Shipped to Seattle and Back – My First Mileage Run

This is Kevin. I’m your self-imposed host for the night. Time for a friendly hijack. :)

Completed. 4802 flown miles in less than a day’s span. Whew. Luckily that converts to 6002.5 elite qualifying miles by having Continental OnePass silver elite status.

Hi, my name is Kevin, and I am Angelina’s “mister”, or in this case, her
travel experiment. I went to Seattle and back this last Saturday.

Interesting trip to say the least.

Before I get into the details of the trip, a bit of background on myself will set the stage right.
Before I met Angelina (or Ang for short) I was Homo-Travel-Ignorosis.

I knew NOTHING about travel, frequent flier miles, yet alone, “elite qualifying” miles (EQM for the cool), airline “status”, the benefits of traveling with points and miles, nada.

Armed with a man-purse, an iPhone and Dan Pink’s new book, Whole New Mind, I set off to learn something new, but this time not from a book.

You see, I am a book worm at heart; however, this Saturday was to be a different one. A couple days before booking the trip, we we’re both watching a documentary called “A Human Experience”, and there was one line that inspired me to become the travel rat for Ang’s experiment.

“When traveling outside of your own comfort zone, away from your reality, that’s when you’re really learning.”

Combine that awesome truth about life with the fact that I was only one trip short of Gold Elite, and you have a round-trip flight to and from Seattle only hours apart.

In the end, the whole experience came to be more than just a flight with an obvious objective, but a true learning experience. I set out to just go with the “flow”. No prejudgements. No place to be except to “be”. On my trip I met…

– An old disheveled woman at the gate who people thought were crazy. I took the time to know her and her story. She reminded me of my mother. I felt really good after the conversation and I believe she did as well.

– A traveler named Sonny. I didn’t know his name until I saw him on the same return flight. And then it clicked, he was also doing a mileage run! Spoke with him briefly, connected and exchanged phone numbers. I explained to him that intuitively I knew, when he sat down next to me on the first flight to Seattle, that he was also doing a mileage run. My gut was right!

– A Filipino bartender (I am half Filipino) whose family was from NJ, a girl who was contemplating  opening up her own therapist practice, two Romanian tourists, and a gentleman from Las Vegas. With each encounter, I stepped out of my comfort zone to learn a bit about them. I smiled with them, laughed with them, learned a bit and explained to them why I took this flight- to achieve Gold Status and then to share what I learned about my experience on this very blog post.

I told a story to the last person I spoke with…

…about a friend of mine who stood in line trying to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. He turned to his first friend who suggested to become an accountant. With the economy in shambles, it would be a steady job. The second friend explained to him why a nursing career would be the best move. Lastly, he turned to a stranger in line who told him with passion how he was going to change the world by becoming a…

I never finished the story, but I told her that at this moment, that was my job… to make an impact on her.

That is why I choose to put my book down and pick my head up this trip. The people I met were all worth it…

…as well as the Gold Status.

Cheers,

Kevin