This is a great topic in which to do my first post...yep, I'm hooked. It's been a gradual 9-year process with a few twists.

For one, about 97-98% of my total 1.5 million or so lifetime miles have come from personal leisure trips, not business. The company I used to work for treated business travel like such a budgetary vice that it was almost a rebellious gesture to flaunt a weekend leisure trip to Florida bought on a super-cheap ticket.

I got proficient with easySABRE back in the early 90s days of CompuServe and green screens, learning how to do increasingly sophisticated booking strategies. It took WAY too much time and brainpower to chase down leads and assemble it all, but there was something in the "thrill of the hunt" that kept me going. Also a compulsion to "beat the system" and psychological payoffs like that.

But most important was that I discovered I loved to travel. I would never do "mileage runs," but rather would always make a trip of it and look around the place, often on 3-day or even normal 2-day weekends around work. By 1992 (the year of the great fare war), I was doing some 18 or so annual 2- or 3-day weekend trips and 2 vacation-length ones around a job that afforded maybe 15 paid days off a year and almost no business travel.

And I didn't say anything about most of the trips to co-workers. They knew I traveled a bit but never dreamed exactly how much. Maybe another sign of addiction: hiding it.

Learning the mileage game and maximizing returns there greatly increased my ability to travel. I would earn miles on weekend domestic trips and spend them on bi-annual vacations to places like Thailand.

Finally the job and the company were getting to be just too much of a pain and too much of an impediment to further travel. So, in 1996, at the age of 33, I quit the job on an incentive buyout after 8 years so I could travel full-time for a year.

Instead, it has now been almost five years. I'll travel maybe 200-250 days out of the year on maybe 20 different trips.

Money is very tight and I have to play every angle to keep it all going, including traveling to places with low land costs, staying at Motel 6 or sometimes hostels, and only doing the very best deals on paid tickets.

It's quite a contrast to step off a plane after flying upgraded first class and head to a $15 bunk in a hostel dorm. I often look too casually dressed to be in first class; the business types must sometimes wonder, "What's he doing up here?"

I get no sympathy when I try to explain what a box I'm in. I have to get a very low fare and generous miles to travel on a paid ticket, and also be able to manage the land costs. All the planets must be in alignment. People think I just decide to go someplace and go, but I have to get the deal first, then find the reason to go.

So, in a way, it has consumed a big part of my life. But it sure beats office politics, corporate downsizing and all that other garbage that came with the job I left. Just got back from a 7-week trip that included Hawaii, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and the Philippines (using 3 different award tickets).

There are definitely consequences. "Home" doesn't feel like home when I'm away so much. Friends marry off, start families and do all that "normal" stuff (I have always been single). While some of the trips might include visits with people I know in various places, all are solo trips.

And since I've started belonging "to the planet" rather than to the local area, I see places where the local area isn't the world-class place it sometimes thinks it is. Or where the U.S. isn't the best in the world in every quality-of-life category like I had once believed. There's risk of becoming a travel snob.

And then there's the ever-present specter of needing to work again. I'm still 29 years away from Social Security and the funds sure won't stretch. But it would be very hard to go back to a conventional job after five great years of travel that hit all 50 states and 25 countries. I have earned close to 1.5 million lifetime miles across 6 programs now, but I guess I'm prouder that I've spent 1.2 million of them, all on coach award tickets.

It's been quite a ride.