olafman

UPDATE: Our year long journey through six continents is long ago complete. We had an amazing time with memories that we will never forget. It was truly a trip of a lifetime for all three of us. I am so happy that part of his educational foundation was this glimpse of the world that we shared together. So many of the experiences we had that year continue to mentioned around our dining room table. It was the best way to spend his fifth grade.

Here are some quick links to the parts of the report:
INTRODUCTION
PLANNING FOR THE YEAR
JULY 2010: Edinburgh, Scotland
AUGUST 2010: Istanbul, Turkey
SEPTEMBER 2010: Cape Town, South Africa
OCTOBER 2010: Mahajanga, Madagascar
NOVEMBER 2010: Krabi, Thailand
DECEMBER 2010: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
JANUARY 2011: Cochin, India
FEBRUARY 2011: Melbourne Australia
MARCH 2011: Lake Tarawera, New Zealand
APRIL 2011: Buenos Aires, Argentina
MAY 2011: Valparaiso, Chile
June 2011: Cartagena, Colombia
__________________________________________________ ____________

How do two reasonably sane, normal people decide to take the year off from work and travel the world with their 11-year-old son? The answer is of course complicated. Overall, I blame Flyertalk.

Before I launch into the description of our big adventure, a slight discourse will clarify how this all came about.

INTRODUCTION:
Sure, my parents taught me the love of travel. Since they were both teachers, we had entire summers off to go explore the world, albeit on the cheap. We flew coach. We stayed in cheap B&Bs and motels. We camped. We would buy a VW van in Europe at the beginning of the summer and then sell it at the end of the summer before we left. It was the basic see-the-world-on-a-shoestring-budget travel that enabled us to see many places.

Then I studied in Spain for my freshman year of university. Most people would choose to take their junior year abroad. I just couldn’t wait that long. It was a wise choice because it allowed me to mature a bit before attacking my studies in earnest.

After graduating, my eyes and heart sought out more adventure and travel, so I signed up for the Peace Corps, committing to two years of volunteer wherever they decided to send me. The call finally came and I was told I would be going to “Malawi”, but since this was before Madonna made the place famous, I misheard. I was sure the voice on the phone had said “Maui”. An unlikely place for the Peace Corps, but I started rehearsing hula dances and ironing my flowered shirts in my head. I graduated from UC Davis with two degrees and absolutely no knowledge of this little African nation just northwest of Mozambique.

Living in Africa broadened my perspective of the world. I traveled several times to the then apartheid governed South Africa and most of the nearby countries. I saw first hand the struggles people have in developing nations. I learned about the “extended family” and other social structures. Mostly importantly, I found out that teaching was my profession. I absolutely loved it. My parents had done well by it and it was making me very happy.

So at this point, you, the reader, are probably asking yourself when are we getting to the talk about the lounges, airline food and seats! Don’t worry, it’s coming.

In college my best friend was from South Africa and his family is like my second family. My wonderful parents are now both dead and his parents were happy to step up as my surrogate parents. Because of this, I’ve been traveling annually to South Africa for over twenty years.

From California, South Africa is usually two long-haul flights, whatever way you go. You can connect through London, Paris, Frankfurt, Sao Paolo, Hong Kong and even Sydney! Some are faster than others but they all take a long time. One round trip to South Africa could give you Elite status on many airlines.

What really got me started with the miles quest was when all the airlines went crazy and offered triple the miles in 1987 and 1988. Them was crazy times! I was a loyal Onepass-er during those years. And with triple the miles, trips to New York were almost buy one-get one free! I had caught the fever! It’s like they were PAYING you to fly. Okay, not really. But almost.

I joined most of the airline programs then even if I didn’t have plans to fly them. I will never forget when I flew to Africa with Peace Corps. A group of 22 of us flew TWA PHL-JFK-FRA with connections on Ethiopia Airways via Addis Ababa to Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital. In those days, TWA’s frequent flyer program gave you stickers with your name and number on them that you would adhere to your paper ticket. And if everything worked out right, you got credited for the flight. Another perk of being a member of TWA’s FFP was the equivalent of Book-The-Cook on SQ. Even with NO STATUS and flying in economy, you could preorder a nice meal.

Cut to me on TWA sitting in coach surrounded by Peace Corps Volunteers on our way to Frankfurt. The meal choices were lasagna or mystery beef. As the meal service began, a flight attendant brought me my lovely chilled prawn salad. All my new friends were like “Who the hell are you?” That’s when I knew that there was something to be gained from these frequent flyer programs.

I can’t quite remember how I found out about Flyertalk. It was the late-nineties and I was racking up miles and status with lots of carriers mostly due to all my flights to South Africa. Flyertalk helped me maximize my opportunities and taught me the ins and outs of international travel.

Then in 2001, Kellogg’s Nutri-grain cereal bars set me on a new life path. Early on in the promotion, several of us on Flyertalk discussed the value of miles earned by buying the product, cutting off the 100-miles coupon and sending it in. Search out this topic for more details but it was a great offer the first year! For me, I could fly in first class on Cathay Pacific from LAX to South Africa for $1700. Compared to the $1400 I was paying for cattle-class, this seemed like a bargain.

Then the southern grocery chain Publix printed a coupon doubling the value of the 100-miles coupon thus cutting my costs in half. A FC CX flight LAX-HKG-JNB was now only $850.

At one point our garage was over half full with cartons of Nutrigrain bars. At any moment, I expected Ricky Ricardo to walk into the garage and say “Lucy, you’ve got some ‘splaning to do.”

In the end, I earned just about two million miles through this promotion. I was the Pudding Guy of Nutrigrain bars. With these miles, I earned the valuable prize of Lifetime Platinum status on American Airlines.

While you’d think that those miles might last a lifetime or at least a decade, they only lasted about five years. Flying first class is fun!

Up next was the Valuemags promotion where I picked up another million miles. This was one much simpler and could all be done online. Here I ordered magazines and sent them to non-profit agencies around Los Angeles. Valuemags gave me Radisson points which then could be transferred to a variety of airline programs. Once again, this promotion made my trips to South Africa only $850 in first class. I also transferred some miles to BA flew the Concorde. Good times.

But after that, the mileage promotions seemed to dry up. AA re-introduced the Nutrigrain promotion with LOTS of restrictions; the worst being an earning cap of 60,000 miles per year. I can’t help but wonder if I had something to do with that (shy grin).

My final hair-brained mileage promotion was the credit union gift cards. I’d buy gift cards using my mileage credit cards. Then I’d go into my bank and get a “cash advance” off each gift card. It was lots of work and my checking account confusingly always had a balance of about $40,000. The total cost was close to nothing but it involved a lot of bookkeeping and work. But we liked the miles! I was collecting over 40K a month.

At this point, I should mention my husband. He is not really a traveler at least in the Flyertalk sense of the word. Yes, he’s lived in Europe a couple of times but he’s not really a planner. Never remembered to give his FF# when he flew. Always flew economy. Then he met me.

He really didn’t buy into the whole mileage program thing at all. When he couldn’t park in our garage because it was full of Nutrigrain bars, he began to question if I had picked up an addiction.

It wasn’t until he was sitting in first class on Cathay Pacific sipping a Pacific Sunrise that he finally bought into the whole mileage thing. At 6’3”, he hates flying coach and thanks to me, it’s now the exception instead of the rule.

So at this point, you are probably questioning my original claim that I am “sane”. Okay, I wrote “reasonably sane”. That does buy me a little leeway. But the point of all this is to provide a little background of how someone decides to travel the world with their kid for a year.