Havana Running Part 12- Can You SEA Me Now?

 

Preview: What Would Hemmingway Do?

Part 1: Relaxing

Part 2: I Promise Not To Call This Sleepless In Seattle

Part 3: Just Sit Anywhere

Part 4: Taking It South

Part 5: Bienvenido a La Habana

Part 6: Day Into Night

Part 7: When the Rooster Crows

Part 8: Shopping, Stumbling Through Havana

Part 9: When Life Gives You a Night In Cuba...

Part 10: Good Morning and Goodbye

Part 11: Miami Vexed
 

And now, the conclusion....

Well friends, here we are, the last flight of the weekend.  I'm sitting in 1C to finish it off.  To say the least this trip has been an experience.  I didn't end up getting stranded (read released) in LA.  The Miami flight made up time, and the Seattle flight was a few minutes behind so trying the 'I couldn't make my flight' argument wasn't going to pass the sniff test.  

My family is out of town, so instead of fighting through LA traffic at 5pm, I've taken a little jaunt up north to Seattle.  My total ground time was about 20 minutes.  It was just enough to remember how late the daylight lasts here this time of year.  8pm and it's not even dusk yet. 

The flight up was beautiful, watching the desert fade into hills and mountains.   There's the added bonus of having the same flight crew on the turn around.  I'm enough of an oddity/amusement tonight for the 1st cabin flight attendant he's got my order down when I walk back on the plane.  It's the little things.  Besides, I'm okay with being an oddity, clearly.

As usual, the end of a mileage run is a high altitude mix of satisfaction, tiredness, and a fair amount of nostalgia.  There's both the exhaustion of flying for what amounts to days on end, combined with that let down feeling of coming back from vacation.  You both want to be home badly, and are bemoaning it at the same time. 

 

On the bright side, it seems like my precious cargo is surviving the journey, and for once I've managed to keep up fairly well with writing my posts (if not actually posting them). 

I've come to realize that you get a strong sense of a place from just a day or two there.  I've said that mileage running is essentially having a 'first date' with cities around the world.  You know whether you want to try it again.  Havana is intriguing- I think a second date is in order if the flight deals are right, but I'm not about to move there.  I'd definitely encourage anyone who's curious to go check it out, and the sooner the better before people realize it's so accessible now. 

It's been great to have so many people who (seem anyway) to be following along with me on this trip.  I mostly write about my travels for my own sake- to remember the details in the moment for later, but if it provides some entertainment and information to anyone else, all the better.

This year has been busy so far.  Between mileage trips, work travel, and family vacations, I'm headed for requalification early.  I have one more scheduled trip soon that's wonderful and convoluted and takes me through Doha x3 with side trips to Colombo and Cairo.  I'm just putting together the finishing touches on the itinerary- hotels, 'one thing to see,' and the like.  Since it's Summer in Doha, the hotel and tourist deals are amazing (like free night at the Ritz, too good to be true so I'm skeptical even with a confirmation number in hand amazing).  I'm hoping to have a preview post up of it all soon. 

Next after that is family travel to Europe!! We're taking Baby Flyer to Helsinki (thanks to Finnair having some great award space in business class this Summer) and then on to Tallinn and Copenhagen!  We'll be keeping up with this one over on Baby Flyer Blog, which is where we post about travel with the kiddo- the good, the bad, and the things that make it easier (even fun). 

Until the next flight, travel well,

~CruisingAltitude
 

The Last Mileage Run of 2016- Epilouge: All's Well That Lands Safely

 

I won't lie, 2:30am is really late to finally get into bed after 24 hours of travel time.  Travel time well spent, but 24hrs nonetheless.  I'm well aware it's supremely cliché to show up late to work after a short night, with Starbucks.  Well I showed up late, with Starbucks. 

Temporary exhaustion aside, I've said I have yet to regret doing a mileage run and this one was definitely no exception. I saw a new city and country, and added to my knowledge of the region.  I endured, adjusted, and rolled with the delays and changes, and strengthened (and probably tested) a friendship.  There are few experiences that can condense both this much stress and euphoria into three days. 

To recap the journey in numbers:

Flights: 5
Plane types: 4
Delayed flights: 2
Airports: 4
Lounges: 5
Glasses of Tattinger: No comment.
Hotels: 2
S. American Sushi Bars: 1
Days: 3
Nights: 2

And 18,956 elite qualifying miles!

You know it's been a good trip when before you even reach the last jetbridge, you're already looking forward to the next adventure.  However, this flight marks my last mileage run of 2016, and all that's left for the year is a quick flight up to Seattle to visit family over the holidays.  The insanity will have to hold off for awhile.  Until February, anyway....

As they say, all's well that ends well.  Thanks for anyone who actually followed along!

Travel well,

~CruisingAltitude



The Last Mileage Run of 2016 Part 9: Over St. Louis

If you're just tuning in:

Part 1- Famous Last Words

Part 2- So...Yeah...Um...

Part 3- Miami Elemental

Parts 4 and 5- Over and Out

Part 6- So..Quito...

Part 7- Early Returns

Part 8- How did we get on the Zurich flight??

And now the conclusion....

Well friends another year, another 100,000 miles.  I'm pretty sure I've just about crossed over St. Louis, which by my calculations means I've gotten to my requalification for the year.  It's proved to have been a long day of flying, but that's pretty much what we're going for here.

When we last caught up, our brave mileage runners were landing in JFK, so let's back up a minute and talk about the new JFK Flagship Lounge.  It's only been open a few weeks at most, so I was excited to check it out.  We had about 3 hours, which as it turned out was still not quite enough time to use the lounge entirely.....but that's just how I feel about it.

The space is redone to make the seating more plentiful, and the décor more modern.  It feels like a real first class lounge.  Maybe not as opulent as JAL's Sakura or Qatar's Al Safwa lounges, but probably the best AA has to offer in the US.  It keeps up with BA's and MH's offerings, and beats some of the others, which is an improvement.

 

There's a certain feeling to getting ready to board the last mileage flight of the year.  Just one more jetbridge, one more seat, one more runway, one more takeoff.  You're finally heading home, and delays or no, it looks like you'll get there.  Of course, there's always room for a few more airplane hiccups.  This one was no exception. 

We boarded pretty much on time, even if we personally were a little late to the gate...possibly on account of a completely reasonable amount of free Tattinger on offer at the lounge.  We got safely to our seats, which by a stroke of good luck in routing, were the very comfortable business class on AA's 321-T. 

Then, just as they're finished boarding and preparing to push back...the lights went out.  I don't mean the quick off and on when the plane changes from ground power to regular...it went black, and for awhile.

Let me just illustrate with a real-time photo, shall I?

This is the actual photo I took.  Yes, I took a photo of this.

 

So...um...yeah.

 

This goes on for the better part of a few minutes, then the lights come back up, and the captain announces we have a mechanical issue.  Cue the collective sigh from the cabin.  We then proceed to wait at the gate for more than an hour getting the issue resolved and the sign offs done.  Honestly though, it didn't seem all that long given the rest of the trip.  They weren't seeming shifty about cancellation, so this plane was getting to LAX tonight, dammit. 

 

Update:  And, eventually, it did.  We touched down more than an hour behind schedule, putting us on the gate close to 1am.  Tired, but accomplished, it was finally time to get out of airports and head for home. 

 

In all honesty, if you set out to fly 5 flights to Quito and back in the course of 3 days, including the Northeast in the winter, and you arrive home safely and only one hour late, I think you can feel pretty successful. 

 

Thanks 2016, it's been a trip.  Literally. I've been the equivalent of around the world 4 times, visited new countries, cities, and of course airports.  I've even made some friends along the way.  Can't wait to see what 2017 has in store.  Spoiler alert- it involves more airplanes.

 

Fly Well & Land Safely,

 

~CruisingAltitude

 



Please remain seated until the aircraft comes to a complete stop....

"Make no mistake, moving is living." 

                                              - Ryan Bingham, Up in the Air

Safely and successfully back home again after the last weekend of mileage season.  Thoughts, stories, and feelings from seat 18D to follow.  Happy Monday everyone.

CruisingAAltitude- 1 Mileage Run-0....

Last flight of the weekend, the short hop back from SFO to LAX and I’m totally aviation-geeking out.  Remember when I said it was fun to see the retrofitted 737 a few flights ago?  Yeah, well this time I’ve got a brand new one to check out.  I’ve also got a uniformed pilot sitting next to me who confirmed it was probably less than a year old.  The cabin looks and feels more like a mix of a single-aisle 767, with the scoop-like overhead bins, and the pictures I’ve seen of the new 787 Dreamliner than the 737 workhorses I’ve gotten used to.  Okay that last comparison may be stretching it, but the larger, oval window frames, smooth lines, open feel and blue recessed ceiling lighting that changes to a gold/yellow when they ‘bring the cabin lights up are kinda doing it for me.    

            Even better, there’s the last minutes of a beautiful orange and blue sunset out the right-side window.  I’d take a picture but there’s no way my phone camera would do it justice.  I’ll just settle for enjoying it from the sky, and for having picked up over 17,000 miles in the last 24 hours (that’s about 6,000 real miles flown for those who read the math post).  Well, we’re already beginning our decent so it’s time to pack it up and head back to real life.   

            Until next week, goodnight and fly safe…

And in conclusion....

(Lest the timestamp on this entry mislead you, I probably won’t get this posted until tomorrow as I won’t be home tonight until too late to want to turn back on my computer.)

First off- Please forgive the personal moment but as is all too easy to do with strangers, I can’t help myself. Every time I leave Boston, I have to say goodbye to my heart for awhile. Such is the nature of long-distance relationships, but it doesn’t make it any easier to do. As I say goodbye and walk back into the terminal after what is always too short of a visit, I consistently have the urge to turn around and run back (slow motion style of course) like in a romantic comedy’s compulsory happy ending. However life is not, much to my chagrin, a movie. Inevitably I give a last glance, set my jaw, and head to the security line to go home, since in the words of Robert Frost, “I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.”

So here it is, the last airline seat of the weekend. It’s a good one at least, seat 10A, which on a Boeing 757 is both a window, and an aisle seat as it has no one in front of it. So as I stretch my legs out shamelessly, I realize that I can’t get away from writing about a crazy weekend of air travel without the compulsory discussion on “single serving” friends. As anyone who’s seen “Fight Club” knows, this is a quite adept name for pretty much anyone you’ll meet in the air or in an airport. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of seeing the movie, here’s the clip. Though his connotation on the phenomenon is more ominous than mine, I think it makes a good point, and a great term.

The term "single-serving friend" is perfect, and I have found myself many times deep in discussion about my life with someone I’ve just met minutes ago while on a flight. There’s something enthralling about talking to a total stranger who you will likely never see again, but with whom for a few hours you have a shared experience. For example, last weekend I met a woman whos husband had taken two very successful footware companies public, and as she put it, spent his life “looking at people’s feet.” Before the end of the flight, she was telling me about how she had given her first son up for adoption when she was 18, and had found him almost 20 years later, then learning that he was gay. Luckily for them both, (after a period of soul-searching) she has taken a “love him no matter who he loved” approach, and have become close, to their mutual benefit. It’s stories like those that make me try to turn to the person next to me and offer an icebreaker, usually a simple, “Going home?”

So far this weekend, due to some empty flights and taking the overnight, I hadn’t made any single-serving friends. However, life saved the best for last. I’m sitting in the same row with a true travel maven (for a definition of "mavens" see the entry below). His wealth of knowledge puts me to shame. Firstly, he is part owner of an airline. That alone should give you an idea of how in depth his knowledge of the subject is. He asks me if I’m going home or to work, and I (sheepishly) tell him that I was going home from a weekend of essentially pointless flying. He however just nods and agrees that the double miles make it completely logical. He then informs me that he each year reaches Platinum Status for American, the “1K” club for Delta, and it’s counterpart on Lufthansa (I feel now that there might be one more I’m missing, but am not about to ask him to repeat it). Mind you, none of these is the airline he has part interest in.

The plane takes off, and I watch as we climb at the rain streaking across the window as it changes to thick snow. I start to know how Rudolph might feel on a particularly stormy night. I settle in, and our conversation shifts and my neighbor asks me a “trivia” question: Which is farther, Sydney to San Francisco, or Sydney to Los Angeles? I do a quick geography sketch in my head and come out with the right answer- Los Angeles (it’s further inland and the flightplan takes you across the Pacific.)

In true single-serving friend form, I learn a few things from him I didn’t know. For starters, that the longest nonstop flight in existence is from Singapore to Canada, and that this is the only flight in the top ten list of longest flights he has yet to take. I tell him that “it’s good to have goals,” and he answers he’s not in any hurry.

His maven nature does not, however, end at airlines and routes. He’s also well-versed in the must-haves for the serious traveler. Upon unpacking his laptop he points to the bottom layer of the plastic, informing me that the entire thing is the battery which will last continuously from Los Angeles to South Africa (he, at this moment has it still turned on sitting on the seat next to him while he works on something else, just to make the point). Further, noticing my Bose headsets, he asks expertly if they are “the new 15s?” I look at them stupidly for a moment, having no idea, and in the end we both decide they aren’t.

He settles in to work on his super-maven computer, and I unpack mine (seeing it’s the same model but mine will not last on a flight across either ocean without being re-charged) and start writing about him shamelessly, using 10pt font (grey for privacy). I’ve gotten used to being the more-traveled of the people I have met lately, and I’m feeling a bit upstaged by my travel companion. To that end, however, I would like to point out two things: 1) He’s about 25 years my senior, and 2) I think he copied my choice of beverage.

Time to kick back for a few hours and decide if I’m just tired enough to watch Will Ferrel in green tights, or if I’d rather watch the first season of Better off Ted over again. This weekend has been an experience to say the least, and I’ve enjoyed writing this as it helps me feel like someone else out there might be following along. Air travel is at once a very solitary experience, and one that gives you the chance to connect with people you might never otherwise know existed, with drastically different life stories than yours. I’ve enjoyed sharing this small one of mine, and have intentions of keeping it up in the future.

Thanks again for reading, and best wishes for wherever you might be on your journey.

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