My name is Paul, I'm not all that old, in my mid 50s. Originally from New Jersey,I live in Tucson, Arizona with my 3 cats and my wife Cathy, (First and only) who I met while visiting the Galapagos Islands in 1980. I love to travel, started to play the frequent flyer games in the early '80s, when United was offering a First class ticket for 7 segments and 7,000 miles. At that time I was in Tucson, and traveled often to Phoenix, (got the segments but not the miles) my brother in N.J. was regularly traveling to LA. (got the miles but not the segments) It didn't take long for the kids from Jerzee to put 2 + 2 together! Boy did we have fun with those tickets, once I went from Tucson to Newark, joined my brother and a couple of friends, then on to Hawaii, and back to Tucson. Those were the days! Today most of my travel is leisure, I have Infinite Elite status with Continental OnePass, so I've got it made as long as they can keep their act together. At the end of April Cathy and I are going to Italy on BizFirst reward tickets, maybe we'll see you in the sky!

Hey good to see contributors from two of the places I visit the most (besides Ottawa) -- Tucson (had to love those desert blooms last spring, been going there almost every year since 1971) and Edmonton.

Hi,
I see other newbies have posted and so thought I�d throw in my bio to the thread.
I�m Stewart Mann, 42, live in Winnipeg Canada, with my wife Sally and 4 children (oldest 15, youngest 9, 2 girls, 2 boys) .
We moved from the UK last year, I still own a printing company near Cambridge UK and commute back for one week each month (on CP). We have started a specialist catering company and a restaurant in Winnipeg, and I have a management company that runs them all. I hope to start a travel agency soon and so will combine my three main loves of travel, reading and fine foods & wine.

Stewart.

Thanks for the welcome, folks! Der katzen say 'danke', as well.

No worries for the Cuban loving guys (gals, too) on FT; you'll be at the top of the list for first pick from the walk-in humidor!

As for the trip next month, I likely won't have time to do the RTW thing, since it's for work (thankfully the company pays for biz class tix). So now I'm thinking about signing up for American's 'Challenge' for Platinum since I have a trip to BRU in June and LHR in July (addition to the long haul next month). Who knows, perhaps they'll take pity on my poor soul and seat me in 1st!

Cheers,

'toad

A great big, huge WELCOME! to all of you newbies. Don't go away! We need you.

And, baobab, thanks for reopening the thread.

Hi, I'm Chris Mcdonnell and I live about 60 miles north of NYC with my husband of almost 39 years, Bill and our Siamese cat, Puss. All the kids are raised and on their own now so we pan to travel a lot. Bill is retired and I will retire on August 27 (4 months and 29 days but who's counting?)from the world's biggest circulation magazine Reader's Digest. And no, I do not pick the sweepstakes winner. I'm in the editorial end. Everyone always asks about the sweepstakes.

We are Elite on TWA but plan to expand either to Star or Oneworld for better choices of places to fly. Have no complaints about TWA just about the lack of good destinations outside the US that we would like to go to. After reading Rudi's plans for trips around the world I'm thinking of planning something like that for us. I never would have thought of it if not for FlyerTalk. I also have my entire family signed up for the 25000 mile MCI offer I learned about here. Next I'm going for Healthy Choice double miles. This has been the greatest find in all my surfing. I'm getting all these miles without leaving home. I love it!!!

Time to quit lurking and dive in...

My name is Scott, I'm 24, and I live in San Diego. I don't travel as much as I would like. Too busy!! On averavge, I'm a 40-50k mile-per-year coach class flyer, most of it personal trips, and my preferred carrier is UA. In addition to UA, I'm currently enrolled in 4 other frequent flyer programs. These include DL, HP, NW, and AA.

My passion is travel, and I'm known for my spontaneous 'weekend warrior' trips. My last one was a long weekend flying to AMS and back - just for the heck of it. Next weekend I'm flying SAN-SFO-BOS-SFO-SAN. And three weeks from today, the trip I have been waiting for for quite some time: Australia/New Zealand!! Two weeks of pure vacation down under. Can't wait.

My Schedule for '99 (already flown or guaranteed for the year):

SAN-LAS HP 737-300
LAS-SAN HP A320
SAN-DTW NW A320
DTW-AMS NW 747-400
AMS-DTW KL 747-300
DTW-SAN NW A320
SAN-SFO WN 737-300
SFO-SAN WN 737-300
SAN-SFO UA 737-300
SFO-BOS UA 767-200/ER
BOS-SFO UA 757-200
SFO-SAN UA 737-300
SAN-LAX UA EMB 120
LAX-AKL QQ 747-400
AKL-SYD QQ 747-400
SYD-LAX QQ 747-400
LAX-SAN UA EMB 120
LAX-JFK UA 767-200/ER
JFK-LAX UA 767-200/ER
SAN-DTW NW A320
DTW-FNT NW DC-9
FNT-DTW NW DC-9
DTW-SAN NW A320
SAN-DTW NW A320
DTW-FNT NW DC-9
FNT-DTW NW DC-9
DTW-SAN NW A320
SAN-ATL DL 767-300
ATL-MIA DL 767-200(?)
MIA-ATL DL 767-300
ATL-SAN DL 757-200

Scooter-

Welcome. Based on the number of trips you make, sticking to United you should gain elite status, thus moving you from a "coach" to First Class" flyer. I too travel rarely for business and mostly for pleasure. Do us all a favor and post a "trip report" on your trip to Australia/NZ. I'm headed "down under" for two weeks in July (US Airways 757-200 First Class from DC to LAX, Qantas 747-400 Business class from LAX to SYD, Qantas 767-300 from SYD to MEL, 737-300 from MEL to Cairns connecting through Brisbane, then a 767-200 from Cairns back to SYD for the return over the course of 3 weeks)and would love to hear your comments. Keep up the posts! Cheers.

Hey, thanks for the welcome geo1004! Yeah, I really should focus on just one airline to earn a respectable status (UA)...but as most of my flying is self funded, and I will (most of the time) go for the lowest price. It just so happens that the majority of my past long haul flights were with UA, therefore the biggest source of my accumulated miles.

Yes, I'll try to do a trip report on my AZ/NZ trip. Since I'm gonna be stuck in coach, it would be interesting to see a trip report from you as well (since you're lucky enough to do this trip in first/business class)!

Happy flying...

-Scooter

Welcome Scooter! We appreciate you joining this friendly and very unique community of frequent travelers, aka FlyerTalkers or "Talkers". Your trip to Australia/New Zealand sounds like great fun. Our fearless leader and big Kahuna, Randy Petersen was recently down under and had a terrific time. I look forward to "hearing" about your travels in the FlyerTalk Trip Reports and happy traveling!

------------------

Hi Scooter:

My job on this forum is to be diffiult and "caustic" (but if you ever want to know anything about BA, I'm your man).

With that firmly in mind I will point out that when Flygirl refers to Randy Petersen as "our leader" she does infact mean her leader. She works for him, the majority of us don't.

You will find the vast majority refer to Randy as our "host".

I would probably challange "big Kahuna" as well, but as I don't know what Kahuna means and it is not in Collins or The OED dictionaries I won't.

Happy flying,
Nick

Kahuna not in OED? Oh that's right, they killed Captain Cook before he could get back with the definition.

Generally translates to (from many polynesian tongues/dialects):

A leader, wise man, shaman, medicine man, conjurer.

Something akin to Merlin?

Note: it now means something quite different. The Outrigger Waikiki has a "Big Kahuna" party every week with VERY loud music and free-flowing mai tais...

Flygirl, as long as you brought it up...

Now that you and some of your colleagues at Inside Flyer are making more frequent posts to Flyertalk, why dont we see some of your bios here as well?

Flygirl, Pam, Bryan, Mileschick, Noah, Elissa.....

Just how many of you are there anyway? You're not all the same person, are you?
Facts....give us the facts....

[This message has been edited by NJDavid (edited 04-10-99).]

NJDavid, this might help a little bit:

http://www.webflyer.com/@corp/frcorp.htm