Originally Posted by Eastbay1K

I've known you over half your life? All I can say to that is "Get Bent"

Originally Posted by jackal

There's a common theme here among a lot of us...

I joined FlyerTalk in college. I'd long been a traveler (I just had dinner with three generations of family last night, and the topic of our entire family being bitten by the travel bug came up--apparently even my great-grandfather had always enjoyed travel and road-tripping, even back in the 1930s when cars were slow!), and I'd even been to 36 of the 44 countries in Europe, plus US/Canada/Mexico and Morocco, prior to joining FT. As well, I'd had a UA MileagePlus account and an AS Mileage Plan account since I was a teenager and had even held an Alaska Airlines Visa Signature card for a couple years (as probably every adult resident of Alaska does) prior to my learning of FlyerTalk, so I had a passing knowledge of frequent flyer program, though of course not how to maximize rewards and benefits.

My recollection is that I initially discovered FT via a trip report posted by the esteemed Seat 2A (FAIRBANKS TO KALGOORLIE - THE LONG WAY). With tales of high-end food and drink in lie-flat transoceanic First Class (which I'm not sure I even knew existed prior to that), his trip report inspired me like nothing I'd read previously, and within four years of joining FlyerTalk (and two of actually being active), I managed to recreate his trip with my newly-minted stash o' miles, thanks to everything I had learned from the FlyerTalk community (and some mileage-run-worthy-from-ANC fares). While I was no stranger to traveling, the ability to jet-set around the world in luxury practically for free has opened up countless doors (not the least of which is my now 11.5 years at my dream job, which FlyerTalk is 100% directly responsible for).

It was also through some of those early posts on FT that I met the people I now consider my closest core social group, and discovering the community that makes up FT (especially in real life: I'm grateful that one of the first FT members I met in person, fellow Alaskan BOB W, was involved in the in-person FT community and invited me to join him at the last two SeaDos hosted by missydarlin, which directly led to many friendships and my own involvement in meeting people all over the world, not to mention hosting a little collection of a few Alaska Dos myself) has enriched my life with so many friendships formed early enough in my life that they materially affected how I grew up. And the rest, as they say, was history...

So yes, I would consider myself as having grown up on FlyerTalk.

Originally Posted by tom tulpe

The one person who really did grow up on FlyerTalk was CMK10 , who passed away a few weeks ago.