a good old fashioned family Thanksgiving trip to Seattle.  However, there will be no 'day before the holiday' panic travel for us.  We're waiting a day to celebrate so we can fly in the Thanksgiving day lull.  It's paid off too- all three of us have already cleared our upgrades for the outbound flight with seats to spare!

I'm ever thankful for family and friends.... and a little extra legroom.

~CruisingAltitude

Still airborne, in good company...

First off, wishing you a late happy new year. I'll admit I started and didn't finish several entries over the last few
weeks but finally buckled down today and put this together. And yes, getting to "100,000" is everything I hoped and more :)
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So, here I am again on a flight from Seattle/Tacoma back to LAX after a short weekend at “home.” I haven’t been as good at updating here in the new year. Would you believe that its because I’ve been too busy flying?

No? Well, it was worth a shot.

I’ve been doing some rather long distance flying, necessitating some short nights and long Mondays. This weekend, however, is turning out to be a nice break from that. Thanks to Alaska’s multitude of flights between these cities, not only was I able to take an earlier flight without paying a change fee, but as a bonus I got a nice bit of exercise on my brisk run through terminal C. I ascribe both of these benefits to, as well as the above, my cunning use of FlyerTalk.com, along with its community of ultimate flight mavens.

Let me go back now and explain. Earlier today I realized that I had cut my airport timing a little close (or so I thought at the time) and spent some time trying to figure out how to shave precious time off of the check-in process. Now usually I wouldn’t even think twice about this, knowing how much time it takes and counting on the short(er) AA priority access lanes. However, as I have before ranted on about, American Airlines does not fly between LAX and SEA, choosing instead to codeshare with Alaska. Hence, all of the hard-earned benefits I generally expect (upgrades, club access, priority access and boarding, etc) are no longer available. Further, SEA can have some killer lines.

Enter FlyerTalk.com …

This website is home to the travelers who know it ALL….seriously. They also in large part are the rare breed who consider travel to be the goal in and of itself. These are the people who can put me to shame, the ones who think it completely reasonable to fly an itinerary from BOS-LAX-BOS-ORD-SAN-BOS without leaving the airport, or to fly for a week and sleep 5 of the nights on planes, especially for events such as DEQM. What’s that you say? This acronym doesn’t just jump right off the page at you as blatantly obvious? DEQM is the magical pot of gold at the end of the frequent flyer rainbow, the piece de resistance that tops off the airline calendar, the mysteriously announced “Double Elite Qualifying Mile” offer. A DEQM offer near the end of the elite qualifying year especially will lure these flyers into “milage run” itineraries that make the average person airsick just thinking about.

But I digress…DEQM will do that to a person… *breathe* Okay, as I was saying before, I was wondering how to get to my flight in SEA quickly. To that end I logged on to FlyerTalk.com and asked if anyone had a suggestion and was nearly immediately rewarded with several replies. One in particular read: “Keep you BP (boarding pass) in your pocket and go to the elite lane at the far right hand end, show the first officer your AA EXP (Executive Platinum) card and if they give you any trouble say the ticket counter told you it was fine.” Good advice. I followed it to the letter and successfully line-jumped, getting through security early enough to take the 2:15 instead of the 3:00 (with a little terminal jogging, but hey, I won’t need to go to the gym today.)

The moral? There isn’t one really. But if one were to exist it might be that perhaps even the most scattered of people, the ones who spend so much time seemingly isolated on planes racing around the world, and jumping from one rental car to another, still manage to be there for each other at the drop of a hat…or the click of a mouse.

Well, we’ve begun our decent so it’s time to sign off. Thanks for reading, and special thanks to my anonymous advisors today, hope sometime I’ll know enough to return the favor.

Another holiday lesson....

‘Twas the day after Christmas, and I did head once again to the airport. It’s a beautiful morning in Seattle, and I had the treat of driving to SeaTac watching the sun rise in an unseasonably clear sky with Mt Rainier in stark relief. I’m currently in the safari themed bar in Terminal A, where the waiter carded me for a coffee (but I do love me a zebra-print chair early in the morning). Other than that, so far this airport visit has been relatively uneventful.

My visit home was nice, full of family and enjoying the peace and quiet of the island. In holding with tradition, we made the journey to the “mainland” to go to our church’s Christmas Eve service. As always, it was worth the drive as it was a fulfilling blend of seasonal joy and thoughtful insight on the meaning of thankfulness and family. Besides the grand finale of singing ‘silent night’ by candlelight, the highlight of the evening for me was the (brief) children’s reenactment of the story of the nativity. Mary and Joseph were there, and as usual were visited by the wisemen, and the stars were bright and so on. However, this year the sheppards (somewhat successfully) managed to heard their flock of diminutive sheep in cotton-ball-covered hats…. And of course… a “secret cow” and one very excited elephant.

Allow me to explain. Prior to the service, the mother in charge of making sheep costumes confessed that (as adorable as the sheep costumes were) one of her children had informed her on no uncertain terms that he was going to be an elephant, and another really wanted to be a cow. Luckily for those making the costumes, the cow was convinced that a sheep hat with black ears could easily be a cow, and so she didn’t tell anyone otherwise and for the night blended in with the flock as a “secret cow.” The elephant, however, stood out a bit. This might have been because of the exuberant twirling dance he graced the crowd with….or it might have been the trunk.

Now, rather than detracting from the peaceful message of the nativity, I rather though the diversity in species was refreshing, not to mention very cute. I could go on to point out that Bethlehem wasn’t all too far from Africa, though it’s unlikely that a stray elephant would really have made its way that far North. Though, as the ancient story tells us, miracles do happen. Rather though, I think the presence of the elephant is a lesson that sometimes its okay to decide that the outfit you’re given just doesn’t fit. The rest of the sheep were happy to share their visit to the new baby with the elephant and cow, and the audience enjoyed the antics. Whether you’re content to be a secret cow, or are moved to go all out and be a dancing elephant amongst sheep, we’re all better for it. Somehow it makes me heartened to know that out there amongst the flocks of children growing up in our sometimes overbearing society, not all are content to be sheep.