REPORT COMPLETE


Trip Report Index

Lagniappe: Returning to New Orleans and Saints Training Camp
Working and Playing Hard: MQ F IAH-ORD-DCA; Washington Nationals Game
Flying to Anchorage to Study: AA F DCA-DFW-ANC//ORD-DCA; AS Y ANC-ORD; DCA/DFW/ORD Admirals Clubs
Chill-LAXing: AA F DCA-DFW-LAX-ORD-DCA; ORD Admirals Club; Av Geek Moment
Homeward Bound: MQ F DCA-JFK; AA F JFK-IAH
Tap the Rockies: AA F DFW-DEN; Marriott Fort Collins; Exploring the Mountains
The Long Way to Beantown: AA F DFW-BOS-JFK-SFO; BOS and SFO Admirals Clubs
Who Dat!: Saints @ Patriots
Homeward Bound 2: AA F BOS-JFK-IAH
Westward Ho!: AA J JFK-LAX
Geeking Out…Again: Boeing Factory Tour;History of Flight Museum; and a Glimpse of Seattle
Homeward Bound 3: AA F JFK-SEA

Each year when the month of August rolls around, I can’t help but smile. To me, August marks the beginning of the most wonderful time of the year. When most sane people think of August, they cringe at the thought of the oppressive heat and humidity that inevitably accompanies the month. While I too dread the awful weather, I see it as a little suffering for the better days just around corner. Autumn will soon arrive, bringing with it cooler temperatures, new episodes of television shows, playoff baseball, and the great scenery afforded to us by state fairs and Halloween. All of these things are near and dear to my heart, but it’s not the most exciting thing the sweltering weather of August promises. That can be found on football fields around the country, where the sounds of thuds of collisions and grunts from extreme exertion are heard, signaling the start of another exciting season.

Statistically speaking, 99.997 percent of American males are washed up wannabe football players whose dreams of getting paid ludicrous amounts money to play a wonderful game were crushed long ago. Now, they are watching other men, who possess the talent they lack, achieve that very dream; while they are relegated to living vicariously through these other men and supporting them by spending a metric crap ton of money on merchandise and booze to drown their sorrows. I too sadly fall in the less talented category. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be spending so much time slaving away on my laptop and calculator. Blake Lively wouldn’t be married to that smuck, and the FTers wouldn’t have put up with my rambling trip reports. See, everyone would be so much better off if I were just a wee bit more talented. Who do I complain to about that and what compensation am I entitled to….

Anyways, I try to attend a few football games every fall, especially those of my beloved hometown New Orleans Saints. Unfortunately, work got in the way last year and I was unable to attend any games. Well I did, but it really didn’t count. For one thing, it was a preseason game. It was also a Dallas Cowboys game. They don’t really count.

Since I missed out on attending any (real) games last year, I was determined to go to at least one game this year. The Saints are playing the Cowboys in New Orleans in November, but I already planned a trip that weekend. So I looked for another game to go to. One game that caught my eye was the game at the New England Patriots on October 13th. For one thing, I was off the next day as it was a holiday. It was also a matchup of two very good teams, so if air fare was reasonable it was a no brainer. It just so happened I was scheduled to work in Colorado the week prior to the game, so my company would reimburse me up to the cost of our contract fare between Dallas and Denver of whatever travel I wanted to do on my way to/from Denver. Using the multi city tool on aa.com, I priced out an IAH-DFW-DEN-DFW-BOS-JFK-IAH itinerary for a mere $380. Our contract fare for Dallas to Denver was $360, meaning it was only $20 out of pocket for me. After few clicks, that was taken care of.

My travel in 2013 so far was not I had hoped for. I had spent a good bit of time in Houston to help out my family, so I was flying United quite a bit in the beginning of the year. My AA travel was limited to a bunch of regional travel and a few mid cons, which was unfortunate as I was unable to put my EXP status to full use. At the middle of 2013, I was just sitting on 25,000 EQMs. While being an EXP was everything I had for and more (very cliché but true), I knew a push to EXP was a bit unrealistic cost wise barring a highly unlikely DEQM promotion. With AA ending its unofficial “soft landing” program, I was destined to be a Gold in 2014. While Gold benis aren’t bad compared to what Delta, United, and US Airways offer their lowest elite tier, the 25% bonus on RDMs were paltry compared to the 100% bonus for PLTs and EXPs. The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced I needed retain at least Platinum (PLT) status in order to keep the 100 percent RDM bonus. I had about 8,000 miles of work travel planned, leaving me about 18,000 miles short of PLT. So I looked for some mileage runs to get me over the top.

I was able to book a DCA-ANC run for $374 and a DCA-LAX run for $230 over the weekends of my three week training session in DC during September. I also stumbled upon a nice BOS-SFO fare during the weekend I was going to be in Boston for the Saints/Patriots game. Since I’ve been to Boston a number of times before, I really wasn’t concerned about losing out on some time in the city so I went ahead snagged that ticket for a cool $240, after applying a 10 percent off coupon that I got from the Disney’s Planes movie promotion. Besides, one of my flights was a red eye, saving me a night of points/cash making it even more worth it. To top it all off, I booked a JFK-SEA ticket for $300, which I ended up turning into a weekend trip to knock off a couple more items on my aviation geek bucket list.

So this is story of how spend the most wonderful part of 2013. Its going revolve heavily around a few things that are near and dear to my heart: flying, sports, food, and booze, in no particular order. So sit back and relax, while I spin y’all a yarn. Here we geaux…

Previous Trip Reports
2013: Geeking Out Across America (AA F)
2012: Around The World and From Sea to Shining Sea (AA F/Y, CX F, SQ F, UA F, DL F, WN Y)
2011: Everybody look at me because I'm sailing on a boat (KL J and DL Y)