Seat 2A

After what may well prove to be the hottest and smokiest summer in Alaska’s history, the 2004 Summer Season in Denali National Park came to an abrupt end when Mother Nature tossed us a sneaky curve ball in the form of a late summer cold front. The storm hit three days before the tour and shuttle busses were scheduled to make their final runs of the season and dropped over 18” of wet heavy snow along the high mountain passes that accent the Park Road. Like a batter whiffing at that strike three curve ball, we could do little more than spin our tires, apply chains to get busses already out in the park home and then call it a year.

Faced with eight months of down time and no employment prospects in my immediate future, now seemed like a good time to go out and harvest some miles for my somewhat depleted Mileage Plan account. After all, my spring 2004 travels through Australia, Canada and South Africa used up over 300,000 miles.

Autumn is a great time to take advantage of excellent airfare bargains. Families have returned from vacations and the kids are back in school. The leisure travelers that filled airline seats all through the summer have, for the most part, disappeared until Thanksgiving and Christmas. The airplanes are still flying however and with business travelers accounting for only about 50% of the available seats, most airlines will offer significantly lower fares in select markets to entice leisure travelers back into those empty seats. For a Mileage Runner such as myself, these low fares offer an excellent opportunity to accrue lots of mileage at minimal expense.

In anticipation of this, I’ve been monitoring airfares out of Seattle and Denver since late July. As an MVP Gold in Alaska Airlines’ Mileage Plan frequent flyer program, I’ve been focusing on fares offered by Alaska, Northwest and American because these airlines not only honor my 100% MVP Gold bonus mileage on all flights, but also offer the best routings either intraline or via code share flights to the East Coast, especially Florida.

As an example, between Denver and Miami I can fly American Airlines in conjunction with an Alaska Airlines code share flight DEN-SEA-ORD-MIA for essentially the same base fare as American’s nonstop DEN-MIA flight. Whereas flying to Miami via American’s nonstop flight would net me a total of 3420 miles roundtrip, the longer routing totals out at 7900 miles roundtrip before the 100% bonus, or about 125% more miles. With a total roundtrip fare of only $200.10 tax inclusive, earning 15,800 total miles, this works out to a cost of $0.0266 cents per status mile or $0.0133 cents per earned mile. This is more than acceptable for a Mileage Run, where I like to keep my earned mile costs below $0.015 per mile. Accordingly, I have booked myself six roundtrips on this route as part of The Great Autumn Mileage Run Of 2004.

So, what exactly is a Mileage Run? There’ve been plenty of opinions on this topic over at FlyerTalk’s Mileage Run forum but I believe that in its purest sense, a Mileage Run is a trip wherein the primary motivation for and benefit of the trip is the accrual of mileage. Nothing else. Sight seeing, relaxation or business meetings are all secondary to the primary decision to make the trip. A Mileage Run is all about miles.

Since 1988, I have made dozens of mileage runs. While some are of the opinion that time is money and that, benefits notwithstanding, there are better ways to spend one’s time, I say time is money only in a business sense. On a personal level, time and money are well spent doing whatever it is you enjoy doing, be it going to baseball games, collecting stamps, driving an expensive high performance car, whatever. I enjoy flying, so for me spending a few days flying all over the country is time well spent, particularly in light of all the miles I’ll be accruing. I’ll later use those earned miles to fly First Class to overseas destinations, or take the occasional trip within America.

Friends and acquaintances think I’m crazy, or at the very least in need of therapy. They just can't get past the fact that rather than stay and enjoy some place like Orlando, I’m going to grab a cup of coffee and get right back on a plane. The idea of flying somewhere just for the miles is ludicrous to them. My patient explanations of Mileage Run economics (such as earning 21,240 miles from a single $210.00 LAX-BOS roundtrip ticket (flying via SJC, DFW and JFK during AA/AS’s Double Mileage Promotion earlier this year, during which, as an MVP Gold, I accrued triple miles) falls on deaf ears. I explain that a single roundtrip ticket from Fairbanks to Seattle costs over $400.00. Now, for half that price, I’ve earned enough miles to fly from Fairbanks to Orlando and stay awhile. With a free stopover in Seattle! Or, I can do five or six LAX-BOS Mileage Runs and earn enough award mileage for a First Class ticket to Australia or South Africa for less than they’d pay for an Economy Class seat. None of this registers with them. Who in their right mind would want to sit on all those airplanes? It’s like work, I explain. Easy work, during which I’m often upgraded to First Class and between flights get to relax in airport lounges. Of course, like most occasional travelers, they have no real concept of either First Class or airport lounges. Everybody on the plane arrives at the same time is their standard retort.

I’ve decided that more often than not, arguing the merits of Mileage Runs with people who only fly once or twice a year is not worth the effort. It’s a no win situation. You either get it or you don’t. People who only fly once or twice a year generally don’t get it. Even so, this summer I did manage to arrange for one fellow employee to do her first Mileage Runs. Boston to Las Vegas via ORD, SEA and LAX.

The bottom line for me is that I simply enjoy traveling, as in going somewhere. I particularly enjoy flying, especially in First Class. Since my job requires no air travel, I have to buy all of my own tickets. Air travel to and from Fairbanks, Alaska is very expensive compared to most American cities. Mileage Runs allow me to more affordably acquire, through status, the ability to sit in First Class for free and through mileage earned, the ability to travel overseas in style or travel within America at a greatly reduced rate.


** ***** **


The Great Autumn Trip of 2004 figures to be an excellent excursion, combining an intensive Mileage Run aboard five airlines with a First Class bedroom on Amtrak’s Coast Starlight between Seattle and Santa Barbara and a four day music festival in northern Florida. Oh yeah – I also get to drive over 7000 miles from Alaska down to Southwest Colorado via Montana, Seattle and Utah.

Over the course of this trip, I will fly eighty-eight flights totaling 99,770 actual miles. I will earn a total of 247,240 miles. Unfortunately, no promotions such as Northwest and Alaska’s 2-4-6-8 or 1000 Miles per NW Segment Flown ever materialized this autumn or my total mileage earned would have been substantially greater. As an addendum, Delta has now become a partner in Alaska’s Mileage Plan and a double mileage promotion is offered on its flights along with those that are both marketed and operated by Alaska and Horizon Air. Unfortunately, all of my Alaska flights are AA marketed codeshares, so I won’t be accruing any triple bonus miles. As well, Delta only offers 50% mileage earnings on deeply discounted fares, so I’m unlikely to fly them anytime soon.

I will however earn a 50,000-mile threshold bonus for having flown more than 70,000 miles on Alaska Airlines and its partners during 2004. The total cost for my tickets comes to $2564.70, or about six days of overtime work, of which I accrued plenty this summer. My cost per earned mile comes out to only $0.0104, making this a very worthy mileage run indeed.

This Trip Report, like all of my other reports, is geared toward those in FlyerTalk who simply enjoy reading about the travel experience more so than the destination experience. Many of the routes will be repetitive and about half the flights will be in Economy Class. Unless something really good comes up through Priceline, I will not be staying in a single Starwood type property. Aside from Canada, I will visit no foreign countries. As such, for some readers this Trip Report could be horribly boring and tedious. You want to read about what to see and do in Orlando or Seattle? Go grab yourself an issue of Conde Nast or Travel and Leisure magazine. Otherwise, either buckle your seat belt and recline your seat or hit the back button and find something else to read because this report is pushing back and heading for the runway.

NOTE If you see colored highlighted words, they are LINKS to relevant topics or photos.

Seat 2A

September 21, 2004
ANC-SEA ALASKA 737-700 N627AS First Class 349p – 809p * Dinner
SEA-DTW NORTHWEST 757-300 N586NW First Class 1035p – 537a
TOTAL MILES FLOWN: 3380 * TOTAL MILES EARNED: 6760


The Great Autumn Mileage Run of 2004 began with a quick roundtrip between Anchorage and Chicago – via Seattle and Detroit, of course. The Northwest sponsored fare, when traveling on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, came to only $259.00, tax inclusive. Unfortunately, a similarly reduced fare was not offered out of Fairbanks, the closest major airport to Denali Park and my home. Indeed, the fare between Fairbanks and Chicago was several hundred dollars higher and even flying a connecting Alaska Airlines’ roundtrip down to Anchorage, with no Saturday night stay, would have cost me almost $300.00 more.

So it was that at 8:00am I hopped into my trusty 1988 Mazda pick-up and made the five hour, 250 mile drive from my cabin on Karma Ridge down to Anchorage. Down to the city. Into the traffic. Stoplights. Urban sprawl. It’s been three years since I’ve made this drive and hopefully the interlude between this and my next driving excursion south of the Alaska Range will be equally as long.

The Anchorage International Airport opened its new C Concourse in late June. This would be my first visit. I was at once impressed by the overall spaciousness of this terminal. The high ceilings, skylights and large windows contributed greatly to this effect and the polished stone floors lent a touch of elegance to it all.

Alaska Airlines is the sole occupant of the new C Concourse, and so they’ve relocated their check in area over there as well. The new check in area featured a multitude of self-service kiosks as well as baggage check in counters for those already in possession of a boarding pass. Since my reservation was on an electronic ticket issued via Northwest Airlines, I was unable to use any of the self-service kiosks. No problem, I’ll just go to the MVP / First Class check-in area, located in its own island nearby. Unfortunately, no one was manning any of the counters there. I asked an agent about this and was told I’d have to check in at the ticketing and baggage check counter where a line of approximately half a dozen people were waiting. Three agents worked this counter but since two of them were tied up with what appeared to be thorny ticket re-issue situations, only one agent was actually checking anybody in. A couple of spots ahead of me in line, two other MVPs commented negatively on the lack of an open MVP counter in a city of Anchorage's size and importance to Alaska Airlines.

While I was waiting, I counted six separate agents working the counters, and one walking around as an expediter. Surely one of them could have manned the First Class / MVP counter. Last I heard, one of the benefits of being one of Alaska’s Most Valuable Passengers was the ability to check in more quickly via a separate counter. Unfortunately, none of Alaska’s ANC staff on duty this afternoon seemed to appreciate that aspect of Alaska’s promised service. Twenty minutes later, I had boarding passes in hand and headed for the security checkpoint.

At security, the TSA agent manning the belt was “encouraging” passengers to remove their shoes. I explained that mine had never registered. She shrugged and I continued through the metal detector where another agent immediately directed me to the side box to undergo a more thorough inspection. So this means that if you don’t remove your shoes, you’ll get them inspected anyway? I asked. No, it’s random was the reply. Interesting, since the guy ahead of me wore his shoes and was also sent over there. I asked the agent doing the wanding about this and was told that TSA agents cannot tell you to take your shoes off, only encourage you. If you don't, you’ll be subject to further inspection. So then, why do they tell us rather than encourage us to remove our jackets and laptops? He had no answer. There’s no reason for it – it’s just policy. I certainly don’t fault the agents working the checkpoints for this nonsense. I do however take issue with the self-important bureaucrat who must justify his bureaucratic existence by coming up with moronic policies like this one.

Due to my delays at both check-in and security, I arrived at gate C-3 to find the boarding process well under way. Unfortunately, there would be no time to check out Alaska’s new Anchorage Boardroom. I headed straight onboard and took my place in Seat 1A without delay. While my normal preference is Seat 2A, the seat pitch in Alaska’s First Class is so minimal that when the seat in front of you is reclined, you’ve hardly enough room to completely open most laptops, much less get in and out of your row. The only exception to this is aboard Alaska’s 737-900s, all of which appear to offer a couple of inches more pitch.

Take off was to the north and as we climbed out over the Cook Inlet and Chugatch Mountains, passengers on the left side of the aircraft were treated to spectacular vistas of Alaska’s mountain and glacial scenery. Flying time down to Seattle was announced at a relatively speedy two hours and forty-six minutes. Passengers in Economy were informed that tonight’s dinner selection would be a hot turkey and Swiss cheese sandwich, accompanied by a Polar Bear Kiss candy bar. Oh Boy!

Service in the forward cabin commenced with cocktails and peanuts, followed shortly thereafter by the dinner service. Following, in menu format, are tonight’s dinner selections:


Anchorage to Seattle

DINNER

To Begin
Two bags of peanuts to accompany the beverage of your choice

Salad
Baby Spinach Salad with shaved red onions, chopped eggs and bacon
Presented with Balsamic Vinaigrette

ENTREES

Grilled Chicken Breast with Red Pepper Pesto Sauce
Served with red skinned mashed potatoes with green and yellow zucchini sautéed with thyme

Beef Tender Tip with Demi Glace Sauce
Accompanied by rosemary roasted potatoes with stir-fried broccoli, carrots and red onion

** ***** **

Dessert
Fantasy Fudge Chocolate Cake




I opted for a mineral water to begin and for my entrée, the Grilled Chicken Breast. The service was smooth and orderly, and the chicken entrée was one of the better meals I’ve ever been served on Alaska. The meat was tender and moist, the sauce delicious and the dessert decadently rich. Seatmate raved over his beef tip as well, and we both chose to conclude the meal with coffee and Bailey’s Irish Cream.

Our arrival in Seattle was fifteen minutes early and so I wasted no time in heading straight over to the Northwest counter to see about upgrading my onward flights to Detroit and Chicago’s Midway airport.

One of the nicest benefits of MVP status with Alaska Airlines is the eight complimentary upgrade certificates that we’re issued for travel on Northwest. Those traveling full fare Economy can upgrade at the time of ticket purchase. On discounted fares such as mine, you can upgrade on the day of departure. Normally, this can be done over the phone but two separate Northwest reservation agents had told me that this had to be done at the counter. It had been over a year since I’d last flown Northwest, so perhaps the policy had changed. However, the counter agent, when informed of this, shook her head in dismay and said that was not the case. Hmm…

As things turned out, a First Class seat was available on the long flight out to Detroit, but not on to Midway. For my part, I was happy to be upgraded at all on such short notice and thanked the agent accordingly as she handed me my boarding passes and wished me a pleasant flight. Indeed!

Unlike Alaska Airlines, Northwest still offers preflight drinks to its First Class passengers. Unlike most other airlines that also offer them, Northwest will still serve you whatever you’d like – from water to whiskey to wine. I accepted a glass of water and sank back into the dark blue fabric covered foam rubber ecstasy of Seat 3A. I’ve always preferred fabric over leather, and Northwest’s domestic First Class seats, while hardly extravagant, are still fairly comfortable.

Detroit sits 1,927 statute miles from Seattle. Flying time was announced as three hours and forty-three minutes, cruising through mostly smooth conditions. Wonderful! Soon after we became airborne, I reclined my seat and slept fitfully all the way to Detroit.

Seat 2A

September 22, 2004
DTW-MDW NORTHWEST DC-9-30 N9341 Coach Class 930a – 938a
MDW-DTW NORTHWEST DC-9-30 N9341 First Class 1020a – 1231p
DTW-SEA NORTHWEST 757-200 N531US First Class 344p – 536p * Dinner
SEA-ANC ALASKA DC-9-80 N974AS First Class 650p – 929p * Dinner
TOTAL MILES FLOWN: 3860 * TOTAL MILES EARNED: 8760


With a little over three hours layover in Detroit before my connecting flight was to depart for Chicago, I headed down to a quiet area across from the departure gate and promptly stretched out on the floor for another two and a half hours of sleep. I awoke in time to wander up the concourse to McDonalds for an Egg McMuffin before heading back down to the gate where boarding was just about to begin.

Today’s aircraft was DC-9-31 N9341, an ex-Hughes Airwest machine that I’d flown once previously in March of 1981 from Salt Lake to Santa Ana with Republic Airlines. At that time, the aircraft still bore the Airwest livery since the combining of Airwest, North Central and Southern to create the new Republic Airlines had only recently occurred. Today it was smartly turned out in Northwest’s classic 1990s livery, to me a much more attractive color combination than the new battleship gray NWA livery.

The seat pitch in Northwest’s Economy Class is nothing to crow about and I was fortunate to get my seat reassigned to a window in bulkhead row five. This is in my opinion the best Economy seat to have on all of Northwest’s DC-9s and single aisle Airbuses. Per Northwest configurations, these aircraft have no bulkhead – only a curtain. Seat pitch between the first row of Economy and the last row of First Class is generous – about 40”. Window seats are even better than exit row because being so far forward there’s no wing to obstruct the view.

The comfy seat and unfettered view notwithstanding, my body demanded more sleep and so I don’t remember much of anything until our arrival at Chicago’s Midway Airport.


MIDWAY AIRPORT

Although now Chicago’s “other” airport, Midway Airport was once the world’s busiest airport, a distinction it held for thirty years. Built in 1923 as the Chicago Air Park, it was renamed Chicago Municipal Airport in 1927 and by 1932 served over 100,000 passengers. Both United and American Airlines were once headquartered at Midway. In 1949, to honor World War II’s Battle of Midway, the Chicago City Council unanimously voted to rename the airport Chicago Midway Airport. In 1959, Midway served over 10 million passengers.

Unfortunately for Midway, its shorter runways prevented it from accepting the new larger and faster jets. It quickly lost ground to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, which, by 1962, had also claimed the title of the world’s busiest airport.

Air traffic at Midway continued to decline through the 1960s and 70s. There was a brief resurgence after the airport was remodeled in the late 1960s, followed by the inauguration of short lived Midway Airlines, the first major airline formed after deregulation. Southwest arrived in 1985 followed by American Trans Air in 1992. Despite the recent bankruptcy of ATA and subsequent transfer of its flights to IND, Midway remains one of the fastest growing airports in America today.

** ***** **

With only a forty-minute turn around, I had just enough time for a quick stroll into the main terminal where I bought a copy of the Tribune for a friend in Anchorage before heading back to the gate area. The ramp was dominated by ATA aircraft, including a number of winglet equipped 737-800s.

Thankfully, my early morning phone call to Northwest Reservations was answered by a friendly and capable agent who had no problem upgrading my Northwest flights back to Detroit and on to Seattle. Add to this the fact that Alaska had already confirmed me a First Class seat on its 6:50pm departure up to Anchorage and I was happily looking forward to the next eight hours and 3620 miles in the forward cabin. Where I belong.

Upon arrival in Detroit, I headed straight for the WorldClub – North, conveniently located directly above the departure gate for my Seattle flight. Northwest’s new WorldClubs, located in Detroit, Minneapolis and Memphis are, aesthetically speaking, amongst the nicest airline lounges I have ever been in. In particular, I think Northwest’s C Concourse WorldClub at MSP with its polished granite floors, wood accented walls, potted plants, fireplaces and large windows overlooking the ramp, is much nicer in ambience than Cathay Pacific’s famous lounge The Wing in Hong Kong. Ambience aside, The Wing wins handily in all other areas, of course, but for a domestic lounge, Northwest’s new WorldClubs are certainly amongst the finest in America and nicer than many First Class lounges I’ve seen overseas.

Strong coffee and two packets of Pepperidge Farm Milano Cookies fueled me through the first three pages of this Trip Report. At 3:00pm I gathered my gear together and headed down to the Concourse below to get my first close up view of one of Northwest’s new A330s. This aircraft was headed for Rome and I briefly imagined how nice it would be to have a World Business Class seat awaiting me, along with a glass of fine Chianti.

Back at Gate A-66, boarding had commenced and I was amongst the last to board, taking up the rear of a long and slow procession of passengers down the jetway. Once settled into Seat 3A, I requested a Club Soda and lime – always a refreshing start to any flight. My seatmate had started his travels in Kuwait and for some reason was having trouble staying awake. He returned to slumber soon after I’d sat down. Despite a nearly full load out to SeaTac this afternoon, pushback was on time and scant minutes later we were climbing through the sunny skies above Detroit and turning our collective noses towards The Great Northwest.

Inflight service commenced with the beverage cart and I was soon guzzling an ice cold James Page Lager, offered with a choice of pretzels or Deluxe Mixed Nuts from the snack basket. Of course I selected the mixed nuts and was pleasantly surprised to find almonds and cashews mixed with delicious sesame sticks.

The dinner choices this evening were as follows:

Roasted Chicken in Madeira Sauce
Served atop Penne Pasta with broccoli florets

Baked Ziti Pasta with Sweet Italian Sausage
Presented in a creamy Alfredo Sauce

While seatmate slumbered on, I ordered the chicken. Despite this being a four hour flight, once worthy of Northwest’s famed Regal Imperial Service, our meals tonight were plated from the service cart – not trolley – and served all at once, i.e. no separate salad or dessert course. Alas, there’ve been some cutbacks in Northwest’s long distance domestic catering since I last flew with them in April of 2003. To wit, the appetizer, once plated separately, now appears to have been combined with the salad. Tonight’s salad consisted of a heart of palm lettuce, salami, Mozzarella cheese, ham and a pepperoncini. We were offered a choice of a French Roll or Squaw Bread, the latter being described simply as a dark bread. I opted for the French Roll. The chicken was actually fairly good, though the Madeira Sauce could have used a bit more red wine in my humble opinion.

Speaking of wine, here are Northwest’s First Class wine selections as listed in the inflight magazine:


WINE LIST
Northwest Airlines, along with Food & Wine magazine, is proud to recommend the following wines. Wine selections may vary by market.


Crane Lake California Chardonnay 2001

Coastal Ridge California Chardonnay 2001

Chateau Julien Cabernet Sauvignon Monterrey 2001

Beringer Founder’s Estate California Shiraz 2001

Interestingly, none of these wines was available on this flight and I was instead served a Meridian Shiraz that I found passable at best, but no match for the average $11.00 bottle from Australia’s Rosemount.

Dessert was the traditional Sacher Torte, though it was cut to about half the size of those from the recent past. In this regard I have no complaint, as that is one rich torte. As always, it was accompanied by a dollop of whipped cream and some shaved almonds.

After dinner, I read a bit and then put in some work on this report. Northwest may be the only airline in America that doesn’t offer some form of inflight entertainment on flights longer than three and a half hours. So far, this doesn’t seem to have impacted their domestic load factors and I, with my books and laptop, could care less.

Upon arrival in Seattle, I hopped on the convenient shuttle bus that connects Northwest’s South Satellite gates with Alaska and Horizon flights departing from the C and D Concourses. After a pleasant hour spent in Alaska’s Boardroom, I sauntered up to my departure gate at D-3.

Awaiting me was DC-9-83 N974AS, an aircraft I’ve already flown four times previously this year alone! The 6:50pm departure is the last of about four dinner hour departures to Anchorage and tonight the load was fairly light – about 50%. The Captain offered a warm welcome and informed us that we’d be battling 50mph headwinds up to Anchor Town, resulting in a projected flight time of 3:18.

Service on this flight started from the rear of the cabin, so the passenger in Seat 1F – that would be me - was the very last to be served. No problem. Seatmate and I were having a fine time chatting about everything from Alaskan history to Mileage Runs and, having just eaten on Northwest four hours earlier, I wasn’t overly concerned about food. If whatever were left sounded good, I’d try it. Then again, if it was that shrimp in the horrid bright red sauce or the turkey tenderloin with barbecue sauce – forget it!

Surprisingly, the dinner choices along with the salad and dessert were the exact same as on the flight down from Anchorage the day before. Was this coincidence, or is Alaska standardizing their meal service systemwide? Equally surprising was that there was still a choice of entrees when we were finally served. Seatmate chose the chicken, leaving me more than happy to try the beef. Unfortunately, my cut would best be described as “rugged”. I’ve always wondered whether an overly cooked entrée is the result of older equipment in the galley or a lack of attention on the part of the flight attendant. I’ve had overcooked steaks on almost new British Airways 747-400s and delicious sliced beef tips on an ancient Aero California DC-9-10. Who knows?

For the duration of the flight, seatmate and I had a good time chatting about Mileage Runs. He’d actually done a couple himself, though nothing on the scale of such Mileage Run luminaries as CMK10 or B747-437. When I showed him my itinerary for the next two months he about fell out of his seat and we both decided that another beer was in order. Before parting ways, I supplied him with URLs to FlyerTalk and other relevant sites.

We landed on a rainy night in Anchorage and parked at gate B-6. Apparently, Alaska has kept most if not all of its gates on the B Concourse. As I entered the junction between the B and C concourses, the differences between the two were like night and day. The B Concourse, which dates back to about 1974, is functional but otherwise fairly plain. The C Concourse is high, wide and airy. At the junction, a stairway led upstairs to an observation deck. In This post 9-11 era, I thought observation decks at American airports had been relegated to the dustbin of history. I’ll have to check it out when I return to Anchorage in November.

With no baggage to claim, I picked up my truck and headed over to a friend’s floor for the night.

Seat 2A

FAIRBANKS, AK TO BOZEMAN, MT.


The next phase of this trip involved driving from Alaska down to Seattle with a brief detour through Bozeman, Montana. There I would meet up with a motley crew of fellow Denali Drivers where we would, amongst other things, pay our graveside respects to the memory of a friend’s dead beagle. More on that later, perhaps…

I am basing my Mileage Runs out of Seattle and Denver because good cost efficient Mileage Runs from Alaska are for the most part nonexistent. In general, airfares from almost anywhere in America to anywhere in Alaska are fairly expensive. Oh sure, every once in a while you’ll get a good though generally short lived sale to East Coast cities and during the summer months there are some great low fares out of Anchorage to Seattle and some West Coast cities. In general however, the West Coast is too close to earn any serious mileage relative to money spent, while flying to the East Coast is simply too expensive.

An example of this would be the Anchorage to San Francisco market where roundtrip fares normally run $300-350.00. For a short time this summer, Alaska Airlines was offering an Internet special down to SFO for just $184.00 roundtrip. Routing wise, the best you could do on this fare was ANC – SEA – PDX – SFO and back. No routing through JNU or SIT. As such, total roundtrip maximum mileage accrual was 5060 status miles before bonuses. Assuming that the $184.00 fare was inclusive of taxes, your cost would still be a whopping .03636 cents per status mile.

Tickets to the East Coast normally run $500.00 or more roundtrip so even if you could squeeze 10,000 status miles out of one roundtrip, your cost per status mile would still be about 5 cents per mile. Unthinkable!

By comparison, roundtrip fares of $225.00 or less between Seattle and Orlando seem to be available year-round. Using Alaska’s partner American, I’m flying SEA-SAN-ORD-MIA-MCO-MIA-LAX-SEA. On average, I’m paying $224.00 per ticket tax inclusive, so my cost per status mile comes to .02817 cents.

I should note that I only display status mile costs for those of you who prefer using them as a gauge for your mileage runs. I understand that many FTers utilize Mileage Runs primarily towards attaining or maintaining their elite status. Me on the other hand – I’m in it for the total mileage earned because that’s what I’m going to be cashing in for my future trips. I don care about no stinkeen status miles because they’re a given. In my pursuit of the amount of miles I need to take the kind of trips I like to take, I’m going to attain those elite levels anyway. As such, my gauge for a successful mileage run is total mileage accrual costing me less than .0125 cents per mile. For this trip, inclusive of all bonuses, I’m at .0104 cents per earned mile.


** ***** **

Since I’m starting my Mileage Runs out of Seattle and Denver, why drive over seven thousand miles and pay over $2.00 per gallon when I could fly to Denver with a stop in Seattle for much less?

Driving down to Colorado serves a number of purposes. Chief amongst them is the fact that I like to drive. I especially enjoy driving around the American West. This will be my 27th time driving between Alaska and the Lower 48. My truck is also outfitted with ten high quality speakers. And no, it’s not one of those obnoxious bass thumpers you can hear three blocks away. I enjoy my music though and the sound system in my truck represents the best listening environment available to me.

Secondly, once I’m in Seattle and Denver, I’ll have a vehicle to get me around town as opposed to using mass transit. For me, that’ll be a nice luxury.

And finally, I’ll have a place to crash. I’ve got a full mattress in the back, underneath the camper shell. I can stretch out fully and am nearly as comfortable back there as I am in any hotel. I’ll also save some money on those days between flights when, if I were not at a friend’s place, I’d either be staying in a hostel or hotel.


** ***** **

My departure from Fairbanks started off in less than favorable conditions. Sleet and snow made for treacherous driving the first two hundred miles out to Tok Junction. A big tractor-trailer was severely jack-knifed out by Delta Junction and three or four cars had spun off the road. By the time I’d gotten out near the Yukon border, summer had returned with sunshine and no evidence of recent snow. I also saw a few places where this summer’s fires had burnt right down close to the highway. Fires burnt over six million acres of Alaska this summer.

I drove past the Yukon’s Kluane Lake under a full moon. Clouds were backed up against the sharp peaks of the Wrangell Mountains like water straining to get over a dam. Illuminated by the light of the moon, the scene was magical.

There were also plenty of fires this summer in Canada’s Yukon. Again, I passed through a lot of burned out areas. Thankfully, sunshine was my constant companion throughout northern Canada.

In Whitehorse, many stores were just days away from closing for the winter. 50% off sales were everywhere! The only thing I really wanted was a good tweed cap but I didn’t see anything I liked amongst what was left in Whitehorse.

Later that evening, while driving through the mountains around Muncho Lake and Summit Lake, I negotiated a veritable slalom course of buffalo, moose, mule deer and elk. About every ten minutes one species or another, either singularly or in groups, would be crossing or standing in the roadway. These are all large animals and to hit one of them would cause real troubles for both of us.

The next morning, just a few miles out of Ft. Nelson I saw a beautiful wolf. He was predominantly white and beige and appeared to be quite large. He looked at me briefly, then trotted off into the woods.

The downside of reaching Ft. Nelson is that you’ve now come down out of the hills. Everything seems tamer and less vital down in the lowlands. I did take a new road through Lesser Slave Lake before dropping down into Edmonton at midnight. Had it been earlier, I would have called on fellow FTer altaflyer, but given the time and my need to arrive in Kalispell by Thursday evening, I pushed on and called it a night at a rest stop fifty miles south of Edmonton.

The drive from Edmonton south to Montana is not particularly inspiring. Most of south central Alberta is pretty flat. The mountains rise abruptly right at the US border however, and what beautiful mountains they are, too! I entered the US at the Carway checkpoint, just below Cardston, Alberta and just above the western edge of Glacier National Park. I then headed west to Kalispell over Logan Pass, otherwise known as Going To The Sun Road. This spectacular road takes you right through the heart of Glacier National Park and for any of you who’ve not yet managed a visit to this beautiful park, I highly recommend it. Besides the fantastic natural beauty, there are some beautiful old lodges that were built back at a time in our history when National Park lodges were built on a grand scale.

I spent a fun evening in Kalispell with a friend who’d recently moved up from Dallas. From Ohio originally, she’s always loved the West and now that she’s living in Montana with her horse and dog and a good job, well – life could hardly be better.

The next morning I pressed on towards Bozeman, stopping briefly in Helena for lunch. The last time I passed through Helena, a friend and I were stopped by the police on suspicion of having beaten up some guy at a bar a couple blocks away. I guess we just looked the part. Thankfully we were able to quickly establish that we’d just spent the past hour in a Mexican restaurant.

My friend John Allen has been a professional tour driver since the mid-Seventies. He worked for many years in Glacier National Park before moving on to Denali National Park in the early 1980s. During the off season, he spent a fair amount of time in Bozeman, Montana with his trusty beagle companion, Lightfoot. Sadly, the dog was killed one day by a car out on a country road. As John so succinctly puts it, Lightfoot overdosed on Buick.

John buried Lightfoot on a small hill overlooking a river valley and four different mountain ranges. A friend of John’s with the right connections managed to get cast and died one of those USGS markers emblazoned with the words Lightfoot National Monument. It apparently looked exactly like the real deal (because it was the real deal, albeit a somewhat illegal deal) and John mounted it in a wooden headstone and placed it on the dog’s grave.

It just so happened that the dog’s grave abutted a Highway Department gravel pit. One day, a couple of highway department workers discovered the grave and the marker and started to ask questions. The local newspaper got involved. What was Lightfoot National Monument? There was a fair bit of speculation around town, especially amongst the local historians as nobody had ever heard of it. Neither, for that matter, had the Department of the Interior. Eventually, a friend of John’s told the story of the dog and its untimely demise to the newspaper and the whole affair just quietly went away. Unfortunately, so also did the mock USGS marker.

In any event, since sometime in the mid-eighties John has been hosting a post season get together in Bozeman. Most of the attendees are fellow Denali drivers and friends come all the way down from Alaska. We generally spend about five days drinking, eating and visiting local Bozeman area attractions like the Madison Buffalo Jump or Norris Hot Springs or the excellent Museum of the Rockies, along with most all of the local watering holes. And of course, one thing we always do is go out to Lightfoot’s grave and leave something of personal value or import (or just any old thing that seems neat) on the grave. John then tells a couple of stories, reads a poem or two, and then we pass around the traditional bottle of Mad Dog 20/20.

So, that’s why I was going to Bozeman this year. I hadn’t been since 1990 and even John and his wife BJ hadn’t hosted a Montana get together for about six years. In the interim there’d been other gatherings in Utah, Ireland, Florida and Bavaria. I made them all except Germany. Back in 1988, there were about 20 of us and quite a fine time was had. This year we numbered only eight.

Normally, we meet at the Filling Station Bar and just camp in the field out in the back. Ah, but that was the good old days. Despite being on the outskirts of town, the Filling Station now has become a popular Friday and Saturday night hangout for the local college crowd. Bands with names like The Vampire Lesbos and The Dead Milkmen play there on weekend nights now and so we set up a base camp for Friday and Saturday nights at the Imperial Inn in downtown Bozeman. For $33.00, I got a room with a fridge, microwave and a 19” TV with a gazillion channels that I never got around to watching.

The next three days were spent doing the usual fun stuff we always do, including cleaning up the dog’s grave which had been vandalized many times, first by coyotes and later by local yokels. It looks nicer now than ever. Back at the Filling Station one afternoon before the bands arrived, Buck, one of the regulars, told us of his adventures at Norris Hot Springs with nude swimmers, a live chicken and the shotgun wielding owner who ran them all off. Later, BJ brought the cowboys right down off their barstools at the Gallatin Gateway Inn when she launched into an acapelo version of Nanci Griffith’s [I]Montana Backroads[/b].

After a really nice evening at Chico Hot Springs Resort, I bid the group goodbye and sped off towards Seattle and the first of eleven trips to Florida in the next seven weeks.

Seat 2A

October 5, 2004

The sound of early morning traffic along Interstate 90 rousted me from a comfortable sleep at my home for the night - a roadside Rest Area out by Moses Lake. After taking breakfast in Ellensburg, I drove up and over Snoqualmie Pass, descending into the Seattle area just as the last remnants of a morning fog were melting away. I decided to make a quick stop out at SeaTac in order to check in early and hopefully procure a First Class upgrade for this evening’s flight down to San Diego.

Because my reservation was booked and ticketed through American Airlines, my Alaska flight down to San Diego was displayed in my PNR as an American code-share flight. As a result, despite my lofty status as an MVP Gold in Alaska’s Mileage Plan, I was unable to either list or upgrade the Alaska flight seventy-two hours beforehand per the normal procedure. According to the MVP Desk, if they were to upgrade the code-shared Alaska flight, it would cause the rest of the reservation to cancel out. Because of this, upgrades could only be processed at the airport on the day of departure. Strangely, I had no problem listing and upgrading via the phone my Northwest code-shared flights between Anchorage and Seattle two weeks ago. Perhaps Alaska has a closer working relationship with Northwest…

In any event, despite my reservation having been made with Expedia and ticketed, albeit electronically, on American stock, I was still able to check in and even upgrade tonight’s Alaska flight using Alaska’s self-service check-in kiosk. This accomplished, I then sped off into Seattle to complete a multitude of small tasks before returning to SeaTac later in the day for my 7:20pm departure.


SEA-SAN ALASKA 737-990 N302AS First Class 720p – 954p * Snack
SAN-ORD AMERICAN DC-9-82 N951U Coach Class 1100p – 448a
TOTAL MILES FLOWN: 2770 * TOTAL MILES EARNED: 5540

When is construction scheduled to finally be completed at SeaTac, anyway? Every time I pass through there, it seems like something new is closed or boarded off. This time the C Concourse Security checkpoint was closed, indeed totally hidden behind a façade of construction boards, yellow tape and signs. I proceeded to the nearby D Concourse checkpoint and thanked my lucky stars that a special First Class/Elite lane was available, thus saving me a good fifteen minutes of wasted time standing in line. Indeed, one of my most cherished perks of elite level frequent flyer status is the ability to avoid long lines.

Once settled into the calm and quiet civility of Alaska’s Boardroom, I accepted a nicely chilled pint of Heineken from the hostess and logged on to the Internet. Alaska’s Seattle and Anchorage Boardrooms now offer free wireless Internet access for which I am most appreciative. It’s quite fast and in short order I’d checked out FlyerTalk’s Mileage Run forum and gotten a bid for a hotel at SFO rejected by Priceline before finally closing up shop and hurrying off to Gate C-16 at the far end of the C Concourse.

Awaiting me at C-16 was Alaska’s 737-990 N302AS, once known as N737X, the prototype model of the 737-900. Often, Boeing will keep their prototype aircraft as a test bed before finally handing it off to some airline. In the case of the 737-900, I reckon Boeing’s made so darned many of the 737 and its derivatives that there just wasn’t much left to learn about the aircraft or its capabilities. As such, Alaska took delivery of this aircraft within a year of introducing the type back in May of 2001.

As usual, I was the last to join my fifteen fellow travelers in the forward cabin. I’ve never understood why everyone is in such a hurry to board and sit in an airplane while it’s parked at the gate. Oh yeah – pre-flight cocktails. Well, Alaska doesn’t serve any of those, so go figure…

My seatmate appeared to be dozing and we were no doubt both thankful that I’d been assigned 2D on the aisle. After a few more stragglers lurched through the cabin on their way back to Economy, the door was shut, the jetway retracted and we were on our way to one of Seattle’s two runways. I noticed that tonight’s safety briefing included a demonstration on the use of life jackets and it occurred to me that because of the recent volcanic activity from Mt. St. Helens, we might be routed farther out to the west, over the Pacific Ocean. Every other time I’ve flown the SEA-SAN route with Alaska, it’s been aboard MD-80s, few of which seem to be equipped with life vests. Ironically, the last time I flew this route was in 1999 aboard DC-9-83 N963AS, the very same aircraft which later crashed into the Pacific on Superbowl Sunday, 2000.

Our 7:20pm departure was listed as offering a snack to First Class passengers. Two weeks ago, my 6:50pm departure to Anchorage had been catered with a full dinner service and so I expected that on this 1050 mile two hour flight we would receive the standard choice of a big salad or a sandwich. As such, I passed on airport munchies in anticipation of a nice chicken or chef’s salad. Imagine then my surprise and dismay when it was announced that tonight’s snack was a small bowl of Tomato and Olive Salsa served with Tropical Sesame Crackers. I suspect the sandwich or salad options may have been available on the earlier flight at 4:00pm, but then again maybe not given that Alaska has no competition down to SAN from airlines who either fly nonstop or offer catering on their one stop services.

In the meantime, I drowned my disappointment in a glass of surprisingly tasty red wine whilst munching on sesame crackers sans salsa. I can’t stand the flavor of olives! We made our approach into San Diego on a beautiful clear evening and, as anyone who’s ever flown into Lindbergh Field will attest, the highlight of any approach from the east is the proximity of the downtown buildings. At night, the overall effect is certainly highlighted by all the city lights. Seatmate must have had a hard day or perhaps flown in from Europe because she was pretty much unconscious from the time I boarded until the time we landed. I wished I’d had her window seat, though.

American’s flights operate out of San Diego’s newer Terminal Two, conveniently accessed from Terminal One via a shuttle bus. The driver was wearing a headset and carried on a conversation in a Middle Eastern sounding dialect all the way over to Terminal Two, pausing only long enough to announce our arrival.

I was pleased to discover that the aircraft operating tonight’s late night service into Chicago’s O’Hare Field was DC-9-82 N951U. This aircraft began its career in 1984 as the second of four MD-80s operated by St. Louis based Ozark Airlines. For years Ozark had operated nothing larger than DC-9 series 10 and 30 aircraft along it’s predominantly Midwestern route system. With the advent of deregulation in 1978, Ozark began to spread its wings and by the early 1980s operated coast to coast. The MD-80s were well suited to the popular West Coast services and looked quite striking in Ozark’s classy new green and white livery. Unfortunately, the MD-80’s tenure in Ozark colors was short lived, as that airline would later merge with TWA in 1986. On a positive note, TWA’s new red, blue and gold livery looked even better on the old Ozark birds. On a less than positive note, TWA’s demise at the hands of Carl Icahn and American’s subsequent takeover spelled the end of not only a great airline but also the disappearance of arguably the nicest livery ever to grace a US flag carrier.

Due to the late hour of this flight and my need for sleep, I have nothing noteworthy to report except that at only three hours and twenty-four minutes of flying time, it was too short for a proper rest. Thankfully I slept through most of the flight. Arrival in Chicago was ten minutes early at 4:35am.

Seat 2A

October 6, 2004
ORD-MIA AMERICAN 757-200 N686AA Coach Class 612a – 1010a
MIA-MCO AMERICAN 737-800 N969AN Coach Class 1150a – 1245p
MCO-MIA AMERICAN 737-800 N969AN Coach Class 145p – 241p
MIA-LAX AMERICAN 757-200 N685AA Coach Class 355p – 618p * Dinner
LAX-SEA ALASKA 737-700 N624AS First Class 937p – 1207a
TOTAL MILES FLOWN: 4870 * TOTAL MILES EARNED: 10980


Even in an airport as large as Chicago’s O’Hare, very little is open before 5:00am. I headed over to the central food court between the H and K Concourses (What ever happened to the I and J Concourses?) and grabbed a cup of decaf while waiting for McDonalds to open. When it comes to fast food breakfasts, there is nothing finer in my book than a McDonald’s Egg McMuffin. And, while I enjoy a quality cup of coffee as much or more than the next guy, this morning I went with decaf in the hope that I might still get a couple more hours of sleep on the two and a half hour flight down to Miami.

That I did, landing on a bright sunny day at Miami International after a flight of just two hours and thirty-four minutes. We parked at Gate A-5, located in what I feel is the nicest of the five different concourses from which American operates. The A Concourse has high ceilings, lots of big windows that flood the inside with bright, natural light and beautiful polished stone floors inlaid with attractive brass artwork. By comparison, most of MIA’s other concourses are narrow and claustrophobic with low ceilings and very few windows. Besides American, the A Concourse also serves a variety of Latin American and European airlines, most notably TACA, Avianca, Lan Chile, British Airways, KLM and Air France.

With an hour and a half to burn before my connecting flight to Orlando was to depart (Also from the A Concourse, conveniently) I set out in search of air conditioned facilities in which to while away my layover. During September and October it’s still quite hot and humid in Miami and though the level of air-conditioning inside the terminals might be acceptable to most residents of South Florida, to an Alaskan accustomed to a cool and dry climate, it was still pretty stuffy and sticky.

My Priority Pass membership will gain me entrance to hundreds of airport lounges all over the world. At Miami International, it is accepted in Delta’s Crown Room, United’s Red Carpet Club and each of the three Club America Lounges which generally serve as First and Business Class lounges for many of the Central and South American airlines. Unfortunately, the beautiful Club America facility in Concourse A didn’t open until noon, so I hoofed it on over to the E Concourse facility. There I was cordially greeted and directed to Lounge B. Actually, there were four different lounges within the E Concourse facility, lettered A-D, and, from what I saw through the open doors of lounges C and D, each of them was essentially alike. Perhaps one of them served as a First Class lounge, differing only in the quality of the food and beverages offered… I helped myself to a cup of coffee and a chocolate chip cookie, then fired off a couple of emails from the single Internet connected computer.

My forty minute flights up to Orlando and back offered no service – not even an expedited beverage service – so the only thing worthy of note was my visit to United’s superb Red Carpet Club, located airside between gates 43 and 45 in MCO’s Terminal 2. This is one of the most attractive lounges that I’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting. Though food and drink are basic at best, the facility itself is beautifully laid out and decorated. The large windows, warm woods and comfy and intimate seating areas set amidst lots of indoor plants combine to create a homelike ambience that was difficult to leave after a visit of just 20 minutes.

By the way, for those of you who’ve ever wondered why Orlando’s three letter airport code is MCO, it’s because the airport was once home to McCoy Air Force Base.

Back in Miami, we parked at the A Concourse again so I spent a pleasant hour in the nearby Club America before strolling over to the C Concourse for my flight to Los Angeles. A network of airside underground walkways connects concourses A-E and as I entered the corridor from Concourse A, a sign advised that Concourse C was a fifteen-minute walk away. Yeah, maybe if you’re blind and need a walker! I set my stopwatch and set off at my usual semi-brisk airport stroll. Five minutes and twenty seven seconds later, I emerged into the dank and damp smelling C Concourse.

Although I arrived at the mostly empty gate lounge twenty-five minutes early, the gate agent encouraged me to board immediately and so I did, thinking that perhaps we’d be trying for an early departure. Alas, it was not to be. We sat at the gate until right up to departure time before the doors were shut and we finally pushed back.

The captain welcomed us aboard and gave us the usual spiel about staying in our respective cabins and not congregating anywhere at any time during the flight. I’ve noticed that American in particular always makes a point of advising passengers of these regulations whereas Alaska and Northwest only seem to do so now and then.

Flight time was announced at five hours even and, after a take off roll of just 28 seconds, we lifted into the muggy afternoon skies above Miami and began our initial climb to 39,000 feet. While the skies over Florida were filled with a multitude of fluffy white clouds, as we continued West the clouds increased in both density and altitude. All across the Deep South and well into Texas we never did quite clear the cloud cover, even at 39,000 feet. Needless to say the ride was not particularly smooth and it was with considerable relief that as we crossed into West Texas the skies cleared and we enjoyed fairly smooth conditions for the remainder of the flight.

After a round with the beverage cart, dinner was served about an hour into the flight. The dinner choices for the Main Cabin were announced as:

Penne Pasta with a Red Sauce
Or
Chicken with Rice and Beans

The Penne Pasta turned out to be Tortellini and since I never did get a more accurate description of just what that “red” sauce was (Hey - it might have olives in it!) I opted for the Chicken with Lots of Rice and only a few Beans. A small green salad, a packaged white bread roll and a small piece of chocolate cake accompanied the meal. The chicken was actually fairly good, although I needed the complete contents of my salt and pepper packets to give it a little more zest.

After dinner, as I sat relaxing over a cold Club Soda and working on this report, I reminisced that thirty years ago only National Airlines served the Miami to Los Angeles route using 747s and DC-10s. National’s 747s in particular were beautiful airplanes in their distinctive yellow and orange livery with the sun king logo gracing the tail fin. Inside, they were equally colorful, sporting three distinct “rooms” in Economy while First Class had the fabulous “Sun King” lounge upstairs. If only I could have flown that aircraft just once! Alas, I was but a wee lad subsisting on just a dollar a week allowance for my principal income.

Later, I watched as ice cream sundaes were prepared and presented to the First Class passengers. Meanwhile, CBS’s Eyes on American had ended and the main movie was just getting underway. This month’s domestic westbound feature is the remake of The Stepford Wives with Nicole Kidman, the Australian actress who must have had some big tax liability or other need for quick disposable income to get involved with this project.

Somewhere over Northern Arizona, with the Grand Canyon just off the starboard wing, I fired off a postcard to fellow intrepid Mileage Runner and Trip Reporter CMK10. Before much longer, we were descending over the bleak hinterlands that are home to Pomona, Ontario and the San Bernardino Valley. The skies were sunny in that hazy Southern California kind of way, yet just a couple of minutes before landing at LAX we descended into a fog bank that made 6:00pm look more like 8:00pm. I never saw the sun again this day, although I did notice an Air India 747-400, an Air France 777-200, a Singapore A340-500, a China Southern 777-200 and America West’s “Arizona Diamondbacks” 757-200 mixed in amongst the menagerie of the basic run of the mill jetliners seen daily at LAX.

My flight up to Seattle included three guys in row two who all looked like younger versions of Curly from the Three Stooges. They all had beefy builds topped by nearly shaved heads and very likely could have been brothers. Two of them were sat right behind me and since they’d asked how much the drinks cost, I assumed it was their first time in First Class. After being informed that drinks were complimentary, they let out a joyful whoop and then proceeded to try and sample each and every one of the various spirits carried by Alaska. After a couple of rounds, the flight attendant admonished them to pace themselves for, as she put it, one drink on board was like the equivalent of three on the ground. I don’t know if I’d go that far, because since the inside of an airliner cabin is pressurized to an equivalent elevation of about 7000 feet, it’d be no about the same as having a drink in Vail, Colorado. I think she nonetheless managed to hold them to about three rounds. Given the late hour, the only accompaniment was a ramekin of mixed nuts. We landed just after midnight on a pretty evening in Seattle. I claimed my truck from Wally’s Parking (Just $7.95 per day – cheap by SeaTac standards) and sped off to the rest area down by Fife.

Seat 2A

October 7-8, 2004

With three days to burn until my next flights, I decided to head out to Olympic National Park. Located across the Puget Sound from Seattle on the Olympic Peninsula, Olympic National Park offers stunning Pacific coastline, rugged and glaciated mountain peaks and lush lowland rainforests. I have been to many parts of this spectacular park, but my favorite location is the Hoh River Rainforest. There is an excellent trail through the rainforest and, for those with enough time, it can be hiked all the way to near the crest of the Olympic Range, just below Mt. Olympus. I thought if the weather cooperated, I’d just hike four miles in to Cougar Creek.

The best way to get from Seattle out to the Olympic Peninsula is to take the Washington State Ferry across the Puget Sound to either Kingston or Bremerton and then drive the rest of the way. From Seattle I drove twenty miles north to Edmonds and onto the giant ferry Walla Walla. Forty minutes later, I was driving off the boat in Kingston and heading for the Park. After crossing over the Hood Canal, I passed through the towns of Sequim and Port Angeles before heading into the forest and skirting the shores of beautiful Crescent Lake. The town of Forks is the closest town to the Hoh, so I stopped there briefly for a bite to eat. Forks is and always has been a logging town. Sympathetic comments about spotted owls could be hazardous to your health.

I arrived at the Hoh River campground about 9:00pm. There were only a handful of campers there, many of them locked up in their motor homes for the night. I grabbed a couple of cold beers and took a stroll around the loop road. It is not at all unusual to spot the big Roosevelt Elk out in the river bed and occasionally even in the campground area. Although I didn’t hear or see any elk, I did meet Jake and Nancy, a couple from Vancouver, BC who’d come south in their VW van to visit not only Olympic N.P. but also Mt. Rainier National Park. They also talked about maybe heading down to Mt. St. Helens if it were open. St. Helens had been acting up of late. It had recently shot off a couple of good blasts of steam and many vulcanologists were of the opinion that a decent sized eruption seemed imminent.

I hauled over the remainder of my beer and we chatted until about 11:30pm when the rain started falling.

I awoke the next morning to an even harder rain. Many years ago, I was way up the Hoh River trail at Glacier Meadows and had made the silly mistake of setting my tent up in a slight depression. The weather had been perfect and looked like it would remain that way. A hard rain began sometime after midnight and I awoke to about an inch of water steadily rising in my tent. I hiked all the way out – about twelve miles – in that rain. Talk about drenched! Today, thankfully, I was warm and dry under the camper shell on the back of my truck. The campground now looked pretty deserted and so I took my stove over to the bathhouse and boiled myself up a cup of coffee and a bowl of oatmeal. Unfortunately, there’d be no hike out to Cougar Creek. I was back in Seattle by dinnertime.


October 9, 2004
SEATTLE AIRLINE COLLECTIBLES SHOW

I collect airliner postcards and have been since I was about twelve years old. My collection steadily grew and by the time the new millennium rolled around, my collection totaled well over 25,000 cards.

I live in a cabin and have to relocate each year down to Denali National Park where I live in Employee Housing. Since I haven’t owned any property in Alaska until just recently, this meant I had to move out of my Fairbanks area cabin each spring and put all my stuff back in storage. 25,000 postcards takes up a lot of space.

Add to this the fact that my passion for collecting these cards had waned somewhat since my younger years. I still looked forward to new cards of airliners I didn’t have represented in my collection, but it was no longer important to have every single postcard out there. I was putting some new cards into the collection one day and noticed that I had over 40 different cards of Lufthansa 747s. Once upon a time this might have been a source of pride but now it just seemed ridiculous. Surely I could pare that down to just one or two cards of each type of aircraft and have a much more manageable collection. The Lufthansa 747 situation was the extreme, but it wasn’t unusual to find anywhere from 5 to 15 cards either airline issued or from independent publishers depicting the same aircraft from the same airline. I determined to thin my collection down. It was too big to ever sell anyway. Heck, I had over $1,500.00 in pages and books alone!

It took me about three weeks, but I went through the entire collection and pulled out all but just one or two of the very best looking shots of each airliner. Whether the card was a rare or more valuable airline issue made no difference. I kept what I felt were the best representations of each different color scheme seen over the years, but the rule was no more than two cards unless it was a VC-10, in my opinion the most beautiful jetliner ever built.

Once I was done, I’d lightened my collection by almost 10,000 cards. Adding these to my boxes of spares, I had about 13,000 cards now ready to sell. The most valuable ones I removed for later sale on Ebay but all the others I sell for 50 cents at airline collectible shows. There are about twelve to fifteen of these shows per year here in the US and a like number spread out around the rest of the world. I manage to get to one or two per year.

In Seattle, there is a show each October at Boeing’s Museum of Flight. I rent a table and set out my boxes of cards. On a good day, I’ll sell about $400-500.00 worth of cards. Today was a bit slower than that, but overall a good effort. Besides selling cards, it’s fun to chat with the folks who stop by to buy my cards. Like myself they are airline enthusiasts and many of them work or did work for an airline. They have some great stories to tell.

I might add that these airline collectible shows offer all manner of airline paraphernalia for sale. There are old timetables, First Class china and glassware, pilot wings, books, models, menus, posters, playing cards, barf bags, you name it! I should imagine if you have enough interest in flying to check out a site like FlyerTalk, you might find you’d enjoy going to one of these airline collectible shows sometime.

HERE is a link to the current schedule for this year and next.

HERE is a link to next year’s Seattle show

After the show, I headed up to the U District to meet some friends for dinner. They were heading off to see one of my favorite bands, the Yonder Mountain Stringband, but since I had to be in Spokane by 1:00pm the next day, I had to pass on the music and start driving out towards Spokane. I called it a night at the Moses Lake rest area.

Seat 2A

October 10, 2004
GEG-SEA HORIZON DHC-8-400 N416QX Coach Class 630p – 735p
SEA-DTW NORTHWEST 757-300 N356NW Coach Class 1035p – 537a
TOTAL MILES FLOWN: 2150* TOTAL MILES EARNED: 4860

I turned off Interstate 90 at Sprague and drove the remainder of the trip to Spokane along back roads. I wound my way through the pine covered hills northwest of Spokane, ultimately paralleling the beautiful Spokane River until finally arriving in Spokane at about noon. Although my flight wasn’t until 6:30pm, the plan was to locate a sports bar that would be showing the Denver Broncos – Carolina Panthers football game. With the Seahawks game against St. Louis on at the same time, I had to find a bar that subscribed to the NFL Ticket and showed all the games. I pulled into a gas station, filled up and asked for advice. After a fair bit of debate amongst the two cashiers (“Rick’s is pretty good but the food’s lousy” – “Yeah, but the Swinging Door is too expensive!”) it was determined that the Swinging Door would definitely have ALL the games whereas Rick’s only might have them. And so it was that I ate first and then spent a fine afternoon in The Swinging Door drinking $2.75 pints and cheering my Broncos on to victory with about eight other Bronco fans, all of us clad in our blue and orange home jerseys.

I arrived at Spokane International Airport at 5:30pm, an hour before my Horizon flight was to depart to Seattle. Two things impressed me about my experience at this airport. First, I found a remote parking place called Jet Park that allowed me to park my truck for just $4.75 per day. That was their everyday rate! Once in the terminal, I was thrilled to discover a First Class/Elite lane at the security screening check point which saved me a good ten minute wait in line. In an airport Spokane’s size, I was surprised to see this feature.

The aircraft for the short flight across the Cascades into Seattle was a DeHavilland Dash 8 series 400, otherwise known in Horizon Air parlance as the “Q-400”. Boarding was accomplished quickly and, after taxiing seemingly all over the airport grounds, we took off into a setting sun and climbed up to twenty some odd thousand feet.

Horizon Air never ceases to amaze me with its continually high standard of inflight service. While it’s parent Alaska Air Group continues to chip away at the once superior inflight product at Alaska Airlines, Horizon Air still offers complimentary local Northwest microbrews and wines along with snacks on most of its flights. I availed myself of a Widmers Drop Top Ale and a bag of very crunchy potato chips while watching the beautiful orange orb of the sun sink below the distant Cascades.

Upon arrival in Seattle, I headed over to the Boardroom for that time honored October tradition of cold beer and playoff baseball. I was surprised to discover that Alaska discontinued its practice of charging for premium beers and wines in its Boardroom. Now all alcoholic beverages are free, though Red Hook is no longer available, even for free. I had no complaints with Samuel Adams however.

Unfortunately, heavy Sunday evening passenger loads prevented me from upgrading between Seattle, Detroit and on to Dallas. I was however quite happy to have scored exit row seats on both segments and slept fairly soundly through both flights.


October 11, 2004
DTW-DFW NORTHWEST A319-100 N341NB Coach Class 925a – 1106a
DFW-DTW NORTHWEST A319-100 N341NB First Class 1230p – 402p * Lunch
DTW-IND NORTHWEST A320-200 N376NW Coach Class 520p – 521p
IND-MSP NORTHWEST A320-200 N376NW First Class 618p – 809p
MSP-GEG NORTHWEST A320-200 N376NW First Class 928p – 1029p
TOTAL MILES FLOWN: 3880 * TOTAL MILES EARNED: 8320

Northwest and Continental both use DFW’s Terminal E and I was thankful that we’d parked at a gate right next door to Continental’s President’s Club. With about an hour layover in Dallas, I had plenty of time to enjoy a cup of coffee, a packet of Biscotti cookies and free wireless Internet access in the Presidents Club.

I am a charter member of the Presidents Club, having bought a Lifetime Membership back in 1980. At a total cost of just $300.00, it may well represent the finest investment I have ever made. As a Presidents Club member, I am also welcomed in all Northwest WorldClubs regardless of whether I am flying with Northwest. My card is also welcomed on day of travel in any Delta Crown Room and most Alaska Boardrooms along with several overseas lounges such as Servisair at London’s Heathrow. Combined with my Priority Pass, I have access to literally hundreds of airline lounges around the world, regardless of whether I am flying the host airline that day. In many cities, I have a choice of lounges. In Seattle for example, I have a choice between Alaska’s Boardroom, Continental’s Presidents Club, Delta’s Crown Room, Northwest’s WorldClub or United’s Red Carpet Club. Life is good when I’m on the road, and that’s especially important when it comes to surviving these Mega-Mileage Runs that I do.

The remnants of Tropical Storm Michael had brought clouds and light rain to Dallas. After a powerful takeoff, our little A319 climbed swiftly through the low-level murk and soon burst into bright sunshine. My serotonin levels soared perceptively and I celebrated my good fortune to be sitting in First Class on this fine sunny day with a Bloody Mary and a bag of Northwest’s Deluxe Mixed Nuts. I know, I know – it ain’t exactly Krug and caviar, but for domestic First Class in this day and age, I was quite happy with my lot.

For those of us in the forward cabin, luncheon was served shortly after we’d reached a comfortable cruising altitude. Following, in menu format, are the choices:


LUNCHEON

Mixed Green Salad Bowl
Accented by Pepperoncinis, Tomatoes, Carrots and Red Onions. Offered with pre-packaged Creamy Peppercorn Dressing

ENTREES

Asian Chicken Salad
Radiccio lettuce is topped with a generous portion of macaroni and chicken salad accented with onions, celery and mandarin orange segments

Ham and Brie Sandwich
A large hoagie roll is stuffed with deli sliced ham and creamy Brie cheese.
Garnished with lettuce, red onions, cucumbers and Dijon mustard

Dessert
Pumpkin Cheesecake




Of course, there was no menu and so we were offered a choice of an Asian Chicken Salad or a Ham and Brie Sandwich. The salad sounded better in title than it actually looked when the Flight Attendant presented it to my seatmate. It was loaded with Mandarin oranges, which I don’t much care for. The sandwich was pretty good, though a big hoagie roll definitely requires more than just one little packet of Grey Poupon. Thankfully, I always carry a few extra packets in my daypack. The pumpkin cheesecake was a nice departure from Northwest’s usual chocolate cake. In all, not a bad meal by today’s standards. I’d be curious what American offers up front on a similar flight.

The 5:20pm flight between Detroit and Indianapolis was definitely the Businessman’s Special. When I’d looked into upgrading this segment earlier in the day, I was told that there were at least ten Golds ahead of me on the waitlist. As the bearer of an Alaska MVP Upgrade certificate, I’m not sure where I rank in Northwest’s upgrade pecking order, but I suspect it’s well below Northwest’s Silver Elites, not to mention the Golds and Plats. Even so, over the past couple of years I’ve had remarkably good luck upgrading to First Class on Northwest. On those rare occasions that I haven’t been able to upgrade I’ve often been the beneficiary of an exit or bulkhead row seat. I really have nothing but positive accolades when it comes to describing my overall experiences with Northwest.

A good example of this happened in Indianapolis when I checked with the gate agent about being put on the waitlist for an upgrade. Evidently, it is not possible to waitlist over the phone – at least not for Alaska MVPs – and I was informed that waitlisting could only be done at the airport of origin for the flight upon which I wished to upgrade.

The gate agent in IND noticed that there was one First Class seat left, though not in the class required per my upgrade certificate. With nobody else on the waitlist and the flight wide open between Minneapolis and Spokane, she elected to make a call to someone in charge and see if she could get me upgraded all the way through. Five minutes later, I was the proud possessor of a boarding pass stamped with seat 1A all the way through to Spokane. I thanked her profusely and filled out a customer appreciation form hailing her extra effort.

Short of beverages served with nuts or pretzels, there was no other service on my flights up to Minneapolis and on to Spokane. Many people have gushed over Northwest’s buttery tasting pretzels known as Spinzels, but I’m here to tell you that the Deluxe Mixed Nut Mix Northwest proffers is the finest tasting nut mix I’ve ever had aloft!

Our landing in Spokane was five minutes early and, with no baggage to collect, I was soon delivered to my truck and on my way west back to Seattle where another roundtrip out to Orlando awaited me the very next evening.

Seat 2A

October 12, 2004
SEA-SAN ALASKA 737-990 N303AS First Class 720p – 954p * Snack
SAN-ORD AMERICAN DC-9-83 N572AA Coach Class 1100p – 448a
TOTAL MILES FLOWN: 2770 * TOTAL MILES EARNED: 5540


Déjà vu – wasn’t I just on this flight a week ago? There’ll be a lot more of this sensation in the days ahead as I’ve got six more trips to Florida planned in the next month. Why Florida? From a Mileage Run standpoint, it’s where many of the best fares from Seattle and Denver happen to be offered. Also, from a routing standpoint it’s where I can accrue the most miles. As nice as it would be to have this big mileage-earning excursion take me to every corner of America, the point of this autumn’s travels is to accrue miles – not to visit destinations. I’m looking at price first and routing possibilities second. Other than that, Miami, Orlando, Ft. Myers – they all mean nothing more than a means to an end for me. The only exception is my attendance at the Magnoliafest, followed by a quick trip down to the Everglades. After I get the miles, I’ll use them to get to destinations where I’ll actually stay and enjoy much more than just a cup of coffee.

Tonight’s flight down to San Diego offered the same tomato and olive salsa plate that last week’s did, the only difference being that the Tropical Sesame Crackers had been replaced with equally tasty Rosemary crackers. Thankfully I’d thought to purchase a delicious Turkey and Pesto Panini sandwich from Starbucks before boarding. Seatmate had also visited Starbucks and came away with a Chicken Salad sandwich that he described as tasting bland. He did however agree with our Flight Attendant’s assertion that the Chardonnay was indeed “Crisp”.

Due to our late departure out of Seattle, we didn’t land in San Diego until 10:25pm. I was a little concerned since my connecting flight to Chicago was to leave from Terminal Two. Given that we still had to taxi to our gate, get the jetway hooked up, and then I had to transfer over to the other terminal, would I have enough time? All I could do was hustle and hustle I did, all the way out of Terminal One where I hit the sidewalk running just as the Inter-Terminal Red Bus was pulling into its stop. My lucky day! The Red Bus comes around only once every ten minutes or so and had it not been there and waiting, I was prepared to hail a taxi. As things turned out, I presented myself at the departure gate with eighteen minutes to spare.

The question came up recently in FlyerTalk’s Mileage Run forum as to whether doing Mileage Runs could contribute to poor health. The gist of it was that in the process of taking all these flights, we’re not getting very good sleep, we’re not eating very well and we’re subjecting ourselves to all the colds and viruses floating around amongst our fellow travelers either at the airport or onboard the airplane.

It’s a good question and a valid concern. I’d like to think I’ve been pretty lucky so far but over the years I’ve found two things to be essential in warding off illness when traveling. First and foremost, I try to get as much quality sleep as possible. It’s why I bring a Thermarest pad, sleeping bag and a pillow on my overnights in airports rather than try and sleep upright in a rigid airport chair. When overnighting on airplanes, I generally don’t have more than one alcoholic drink and I use Melatonin tablets to help me sleep better since I, like many I imagine, don’t sleep well in an upright position. I like Melatonin because it’s gentler than most of the chemical alternatives out there. Secondly, I wash my hands a lot. That’s just a good practice in general, but particularly so given the conditions we come into contact with amongst so many travelers in an airport.

As such, I popped a Melatonin as soon as I got settled into my exit row seat and by the time we’d leveled off at thirty some odd thousand feet, I was ready to call it a night.


October 13, 2004
ORD-MIA AMERICAN 757-223 N668AA Coach Class 612a – 1010a
MIA-MCO AMERICAN 737-823 N915AN Coach Class 1150a – 1245p
MCO-MIA AMERICAN 737-823 N915AN Coach Class 145p – 241p
MIA-LAX AMERICAN 757-223 N623AA Coach Class 355p – 618p * Dinner
LAX-SEA ALASKA 737-990 N303AS First Class 755p – 1029p
TOTAL MILES FLOWN: 4870 * TOTAL MILES EARNED: 10980

In Chicago, after a brief interlude that included a breakfast bar and a cup of decaf in Delta’s Crown Room, I headed down the L Concourse to my Miami-bound 757. Although the plane was filled close to capacity, my exit row window seat had nobody in the middle seat and so I caught another two hours of blissful slumber before our descent into Miami.

To say we “landed” in Miami would be charitable in the extreme. Following what seemed like a normal approach, we dropped out of the sky and fell onto the runway with a thud, followed soon after by a weird but short-lived whapitty-whapitty-whapitty noise that my seatmate thought might be a flat tire. Perhaps, but the aircraft maintained control throughout braking and we taxied into the gate without further incident.

My flights up to Orlando and back were routine affairs unworthy of further detail. While in Orlando however, it did occur to me how much things had changed there in terms of aircraft spotting since the mid-Seventies. Whereas today I saw all manner of single aisle aircraft parked or taxiing around the airport, back in the Seventies Orlando was well served by a multitude of L-1011s from Eastern and Delta along with a host of DC-10s primarily from National but with the occasional Northwest or United bird thrown in as well. The biggest airplane I saw today was US Airways’ Star Alliance 757-200. Although Delta still flies the 777 and a few 767s into MCO and American still schedules an A300 or two through town, the most common birds in Orlando these days may be the A320 and the 717.

Back in Miami, I noticed that the 757 operating my flight across the continent to Los Angeles no longer bore the “757 Luxury Liner” sticker under the cockpit windows. Upon further inspection, I noticed that most of American’s other 757s were missing the Luxury Liner designation as well. Could it be that American is finally acknowledging that none of its 757s were ever what could truly be called “luxurious”, even in First Class. To be sure, the only aircraft in American’s fleet that comes remotely close to luxurious would be the 777, and then only in the First Class cabin with its Flagship Suites. Then again, consider the definition of luxury in the dictionary:

Luxury: A condition of abundance or great ease and comfort: sumptuous environment

Now consider the First Class cabins and products of airlines such as Singapore, Cathay Pacific, British Airways or Emirates. If these airlines represent luxury as defined per current International Airline standards, how would you then define American’s aircraft? Unless you’ve ever flown First Class aboard any of the above named foreign carriers, don’t even attempt to consider this, as you’ll have no proper point of reference. I mean hey! Some people think United’s International First Class is the height of luxury. Some of us would just like to have running water someday. Regardless, however one accurately defines the comfort and service aboard American and any other US airline, luxury is not a word that springs to mind.

That said however, I do think that amongst the major carriers American offers the finest Economy Class product in America. The two things that weigh most heavily in this assessment are the MRTC (More Room Throughout Coach) configuration in most of the fleet along with the laptop power ports available throughout most aircraft, not just in First and Business Classes. I don’t really pay much attention to the inflight entertainment options because in my laptop I’ve got hundreds of hours of music along with the ability to play DVDs of movies I like rather than the often sappy fare the airlines usually inflict upon us. Now if they could just add the 25 channel television that Jet Blue, Song and Frontier offer, I could watch ESPN all the way across the country and never get anything done!


** ***** **

The walk from the end of MIA’s A Concourse to my gate near the end of the D Concourse has to be one of the longest possible distances one can travel while still connecting to a flight on the same airline. It took me almost fifteen minutes of brisk walking to make my way up to the head of the A Concourse, navigate through the myriad of serpentine tunnels connecting concourses A-E, then walk all the way down to the end of the D Concourse. Even the journey from Gate 3 to Gate 68 at Hong Kong’s Chep Lap Kok has people mover sidewalks. This might make an interesting topic for a slow day on FlyerTalk: What is the longest possible walk between connecting flights in the world?

American’s mid-afternoon departure from Miami out to Los Angeles was only about half full and so everyone had plenty of room to stretch out. My seatmate was returning home from a week in Peru and during the flight we had a good time talking about everything from South America to Mileage Runs. He had some fascinating stories to tell about the scene in Lima, not to mention life in places like Cuzco. Peru is definitely on my list of places to visit someday.

Flight time was announced as five hours and four minutes, cruising at somewhere between thirty and forty thousand feet. Sorry, Detail Freaks, I’ll try to make a note of that exact altitude next time around. After the beverage cart had made its rounds, we were offered a hot dinner. Tonight’s choices were the exact same as last week’s:

Chicken with Rice and Beans
Or
Cheese Tortellini

How often does American rotate its Economy Class menu these days? I remember when I was a young courier back in the Seventies and flew Frontier four nights a week from Denver to Detroit. Frontier’s 737s were operated in an all Coach configuration and menus were rotated weekly amongst four different entrees:

 Flank Steak with Wild Rice
 Beef Wellington
 Steak and Langostino
 Chicken Parmigiana

Each meal included a small bottle of Beringer Brothers wine and the Chicken Parmigiana included a delicious stuffed zucchini. Ah… the good old days.

From Detroit, I’d catch Delta’s 3:00am 727 down to Atlanta and connect to the 6:30am DC-8 back to Denver. Delta’s early morning breakfast menu never changed. It was either pancakes with little smoky link sausages or scrambled eggs with little smoky link sausages. Up in First Class, where Delta offered its so called Medallion Service on longer flights, I believe passengers were offered pretty much the same entrees, though in larger portions that included a nicer fruit plate. But I digress.

This month’s westbound movie feature, The Stepford Wives, developed sound problems early on and was replaced by The Terminal starring Tom Hanks as a guy who’s country and by extension passport are suddenly rendered invalid. He gets stuck in JFK’s Terminal 4 for some weeks. At least that’s what it looked like was happening without benefit of actually hearing the movie. I didn’t have any headset with me and so will have to rent this movie someday. It looked interesting. In the meantime, I put in some work on this report and finished Richard North Patterson’s Balance of Power, an excellent book on the politics of guns and gun control in America.

In Los Angeles, I took the American Eagle shuttle bus over to Terminal 3 where Alaska operates from. This shuttle is a great resource for travelers because it actually connects five terminals without the need to go back through security. Besides my usual route from American to Alaska, I often use it to go from Alaska’s Terminal 3 next door to Terminal 2 where Northwest’s WorldClub is located.

There was no time for a WorldClub visit tonight however. Within minutes of arriving at Terminal 3, I was boarding my flight up to Seattle. The aircraft, once again, was N303AS, the same aircraft I’d been on last night between Seattle and San Diego. Since I log all my flights, paying particular attention to the Registration Number, I was not overly pleased to be flying this aircraft again. For sure it’s a perfectly fine airplane but what the heck – Alaska’s got twelve or thirteen of them now – why not collect a flight on all of them. So far, the only ones that I am missing are N317AS and N320AS. If you see these aircraft, let me know immediately!

Midway through the flight, my seatmate, who’d been unconscious through the first part of the flight, awoke to make an interesting request. “You wouldn’t happen to have one of those little screws that holds eyeglasses together, do you?” Think back now to how many times you’ve asked this of your seatmate, much less anybody expecting an affirmative response. Well, it just so happened that I did have exactly what he needed. I also had one of those tiny little screwdrivers, without which it’d be impossible to tighten such a tiny screw. He was properly awed and after I’d repaired his glasses, he bestowed upon me all the sordid details of his trip down to LA, which I won't repeat here.

We arrived to a pretty evening in Seattle, clear and cool. Leaving the airport, I tallied up my travels so far: 4,850 miles driven, 26 flights and 28,550 miles flown, 61,740 miles earned. Tomorrow, a First Class compartment would await me aboard Amtrak’s premier train, the Coast Starlight.

Although I have friends in the Seattle area, the operative word is “area”. They live too far away and go to work too early for me to dare impose on them with such late night arrivals. This is hardly a problem for me as I am totally self sufficient, from the full bed in the back of my truck to camp stoves upon which I can prepare anything from a filtered cup of coffee to a filling meal. As long as it can be boiled or fried.

Thirteen miles south of the airport, I pulled into the Mile 139 Rest Area on I-5, crawled into the back of my truck and slept like a king. King of the road.

Seat 2A

October 14, 2004
Amtrak’s Coast Starlight
Seattle, WA to Santa Barbara, CA.
First Class Standard Bedroom
Car 1132 Room 11

Pictures from along the route of the Coast Starlight can be seen HERE

After parking my truck at one of the discount airport parking areas, I caught the 194 Express bus from the airport into downtown Seattle. Alighting at the International District stop, I then walked two blocks down Jackson St. to the King Street Station.

Once upon a time, Seattle’s King Street Station was as busy as it was grand. The same architects who created New York’s magnificent Grand Central Station designed the King Street Station. On the walls are some archived photos showing what the station used to look like in its heyday. It was constructed of brick and granite from the quarries at Index, WA. The interior of the building was white marble, and ornate plaster decorated the ceiling. Most of the floors were terrazzo and mosaic tiling, forming borders and dramatic designs. The building's most notable feature, the clock tower, was designed to mimic the bell tower at St. Mark's Church in Venice, Italy. The King Street Station truly looked like and indeed was a place where great rail journeys began. The Empire Builder, The North Coast Limited, The Western Star – they all departed from the King Street Station.

Sadly, the decline in the nation’s passenger rail traffic has been mirrored in the once grand central waiting room. The once high ornate ceiling is now hidden behind and above dingy looking particleboard ceiling tiles. The beautiful walls have been covered with what looks to be a basic dry wall. In short, what’s left of the original waiting room now has less ambience than many bus stations.

Apparently there are plans to restore the old station to its former glory, but I’d also heard this two years ago and as yet little if anything has been done.

Boarding commenced about fifteen minutes before our scheduled 10:00am departure. As always, I was a good twenty to thirty years younger than most of my fellow First Class passengers, many of whom grew up in an age when trains were still the best and most affordable means of getting around America. As they dottered their way down memory lane to their sleeper cars, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’ll still be doing Mileage Runs and trips like this when I’m sixty five years old. I hope so.

Due to a fairly light load, today’s Coast Starlight was only ten cars long. I remember once riding it in the summer when it was eighteen cars long! Today consist started with two big General Electric Genesis Model P42DC locomotives pulling a baggage car, a transition sleeper (For the crew and some passengers), three Superliner II Sleeper Cars, a dining car, the Sightseer Lounge Car and three Superliner coaches. With each locomotive generating the power of 4,250 horses, we certainly weren’t short on power.

Strikingly obvious by its absence was the First Class lounge known as the Pacific Parlour Car. Although all of Amtrak’s long distance trains offer a communal lounge car open to all passengers, only the Coast Starlight offers a dedicated First Class lounge car in addition to the regular lounge. It’s quite a nice lounge too, sporting ten large overstuffed swivel chairs, a stand up bar, a buffet area with cocktail lounge type seating and a downstairs movie theater. Apparently, this train’s Pacific Parlour Car had developed a problem with one of its wheels and so was taken out of service for repairs. Ah well, I’ll just pretend I’m on the Empire Builder and hope that the Pacific Parlour Car is included on my northbound train.

Amtrak names its sleeper cars after states. Mine was named “Michigan” and was attended to by a friendly little guy named Santiago. After showing me to my standard room, he was immediately hailed by an elderly couple who needed real assistance in getting up the stairway to their rooms on the main level. Soon after that, he was explaining to another couple where the showers were and what time he’d be turning the beds down. Santiago was a busy man.

As for me, I busied myself in getting settled in for the thirty-three hour journey down to Santa Barbara. There were books and toiletries to find a place for, a battery recharger to plug in, a shirt to hang and of course beers to chill. A full container of ice was located just at the top of the stairs and before long I had converted my garbage receptacle into a makeshift cooler with four cans of Tecate sitting nicely on ice.

The next item of business was a shower. Although we hadn’t yet left the station, Santiago assured me that there would be no problem in using the shower right away. The shower had decent water pressure and fifteen minutes later I emerged feeling much better and ready for a trip up to the big Sightseer Lounge Car.

We’d pulled out of the station while I was showering and as I walked back towards the lounge car, Boeing Field started to come into view. There were plenty of seats open in the lounge car so I grabbed a cup of coffee and settled in for a look at the airplanes. Somewhere out there is one of the six British Airways Concordes, though I never did see it. I did however note one of the ex-TWA 767-200s now in the drab gray colors of Airborne Express. These are, I believe, the only 767-200 freighters in the world.

We began to pick up speed as we continued south through the suburbs. South of Tacoma, at a point where the Interstate parallels the train tracks, we were making better time than any of the cars beside us. The posted speed limit on Washington’s interstate highways is 70 mph.

Before long, it was near noon and the first call for lunch went out over the train’s PA system. I was having a good time chatting with a fellow railfan about some of the lesser known passenger trains that used to serve the West and so decided to wait awhile on lunch. Everyone’s heard of the California Zephyr or the Super Chief. Anyone ever hear of the Portland Rose? The Colorado Eagle? The Aksarben Zephyr?

At about 1:00pm I decided to check out the luncheon offerings. After all, meals are complimentary for Amtrak’s First Class passengers. Despite our light load, I was surprised to find the dining car almost empty. People were being put on a waiting list just a half-hour before, Here’s the menu:


LUNCHEON

Angus Beef Burger
Served on a soft bakery bun, with or without cheese, and lettuce, tomato, red onion slice, chips, pickle spear and coleslaw. Bacon may be added by request

Grilled Chicken Sandwich
Tender boneless grilled chicken breast served on a soft bakery bun, with or without cheese, and lettuce, tomato, red onion slice, chips, pickle spear and coleslaw. Bacon may be added by request

Gardenburger
The delicious meatless alternative. Served on a soft bakery bun, with or without cheese, and lettuce, tomato, red onion slice, chips, pickle spear and coleslaw

Southwestern Quiche
Quiche with pinto beans, onion, jalapeno peppers, red and green peppers, cheese, roasted tomatoes and seasonings. Served with a tossed salad and dinner roll

Tuna Salad & Swiss Sandwich
Albacore tuna salad and Swiss cheese on wheat bread topped with lettuce and tomato. Accompanied by chips, pickle spear and coleslaw

Hot Pizza
Freshly baked individual pizza, plain or with pepperoni. Served with a tossed salad

Field Green Salad
A bountiful bed of field greens with sliced tomato, ripe olive relish, green olives, white asparagus spears, hard cooked egg wedges, toasted croutons and a dinner roll. Also available with herb crusted halibut fillet




So many choices… After verifying that the grilled chicken sandwich was still apparently made from undersized Guinea Hens, I opted to go with that old American standby, the hamburger. In terms of quality and quantity, the Angus Beef Burger may be the best deal on Amtrak’s luncheon menu. I ordered mine with bacon and was served an almost half pound burger presented with all the usual trimmings. Dessert would have to be enjoyed another day.

We crossed the Columbia River and eased into Portland’s Union Station at 2:10pm – only five minutes off schedule. Since no smoking is allowed anywhere onboard the Coast Starlight, those folks that did smoke wasted little time in quickly scrambling off the train to attend to their addictions. Thankfully, I quit smoking back when it was still legal to smoke on most planes and trains, as well as restaurants, bars and office buildings. It’s getting pretty difficult to be a smoker these days, but then perhaps that’s part of the plan.

Portland’s Union Station is a grand old red brick building that’s in considerably better condition than Seattle’s King Street Station. I went in and made a couple of telephone calls, bought a newspaper and then headed back out to the train.

A few years ago, while riding the Desert Wind between Los Angeles and Denver, I decided to take advantage of the longer station stop in Las Vegas to head into the station and buy a six pack of beer. Although we were just a few minutes behind schedule, Las Vegas was a service stop where garbage was emptied, ice and food restocked, etc. The schedule indicated a fifteen minute stop to accomplish these things. At that time, the Las Vegas train station was located in the Union Plaza Hotel, and just off the hotel lobby was a small liquor store. The idea here was to save money. With another twenty-six hours of train travel ahead of me, I’d require at least four to six beers, Why pay $4.00 per beer plus tip when I could just buy a six pack for so much less? The potential savings were too good to ignore and so I bought a six pack of Sam Adams for about $8.00. With a few minutes still to spare, I decided it’d be a good idea to pick up some ice because I can’t abide warm beer. An ice machine was located up on the second floor of the hotel and once I’d filled up my small plastic shopping bag, I headed back down to the train.

By my reckoning, I arrived back at the station with about three minutes to spare. Imagine then my surprise and dismay when I walked out onto the platform to see the end of the train heading down the tracks about one hundred yards away. The big steel mesh gate leading to the tracks was closed and locked, so any fantasies I had of dramatically chasing down the train with my bag of beer were quickly squelched. It was later explained to me that because the train was running behind schedule, the normal fifteen-minute service stop was accelerated a bit. Fair enough. I’d gambled and lost. Both my backpack and my daypack were onboard the train as well, but on a positive note I did have that bag of ice cold Sam Adams with me.

Beer or no beer, I’ve never been one to panic in these kinds of situations. Things are as they are and they only way out is to move forward. Calmly. There had to be a way to catch up with that train somewhere between Vegas and Denver. I had twenty-six hours.

From Las Vegas, the Desert Wind headed northeast up to Salt Lake City, arriving at about 5:00am. I quickly discovered that I wouldn’t be able to use Greyhound to catch it anywhere in between because the train did not parallel the highway but rather took the rural route – out in the middle of the desert. Next I started looking into flying to Denver on one of those air-only specials offered by the package tour companies when I stumbled across Morris Air’s ad in the Yellow Pages. Morris Air was a Salt Lake City based discount carrier. I’d totally forgotten about them! Ten minutes later, I was booked on Morris Air’s 10:00pm nonstop to Salt Lake. Total cost: $49.00.

A shuttle van to Las Vegas’ McCarran Airport only cost me about $5.00. However, because my flight didn’t arrive in Salt Lake City until a little after midnight, there were no scheduled bus or van services offered downtown. As a result, I had to shell out about $20.00 for a taxi. Then, because the train didn’t arrive until 5:00am and the station was closed until about 4:30, I spent about three hours and another $7.00 hanging out in a nearby Denny’s on South Temple Street.

Now let’s do the math.

Had I bought six premium beers on the train and tipped accordingly, I would have paid about $25.00.

Instead, in an effort to save money, I paid the following amounts for my six pack:

 Six Pack of Sam Adams: $8.00
 Shuttle to the Airport: $5.00
 Flight from LAS to SLC: $49.00
 Taxi to downtown SLC: $20.00
 Hanging out in Denny’s: $7.00
 The Overall Experience: Priceless

At $89.00, that six-pack of Sam Adams remains by far the most expensive beer purchase I have ever made.

Upon re-boarding the train, my daypack was still on my seat, right where I’d left it. Interestingly, when I recounted the story of my little adventure to the car attendant, he said they’d never known I was missing. The daypack on my seat notwithstanding, he’d just figured I was hanging out in the lounge car.

In any event, I am now careful to be back onboard or at least trackside at least five minutes before our announced departure. As for beer, I now buy that in advance of the journey.

Seat 2A

About five minutes after pulling out of the Portland station, we came to a stop. A few minutes later, the conductor came on over the PA and informed us that there was a problem with a track switch up ahead and we’d be held up for about twenty minutes. At the time I was in my room, tapping away on my this report. The wireless signal indicator on my laptop showed it was receiving a signal, so I decided to check it out. Sure enough, I was able to get online while sitting in some dirty industrial area in South Portland.

Hmm… I wonder if that $118.00 base DEN-MIA roundtrip is still out there? A quick check on my bookmarked Expedia Fare Calendar showed that it was. What the hell – let’s plug in a couple of prospective dates.

It’s worth noting here that even though I’ve long since exceeded the mileage requirements to maintain my MVP Gold status with Alaska, I believe that in this age of steadily increasing oil prices, many of these super low fares we’ve enjoyed are bound to increase substantially. In the meantime, if Southwest Airlines can hedge and buy its fuel in advance at lower prices, I can certainly do the same with my Mileage Runs. It’s also worth noting that while AA’s low DEN-MIA fare didn’t show an expiration date, I’ve yet to be able to book it for late March or early April of 2005. Had I been able to, I certainly wouldn’t be booking any more travel for this year.

The attractiveness of the Denver to Miami routing on American is that it allows you to route through Seattle via AA’s DEN-SEA codeshare with AS. The actual routing looks like this: DEN – SEA – ORD – MIA. Thus, despite Denver’s geographical location being almost a thousand miles east of the Pacific coast, I’m still able to enjoy transcon like mileage accrual via the SEA routing.

I always try and book directly with the airline first. When I first tried to make a booking for December 1st and back the 2nd through AA.com, I was given a fare of $210.00. I then went over to Expedia who gave it to me for $165.10. However, because of a tight 32-minute connection in Seattle, Expedia would not allow me to ticket it. Interestingly, AA will ticket on that same 32-minute connection. Anyway, I settled for the Alaska code share MIA-SEA nonstop that got me into Seattle with plenty of time to spare for my 2:15 connection down to Denver. I’ll lose about 400 total earned miles, but I’ll gain the possibility of a First Class upgrade on the transcon. Fair enough.

Eventually, we made our way out of Portland and into the broad Willamette Valley. I don’t believe Amtrak uses any photos of this section of the journey in its Coast Starlight promotional materials. The valley is so wide as to appear essentially flat and although there are few trees, there are plenty of colorful cars and semi trucks along the nearby interstate to provide a break from the monotony.

Speaking of cars, what is it with all the junk cars along the railroad tracks? If they’re not in junkyards, they’re rusting away in people’s back yards! Perhaps I was looking at the wrong side of the tracks.

It was a beautiful evening as we rolled into Eugene. Nearby, sheep grazed in bucolic splendor and a couple of boys waved at the train from their perch high up in a tree. Eugene is home to the University of Oregon and it is a nice place to spend a couple of days. Back in the late 80s, about a dozen of us flew down from Alaska to catch the Dead’s three day gig at Autzen Stadium. What a great weekend! I’d love to return for another visit someday soon.

From Eugene, the Coast Starlight heads east, passing through twenty-two tunnels as it makes its way over Willamette Pass and into the Cascade Mountains. Earlier in the day I’d made a dinner reservation for the 7:00pm seating and the call now rang out over the PA for those of us so reserved to present ourselves in the diner.

Seating in the diner is communal. Parties of one or two will be sat at whatever table is open, regardless of whoever else is already sat there. As such, you will meet some of your fellow passengers whether you – or they – like it or not. I was initially sat at an empty table but was soon joined by a young fellow named Nick, and soon after by a rather quiet couple from Eugene. Nick was in his early twenties and was headed down to Las Vegas for a go-cart competition. In talking with Nick, I was surprised to learn that go-cart racing is not just a neighborhood event, it'’ now national. For sure, go-carts have come a long way since the 5-hp lawnmower engine powered versions of my youth. Some of these “racing” go-carts are powered by 60 horsepower engines, making speeds of over 100 mph possible.

The middle-aged couple from Eugene was clearly not comfortable making conversation. The lady’s responses were at best forced while her husband said nothing to Nick and I or even his wife until they’d finished eating. “Ready to go?” Ah well, Nick and I had a good time chatting about go-carts, jambands and South Africa.

Here is a transcript of the dinner menu:


DINNER
All entrees include a mixed green salad with a choice of dressing, a dinner roll and coffee, tea or milk

New York Strip Steak
A classic 10 oz. Strip steak grilled to your preference. Our beef is all corn fed, aged for 21 days to enhance flavor, and hand cut. This steak may also be ordered “blackened” for Cajun style flavor

Rack of Lamb
Seared and slow roasted to perfection, crusted with garlic, thyme and parsley. Served medium rare unless otherwise requested

Herbed Halibut
Seared halibut seasoned with fennel and an aromatic blend of herbs

Chicken Cacciatore
A generous serving of chicken leg and thigh simmered with mushrooms, bacon, tomato, white wine and tarragon

Eggplant Ravioli
Roasted eggplant ravioli, served with crushed tomato sauce and your choice of vegetable

This Evening’s Special
Your server will describe tonight’s special offering

Please select either a green peppercorn sauce or a buttery white wine sauce to enhance your entrée, and choose two of the following: baked potato, whipped mashed potatoes, rice pilaf, roasted corn blend or tonight’s vegetable

** ***** **

DESSERTS

Bodacious Brownie
A decadently rich chocolate brownie topped with caramel, piled high with brownie cubes, toasted pecans, and drizzled with milk chocolate ganache

Strawberry Torte
Crisp graham crust, strawberry jam, moist butter cake, creamy cheese filling, finished with strawberry jam ad toasted sugared almonds

New York Style Cheesecake

Fresh Cut Fruit
Refreshing mix of cantaloupe, honeydew and seedless red grapes

Vanilla Ice Cream
Complimented with any combination of strawberry topping, whipped cream or chocolate sauce




Dinner started with a bowl of mixed green salad and a tasty sourdough roll. For my entrée I chose the New York Steak, cooked medium rare and blackened. It was served with a baked potato and all the vegetables rather than a choice. For a ten-ounce steak, it was actually pretty good. Despite the inherent thinness of a 10 oz. steak, the cooks even managed to cook it medium rare as well. Thankfully, meals are complimentary for Amtrak’s First Class passengers or this little steak would have set me back $19.75.

Nick was traveling back in Economy and so went with more affordable $13.50 Chicken Cacciatore. What he received was a tiny leg and thigh doused in Cacciatore vegies and sauce. Though the taste was adequate, he felt the portion size was a bit of a “rip off”. Where does Amtrak get its chicken anyway – Ethiopia?

After dinner, we headed back to the main Sightseer Lounge. In the evening movies are played on the 25” TV screens mounted at each end of the car. Tonight’s selection was what appears to be the movie of the month for planes and trains in America: The Stepford Wives. Because there are no headphone jacks at the seats, during movie times visitors to the lounge must at least listen to the soundtrack whilst watching the passing scenery. I’d snuck a few cold Tecates into the lounge my daypack so Nick and I discretely drank beers and watched with amusement as Nicole Kidman recoiled in horror while Bette Midler’s hand started smoking on a hot stove. Alas, there may not be any Academy Awards for Ms. Kidman this year.

At about 11:00pm I called it a night and returned to my Sleeper Car. Santiago had already made up my bed, complete with two pillows, turned down sheets, an extra blanket and a fresh bottle of water. Very nice.

As I lay on my bed reading Vince Flynn’s latest thriller, I heard the girl in the room next door to mine come out and accost Santiago for having reported her husband for drinking too much. The truth of it, as Santiago patiently explained to her, was that her husband, who had apparently been drinking steadily but without incident in the lounge for much of the evening, had, upon passing through the dining car, commented favorably albeit crudely about the posterior of one of the waitresses. The waitress was not pleased and reported the incident to the crew chief. Husband was then disallowed from further alcohol consumption and Santiago was so informed since the couple was staying in his car.

The girl and her husband had apparently upgraded earlier in the evening from Coach. I’d seen them in the lounge earlier in the evening. They were in their mid-twenties and looked a bit Amish or old fashioned Pennsylvania Dutch in their style of dress, particularly her. In attitude however, she was decidedly feisty. She stood there right outside the rooms and gave poor Santiago a rasher of nonsense in defense of her husband until the elderly couple across from me requested that they take the conversation elsewhere. Santiago told her to take up her complaint with the train conductor but any further noise down here and both she and her husband would risk being put off in Klamath Falls. Good on ya, Santiago!

Later, I heard the girl having quite the stern conversation with her husband about his alleged comments to the waitress. She was doing all the talking. Thankfully, once I shut my bedroom door I could hear nothing. I turned off the overhead light and slept quite nicely until about 6:30am.

Showers are wonderful things to wake up to. I am particularly enamored of them perhaps because aside from my two winters spent in Colorado, I haven’t lived anywhere with running water since 1993. Well okay – last year I had a shower stall in my cabin but I had to heat up the water in advance on my stove and then pour it into a five-gallon wastebasket. In the bottom of the wastebasket was an electric pump and tubing salvaged from a motorhome. I could turn that on and then enjoy a nice four to five minute shower. During the summer, I live in employee housing at Denali Park. The bathhouse is a good 150-yard hike from my place. So for me at least, to wake up, get out of bed and pad into the shower is quite a luxury. On a train, it feels downright decadent.

We’d fallen a bit more behind schedule during the night and were now running about an hour late. Because of a forest fire in the hills northeast of Sacramento, the skies were rather smoky. This combined with a bit of early morning fog made for a pretty dull view out the windows. I grabbed a complimentary breakfast pastry and a cup of coffee from the service area at the top of the stairs, then headed up to the diner for breakfast. Here’s the menu:


BREAKFAST
All breakfast entrees include juice (apple, orange or cranberry) and coffee, tea or milk

Vegetable Omelet
Freshly made three-egg omelet filled with mushrooms, broccoli and onions. Served with hashed brown potatoes or grits, and a hot biscuit or a croissant

Two Fresh Eggs
Prepared up, over or scrambled. Served with hashed brown potatoes or grits, and a hot biscuit or a croissant

Southwestern Quiche
Quiche with pinto beans, onion, jalapeno peppers, red and green peppers, cheese, roasted tomatoes and seasonings. Served with hashed brown potatoes or grits, and a hot biscuit or a croissant

Railroad French Toast
Traditional thick slices of egg dipped French Toast grilled to a golden brown. Served with syrup or strawberry topping

Pancakes
Three pancakes fresh off the griddle accompanied by syrup or strawberry topping


 Your choice of thick sliced smoked bacon strips, pork sausage patties or turkey sausage links may be requested on the side

Continental Breakfast
The lighter alternative: Your choice of Rice Krispies, Raisin Bran Crunch, Frosted Flakes or Oatmeal. Served with fresh cut fruit, yogurt and a choice of hot biscuit or croissant

Seat 2A

Amazingly, I had a table to myself for the entire breakfast. Orange juice and coffee were followed by a plate of pretty good Railroad French Toast accompanied by turkey sausage links. By the time I’d finished, we were pulling into Sacramento.

From Sacramento, the Coast Starlight heads west to Davis and on to Martinez, the birthplace of Joe DiMaggio. Passengers traveling to Fresno and Bakersfield connect to the southbound San Joaquin in Martinez. Normally, those passengers would have a leisurely hour and a half to stroll about Martinez’ pretty downtown area but today their connection time was only about ten minutes.

The smoke and fog cleared as we continued into Oakland, skirting the edges of San Francisco Bay. Just outside of Martinez is anchored a mothballed fleet of US Navy ships that appeared to include at least one aircraft carrier. The Passenger Service Director informed us over the PA that these ships could be re-commissioned and put back into service with minimal effort.

The old Oakland train station was cavernous, dimly lit and situated in a dangerous neighborhood. The crew used to warn passengers not to go walking around outside the station, day or night. Although there is still a small station serving Oakland from a new location down by Jack London Square, the majority of East Bay passengers now use the shiny new station at Emeryville, located at the eastern base of the Bay Bridge. We stopped there briefly before heading down to San Jose.

The Passenger Service Director must have been a local because he supplied us with all manner of interesting facts about the South Bay area. I never knew, for example, that San Jose was the original state capitol of the Republic of California. Or that the little town of Gilroy was the Garlic Capital of the World while Castroville was the Artichoke Capital of the World. Next time I’m on Jeopardy, I’ll take Capitals for $500.00, Alex.

Later in the afternoon we made our way around two sweeping horseshoe curves that made it possible to see both ends of the train at once. Below the second curve was a huge, walled in prison called the California Men’s Colony. Our PSD informed us that its most famous escapee was Timothy Leary.

Just south of San Luis Obispo in Pismo Beach, we got our first views of the Pacific Ocean. I was perched in the Lounge Car and the excitement amongst the passengers was almost tangible. What is it about the ocean that elicits such awe and wonderment? It’s size, if nothing else. Looking directly west from our point, there’d be no landfall for well over 5000 miles. Today, under the late afternoon sun, the Pacific shimmered a beautiful sparkling dark blue. We’d be skirting the Pacific Coast for the next 104 miles.

We rolled into Santa Barbara at 8:30pm, only an hour off schedule. Although I could have eaten dinner on the train, I was looking forward to wandering up State Street and seeing what Santa Barbara had to offer. First however, I had only to walk directly across the tracks from the station to get to the Santa Barbara Tourist Hostel. Once checked in, I threw my pack on a bunk and headed into town for the evening.

** ***** **

Santa Barbara is a wonderful place to spend a weekend or a life. Of course, it would help to have a good income and/or a sizable trust fund. I only had time and money for one full day there so I started with breakfast at the original Sambo’s restaurant. Anyone older than about thirty-five who also grew up in the West might remember the Sambo’s restaurant chain. I wrote many of my finest college papers during many a late night at the Sambo’s in Durango, Colorado. The name of the chain fell into politically incorrect disfavor in the late 1970s and it was eventually merged into the Denny’s brand. Nowadays, the Sambo’s Restaurant in Santa Barbara resembles the original in name only, along with the original sign from its opening in 1957. Otherwise, the food is much nicer and the prices much higher than the original Sambo’s. I settled for a plate of Eggs Benedict and then went across the street to the beach to watch a volleyball tournament.

Wow! These guys played a brand of volleyball that bore no resemblance to the friendly get togethers of family and friends at a barbecue on the beach. Theirs was a hardcore power game that was almost as exciting to watch as it must have been to play. I watched for a couple of hours before heading up to Stearns Wharf and on to the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum. Later I checked out the old Mission Santa Barbara which dates back to 1786 and is in my opinion the nicest of all the missions on California’s Camino Real.

** ***** **

The next day I took the Coast Starlight back up to Seattle. Once again, we were missing the Pacific Parlour Car. This time, the story was that it’s that time of year when each car is taken out of service for a complete “check-up”. Uh huh. Well, with or without this fine lounge car, the Coast Starlight represents one of the few money making trains in the Amtrak system. This is as much for scenery as it is for the fact that the cities and travel patterns along the West Coast cities between Los Angeles and Portland are well served by this train.

Alaska Airlines’ Mileage Plan members would be well advised to take advantage someday soon of the 20,000 mile award for a roundtrip First Class sleeper. For only 10,000 miles more, two people can travel together in First Class.

Seat 2A

October 20, 2004
SEA-SAN ALASKA 737-900 N323AS First Class 720p – 954p
SAN-ORD AMERICAN DC-9-80 N9630A Coach Class 1100p – 448a
TOTAL MILES FLOWN: 2770 * TOTAL MILES EARNED: 5540

After spending the morning doing laundry and running errands, I headed over to Wallingford for lunch. I found an Indian restaurant in Wallingford Center that served a great buffet for only $6.95. Even though a lot of those saucy Indian dishes look like baby poop, they are amongst my favorite foods, especially the vegetarian dishes.

By the time I was ready to head out to SeaTac, it was 4:30pm. Uh oh. Traffic on I-5 would be hopelessly constipated this time of day. Thankfully, my secret route remained worthy of keeping it a secret and I arrived at SeaTac only 45 minutes later.

Parking around SeaTac is fairly expensive. Most places want about $10.00 per day. Up on 188th Street and Pacific Highway I found a place called All Star Parking that offered a week’s parking for just $49.50. The lot looked secure and well lit, so I parted company with my truck and within thirty minutes was enjoying a cold beer at the Boardroom while watching the Red Sox paste the Yankees in game seven of the ALCS. Interestingly, the ratio of Red Sox to Yankee fans in the Boardroom was about 8:2.

At the gate, I was delighted to find 737-900 N323AS, one of three of Alaska’s –900s that I’ve not yet flown and surely one of the three newest airplanes in Alaska’s fleet, loading up to take us on down to San Diego. Flight time was announced at two hours and seven minutes, cruising at 37,000 feet. A good sized storm had been pounding Southern California and San Diego’s airport had actually closed earlier in the day due to diminished visibility. Our captain informed us that present conditions were marginal but that we had plenty of fuel aboard should we have to circle or head for an alternate airport.

After we’d leveled off just south of Portland, Oregon, our Flight Attendant came around with drinks and tonight’s snack – fancy Italian breadsticks and what tasted like a port wine cheese spread. Although about half of my cheese sticks were broken, the cheese spread was really good, much tastier than last week’s tomato and olive salsa.

Landing in San Diego was on time and uneventful. I made my way to Terminal 2 and awoke on final approach into Chicago about four and a half hours later.


October 21, 2004
ORD-MIA AMERICAN 757-200 N638AA Coach Class 612a – 1010a
MIA-MCO AMERICAN 737-800 N906AN Coach Class 1150a – 1245p
TOTAL MILES FLOWN: 1390 * TOTAL MILES EARNED: 3400


Upon reaching Orlando I faced a further two hundred-mile drive to get out to Suwannee Springs, located way up by the Georgia border. I needed as much sleep as I could muster so I reclined my seat and slept through both of these flights. I must say I’ve been very impressed with the availability of pillows and blankets on American Airlines. I’ve yet to be denied either on any of my flights so far.

Unfortunately, my backpack didn’t make it to Orlando with me. With a routing between Seattle and Orlando that included an interline connection in San Diego and online connections at American’s hub cities in Chicago and Miami, I knew there was a good chance my pack would misconnect somewhere along the line. More than likely it would happen in San Diego where Alaska’s baggage handlers would surely do a double take upon seeing a bag from Seattle headed onward to Chicago. As such, I’d asked the Alaska agent in Seattle to have my pack checked only to San Diego. From there I’d collect it and recheck it with American. I was told that new regulations prohibit checking baggage to anywhere but its final destination. Why I don’t know, since I’d still be traveling with it on each flight and it would be inspected again when I checked it in San Diego. Yet another typically idiotic over-reaction in the form of another mindless regulation enacted in the wake of 9-11. Further complicating matters was that I checked it with Alaska but was claiming it from American. Bar codes on the bag tag notwithstanding, the folks at American’s Baggage Service had no idea where my pack was. All they could do was file a claim. Meanwhile, I couldn’t give them an address to deliver the pack to because I’d be camping out all weekend at Suwannee Springs. As for my home address in Alaska, I wouldn’t be back there until late November. A call to Alaska’s Baggage Service in San Diego uncovered that a pack fitting the description of mine had been sent out that morning, but there was no record of which flights or even a bag tag to determine if it was indeed my pack. I decided to hang out at the airport and see if the pack might arrive on later AA flights.

To make a long story shorter, despite having just over an hour connection between flights, my pack never made the interline transfer in San Diego. I suspect a bag coming in from Seattle and connecting on to Chicago threw Alaska’s baggage handlers for a loop. But so what?! Just read the bag tag and get the bag over to its next flight. Computer generated bag tags don’t lie. Not only did the SAN crew fail in this endeavor but they compounded the problem by failing to quickly expedite the bag to AA where it could have gone out two and a half hours later on the 12:30am departure to Dallas. Alaska’s SAN baggage handlers did nothing with it until the next morning when it was sent to Orlando on United via LAX. As a result, I didn’t finally claim my pack until 7:30pm, almost seven hours after my arrival. And - I still had a two hundred mile drive ahead of me.


MAGNOLIAFEST

Peace, Love and Catfish. Although that was the name of one of the food concessions here at Magnoliafest, it also sums up an excellent four day gathering of good people, good times and especially good music. I met up with the same old group of eight friends that have always done these Magfest’s together. We always meet in the primitive camping area, i.e. the undeveloped area beneath the towering live oaks and Spanish moss. Even though I was about eight hours late, I had surprisingly little trouble finding my friends Paul and Patti’s bright yellow 1976 VW van. They always arrive Thursday about noon and manage to set themselves up, along with everyone else, uncannily close to the exact same spot every year. The fact that amongst all the tents and vehicles back there we still managed as usual to get all our vehicles parked to create our own little space is all the more amazing when you figure that amongst the eight of us, we had folks coming in from Hastings and Tallahassee, FL., Boone, N.C., Boston, MA. and wherever I happened to drop in from.

The music line-up consists of mostly Jambands with a healthy dash of Newgrass thrown in. There were four different stages and about thirty different bands. Listening to 70 year old Vassar Clements jammin’ with Col. Bruce Hampton and the Codetalkers was one of the real highlights for me and, to my ears at least, far preferable to the vast majority of stuff that passes as popular music amongst the American mainstream these days. But I digress. This is FlyerTalk after all and I suspect most of you have about as much interest in reading about this scene and the music as you do in the history of celery.

On Monday I drove down to visit some old friends and fellow drivers from Denali who now work for the National Park Service out of Biscayne National Park. For many years they worked at Everglades National Park and most recently Zion National Park before returning last year to South Florida.

My favorite drive in all of Florida is the 40 mile long journey from Homestead down through Everglades National Park to Flamingo – located right at the very bottom of the Florida peninsula. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. . . Here, check these out:


EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK PICTURES

Seat 2A

October 27, 2004
FLL-ORD AMERICAN DC-9-80 N474 Coach Class 1122p – 130p
ORD-LAX AMERICAN 737-800 N962AN Coach Class 415p – 635p * Snack
LAX-SEA ALASKA 737-900 N303AS First Class 755p – 1029p * Snack
TOTAL MILES FLOWN: 3880 * TOTAL MILES EARNED: 7660


Although traffic was light into Ft. Lauderdale International Airport, inside Terminal 3 it was pretty crowded. Check in and security took almost 40 minutes and I arrived at the gate just twelve minutes before scheduled departure. The gate agents were waiting for me along with two other passengers. I suppose I could have gotten to the gate three or four minutes earlier but I had to stop and grab a sandwich because American offered no food on the two and a half hour flight up to Chicago.

Once in Chicago, I had nearly two hours layover so I strolled the third of a mile from the end of the K Concourse over to Continental’s Presidents Club, located halfway down the E Concourse. Interestingly, Continental and Northwest operate a joint Presidents/WorldClub at O'Hare. It’s quite a nice facility with lots of dark wood and lots of big windows providing a nice view of the tarmac. A Northwest DC-9-50 painted in the new livery was loading passengers for its 3:00pm departure to Minneapolis.

Speaking of new colors, I’ve hardly seen any of United’s mainline fleet painted in the new blue and white livery. Granted, United’s still in bankruptcy but at the rate it’s repainting its fleet, the job won’t be completed until about 2015 or the Cubs win the World Series, whichever comes first.

My flight out to Los Angeles was scheduled for four hours and twenty minutes. As such, Economy Class catering warranted a Bistro Bag that contained a small turkey and cheese hoagie, a bag of baby carrots, a bag of potato chips and a brownie. The movie was Spiderman II, but I was busy watching Goodfellas on my laptop and so will have to catch Spidey another day. Or flight.

Once again, my aircraft up to Seattle was 737-900 N303AS, an aircraft I’ve flown three times in the past two weeks and six times overall. Alaska flies twelve or thirteen of these –900s. I sure would like to get a ride on ship 317 or 320 and complete the collection. I’ve flown all the others.

About halfway into the two hour flight up to Seattle, the Captain announced that the Red Sox had just beaten the Cardinals. A big cheer went up throughout the airplane. The curse is finally over! Now if only my A’s could get their act together again…


SEATTLE TO DENVER

Now that I’d completed my Seattle based Mileage Runs, it was time to relocate to Colorado. I briefly considered driving the long way, via Eastern Montana. Anyone who’s ever been to or through Eastern Montana knows that it’s just an extension of North Dakota. The mountainous lands from which Montana draws its name are a couple of hundred miles to the west and in general the only distinguishing landmarks on the plains are silos or lone cottonwood trees. So, why go?

As I mentioned earlier, I really like driving around the West. Indeed, one of my hobbies is driving any and all back roads that I haven’t been on. I’ve been at it for awhile now and though I’ve still got a few roads yet to travel, one of the things I recently discovered was that from Montana down to New Mexico and all points west, there are only eleven counties that I’ve not yet been in. Nine of them are in Montana, one in Idaho and one in New Mexico. I’ve been in all the others.

Complicating matters however was that I had to be in Denver by Sunday at 2:00pm. It was Bronco Sunday and I was looking forward to watching the Bronco’s game against Atlanta with a partisan crowd. I probably could have collected a few of those missing counties in Montana and still made it down to Colorado in time but I would have been rushed. I don’t mind being rushed on Mileage Runs but driving is different. As such, I decided to angle Southeast through
Oregon, taking a new route through the Blue Mountains, followed by another one through southern Idaho.

And so I did, passing through such illustrious burgs as Hermiston, WA., Halfway, OR., Nampa, ID., Price, UT and Rifle, CO.. After spending the night with friends in Dillon, I rolled into The Mile High City at about noon on Sunday – refreshed, relaxed, and primed for another glorious Broncos victory over the hapless Atlanta Falcons.

Unfortunately, my Broncos, despite being 6 point favorites, were soundly beaten by the inspired Falcons. Michael Vick had a game for the ages and the Broncos looked like they’re nowhere near as good as we’d thought just two weeks ago after their convincing victory over that group of spindly legged vermin collectively known as the Oakland Raiders.

Oh well. Wait’ll next week!

Monday was a workday for me. I accomplished a multitude of small chores ranging from laundry to banking to finding lightbulbs for my Mini-Mag light. Perhaps most importantly though, I stopped by the huge ARC thrift shop out on West Colfax and procured a carry-on bag of suitable size to accommodate a small blanket, a small pillow, a Thermarest pad and a change of clothes.

I’ve got eight roundtrips to Florida coming up, each of them involving an overnight stay in the airport. My routings and connections are such that checking baggage could be a risky proposition. Now, with my new Pierre Cardin carry-on bag, (Only $3.50!) blanket, (Only $3.25) and little pillow (Only $1.29), I’ll enjoy the luxury of having everything with me as I fly. I’ll even be able to contribute to slowing down the boarding process as I search for an overhead bin in which to place my new carry-on bag. Then again, I’m always amongst the last to board anyway, so probably not.

** ***** **

Alright everyone, that’s it for now. So far I’ve driven 7,600 miles, ridden 2560 miles on the rails and flown thirty-three flights for a total of 36,590 actual miles. Factoring in minimum miles, MVP Gold 100% bonus miles and the 50,000 mile threshold bonus I received for having flown over 75,000 miles on Alaska and its partner airlines, I have thus far accumulated a total 126,890 miles. Only 60,000 some odd more actual miles to go.

I hope you enjoyed this portion of the trip report. I should have Part Two up after another forty or fifty flights. For now, it’s off into the Rockies for a little beer and football at the Dam Brewery in Dillon, Colorado.

************************************************** ********

This Trip Report continues HERE

greggwiggins

Y'know, I was just thinking that it was about time for Seat 2A to return to us.

Thank you for giving me an excuse not to work on the magazine article I'm supposed to be writing (hey, the deadline's not for another two weeks).

As usual, a great trip report.

And, remember, if your travels bring you through the DC area I'm buying the beer.