Thanksgiving Travel

Outbound
Delta's been running some great fares between DCA and DEN recently.  I snagged one for $75 o/w right around Thanksgiving time.  Unfortunately, it was a 6:30 am flight.  I left my apartment a little before 5 am and hailed a taxi, as the metro was not yet open.  I arrived at the airport in no time and soon boarded my flight.  The plane was a CRJ-700, which I prefer to a larger plane because you only have to sit next to one other person instead of two.

I had a short connection in Memphis and decided to check out the SkyClub there.  I had recently signed up for a program that would reimburse me (up to $50) for any airport lounge day pass I purchased.  I walked into the SkyClub and inquired about a day pass, but while the agent was about to ring me up, I looked at the time and realized my flight was well into boarding.  I guess I had kind of lost track of time while I was shoving delicious Popeye's into my face.  I raced back to my gate, and boarded the second leg of my flight which was also operated by a CRJ-700.

Memphis Airport

On my flight to Denver, I was sitting next to a rather interesting guy.  He said he'd just gotten back from living in Africa for the last two years on a mission trip, and was headed to Bangladesh after the holidays.

One thing to note is the flight attendants on both my flights were all some of the best I've ever experienced.  They were constantly cracking jokes (yet, they were still very professional) and made the flights fly by quickly.  Delta, for the most part, has way better customer service than United in my opinion.  Every time I fly them, I'm pleasantly surprised.  Plus, Delta gives you cookies.

In the end, my flight arrived in Denver early and I enjoyed a nice week visiting my family.

Return
I wanted to return on the Sunday after Thanksgiving like normal people do, but the flights were extremely overpriced.   I ended up taking a relatively cheap fare on United on Saturday morning at 6 am.  Getting up at 4 am to head to the airport is a pain.  I could barely pull myself out of bed.  I made it to DIA just in time.  There weren't many people on my flight to Houston and I got a bit of rest.

Sunrise from the plane

After arriving in Houston, I headed for the lounge where I helped myself to a delicious breakfast of stale bagels and lukewarm OJ.

Lounge food at its finest

My flight to DCA was packed and it was delayed by about 40 minutes due to a storm.  After I boarded and took my aisle seat, one of the FAs approached me and asked if I'd be willing to switch to a middle seat so some woman could sit with her kid.  I gave the FA kind of a blank stare (thinking oh god, why me??).  Luckily, the guy sitting in front of me volunteered to give up his seat.  Despite keeping my aisle seat, the flight went by extremely slowly.  It just wouldn't end.  I'd look at the time and it would be 12:30 pm, and then I'd look it at again after what seemed to be three hours later, and it would say 12:32 pm.  When we finally did land, I had a giant headache (from the two dozen crying babies on the flight) and a backache (from the kid behind me who kept kicking my seat).  Travel will really wear you down.  I need me some first class upgrade.  Come to think of it, maybe I'll just fly private home for the holidays.

Megabus to Philadelphia

Somebody gave me a $150 gift card to Del Frisco's steakhouse, but unfortunately there isn't one in DC. Luckily, there is one in Philadelphia which is only a 2.5 hour drive from DC.

Me and my roommate grabbed some cheap Megabus fares to Philly and were soon on our way. The night before leaving, I had some especially tedious statistics homework that I'd been putting off for a long time. I stayed up until about 6 am working on it, but still didn't finish and figured I'd work on it on the bus.

It was extremely rainy and cold in DC when we were walking to the Megabus stop which sucked because we were soaking wet on our 2.5 hour bus ride. It was turning out to be one of the worst days ever. Not only was I wet and cold sitting on a cramped bus, but I still had my stat homework to do.  I tried very hard to do work on the bus, but it was next to impossible. I had to do it on my computer, and while Megabuses are equipped with WiFi and power outlets, neither was working on this bus. In fact, come to think of it, the WiFi and power outlets never seem to work whenever I've taken Megabus.

It was also extremely difficult to concentrate because they had one of those Tyler Perry movies blasting from the screen. Black women singing about how they can "do bad all on their own" is not conducive to doing stat homework. The movie didn't seem very appropriate for kids considering there is one scene where a man starts violently twitching from an electric shock after his girlfriend drops a boombox into the bathtub that he's in. I didn't see any kids on the bus, but still I don't think this is appropriate for children, especially when parents have no way of stopping their kids from watching it.

Our bus was really crappy as well. At one point the bus driver had to stop the bus in the middle of the road and get out to close a panel on the side of the bus that had popped open.

Terrible movie that blasted from the speakers

Arriving in Philly

We finally arrived in Philly looking somewhat disheveled. Our reservation at Del Frisco's wasn't for another two hours, and while the plan was originally to walk around looking at the various company headquarters Philadelphia has to offer (ya, we're nerds), we just decided to hang out at a McDonalds. This was a smart move consodering it was extremely cold and snowy outside, and I was able to finally finish my stat homework.

At around 6:30 we headed over to Del Frisco's. Upon walking in, the day turned from being very shitty to the best day ever. The staff at Del Frisco's were extremely nice and friendly. We had a very leisurely meal with a ton of courses. The steak was probably the best steak I've ever eaten.

Del Frisco's

Interior

12 oz. filet mignon with asparagus

Chocolate souffle cake

Butterscotch cheesecake

One thing to note is the bathroom. It's a one person bathroom with an attendant who handles everything for you from your soap, your towel, cologne, etc. I almost thought he was going to pull down my zipper for me.

After a few hours, we headed back to catch our Megabus home. Our bus home was much nicer than the bus coming to Philadelphia. It was practically empty and we got great seats in the upper level at the very front. If you ever take Megabus, this is the best place to sit.

Front row seat, top floor

Overall, it turned out to be a great trip.

Mileage Run to San Diego

BWI-DEN-SAN-IAH-BWI

Earlier this month I did a mileage run to San Diego.  I started off by taking the metro and bus to BWI which takes way too long.  I got to the airport with plenty of time to spare and eventually boarded my flight to Denver.  Upon arriving in Denver, I headed over to the United Lounge to make use of my newly achieved Star Alliance Gold status with Aegean.  I didn't have my card yet, and the lady was reluctant to let me into the lounge, but after telling her my Aegean number she looked it up and admitted me into the lounge.  Riding up the escalator into the lounge is always the best part.  You get to watch all the commoners walking below you.

Escalator to the lounge - look at the commoners!

Lounge

Terrible United snack selection

Once in the lounge, it was time for some dinner, which consisted of a plate of cheese and crackers and a cup of trail mix. 

Dinner

Delicious and nutritious

Me and lounges don't really mix.  Imagine letting a homeless person loose in a lounge.  I kind of just wander around the lounge, mumbling things about status and airplanes.  I literally take every snack item on the table and put it in my bag.  I shove trail mix into my face like a mentally challenged baboon.

Mileage running is extremely expensive in itself, let alone paying for expensive airport food.  Now that I have Star Gold and access to a wide array of lounges, I will be able to eat for free.  Sure, it's not really smart to try and sustain yourself on nothing but coffee and low grade cheese and crackers, but I could see myself doing it for weeks at a time.

Guy trying to enter the closed lounge

 Soon it was time to board my flight to San Diego and I noticed that I was seated in Economy Plus.  I'm not sure why, as I don't have status on United, but it was a pleasant surprise.
 

United Blue Carpet

Nothing better than Economy Plus and reruns of 30 Rock

So much legroom!!!

I arrived in San Diego at 10 pm.  I did not have a hotel room booked since I would be leaving at 6 am.  I decided not to sleep, and instead I just stayed up all night watching Prison Break in the airport food court.

Prison Break

San Diego Airport

The next morning I headed over to security and was through in a matter of minutes.  Stupidly, I didn't look at what gate my flight was leaving from and just figured it would be leaving from Terminal 1, the same terminal I arrived at. However, Continental still has like two gates in Terminal 2, so I quickly ran back past security and outside.  I didn't know how to get to Terminal 2, but remembered seeing an airport shuttle bus.  One pulled up in front of me and I hopped on.  I was the only person on the bus and the driver asked where I was going.  I replied that I was headed to Terminal 2 to which the driver gave me a confused look.  He drove about 10 feet and stopped and yelled out Terminal 2.  I guess I could have just walked.

I then walked over to security which was a packed.  I must have waited in line for over an hour.  When I finally made it through, I raced over to my gate.  There was no time for the lounge, meaning I wouldn't get my early morning dose of trail mix :(

I boarded my flight and was soon in Houston.  I quickly ran over to the lounge where the lounge agent remembered me from last week. 

IAH Lounge

After filling myself with trail mix (I didn't spend a single dime on food during this MR), I headed over to my gate where boarding had already commenced.

When I arrived back at BWI, I ran to catch the bus to Greenbelt station which was leaving in 5 minutes.  I just missed it and the next bus wasn't for an hour.  While waiting, I got to talking with some guy from Japan who was very confused with the bus system.  When I went to the bathroom, he followed me in and then took a sponge out and started washing his face with it which I found kind of odd. The bus finally arrived and because of some delays with the metro it took me 4 hours to get home.  But overall, it was a good MR.

I will soon have 2P with United, which provides very few benefits and is really not worth mileage running for, but still, it has been a fun journey.

Mileage Run To Phoenix

BWI-IAH-SFO-PHX-IAH-EWR-BWI

I came across this great mileage run (2.2 cpm) back in April while I was visiting friends in London.  One of my friends agreed to do it with me.  By the time September rolled around, our flights were really messed up.  Flight numbers had changed, times had changed, and hence our routing was all messed up.  I spent a good hour on the phone (not including wait time) with a Continental agent.  We were originally routing from Baltimore to Phoenix via Houston and San Francisco.  The agent insisted that I take the direct flight from Baltimore to Phoenix.  I just told her I was doing some independent research on airports and wanted to visit as many as possible.  She probably thought I was a terrorist scoping out airports.

After we'd gotten all of our routings in order, the day finally came and we headed to the airport.  When we arrived at BWI, my friend and I decided to have a contest to see who could get through security first (I won of course).  The guy in front of me in the security line appeared to have never flown before.  He was fairly old (40s probably) and he was traveling with young kids.  He saw me take out my laptop and place it in a bin and said, "We're supposed to take out our laptops?"  Where the hell has he been for the last decade?  A TSA agent yelled out reminding everyone to take off their shoes.  He seemed very perplexed by this.

BWI Auntie Anne's - Ammurrrica's finest

After grabbing something to eat, we headed over to board our plane.  Once we reached cruising altitude, the flight attendants began coming around with drinks and snacks.  The guy sitting next to me was a skinny little Asian kid who looked like he was about 14.  When asked what he wanted to drink, he replied, "Do you have anything alcoholic?"  The flight attendant replied, "Ya, we got alcoholic."  He ordered a screwdriver.

The flight went by fairly quickly, and we were soon at IAH.  I had recently done a MR to FLL to secure Star Alliance Gold status on Aegean.  The miles had credited and I was now Gold in Aegean's system, but I guess it hadn't reconciled throughout the entire Star Alliance system.  We tried to get into a President's Club lounge at IAH.  I gave the lounge dragon my Aegean number to look up, but it still showed that I hadn't achieved Star Gold yet.  We tried a few more lounges at IAH to see if anyone would just be nice and let us in, but no luck.  Most of them were really snooty about it too.  I would get my revenge soon enough though.

Disappointed after not being able to eat some expired lounge cheese and crackers, we boarded our flight to SFO.  The guy sitting in front of me got four bottles of wine.  He watched Karate Kid Part III throughout the flight.  Not a bad way to spend 3 hours I suppose.

Look how intently he is watching Karate Kid III

My friend taking notes in  his detective notebook

I was getting kind of hungry, so I decided to splurge on a snack box.  I got classic.

We soon landed at SFO where we had a few hours to kill.  We tried a bunch of lounges, but still no one was willing to let us in.  I mean sure, we did look homeless, but they could have at least let us grab a cup of trail mix.

Next, we headed over to a sushi restaurant to grab a bite to eat.

Swiss plane headed to Zurich

Soon it was time to board our last flight of the day to Phoenix.

Our plane to Phoenix

SFO mountains

After a quick flight, we arrived in Phoenix at around 10 pm.  We called up the Hilton Phoenix Airport to send over their shuttle.  We arrived at the hotel, which was quite nice.  The front desk agent checked us in, recognized my gold status, and put us in a room on the executive club level.

Hilton entrance

Hilton entrance

Front desk

Lobby

Our room was quite nice with very comfortable beds.

It was getting pretty late and we had to go back to the airport to catch our return flights soon, but we decided to explore Phoenix a bit.  We walked about 3 miles each way through the dumpiest part of Phoenix to visit the US Airways headquarters, and it was well worth it.

Phoenix car wash - way better than Mike's Car Wash

If you look up at the top window you can see Doug Parker calling security to have us escorted off the premises

Inside

After snapping a few blurry pictures of the headquarters, we started walking back to the hotel to go to bed.  We woke up somewhat early the next morning to take full advantage of free hotel lounge breakfast.  They had a pretty good spread.  Now the funny thing is most people would come into the lounge, grab a quick bite to eat and head out the door.  We, on the other hand, take free breakfast very seriously (especially when it's in an all-you-can-eat buffet format).  We made sure to stuff ourselves, as we knew we likely wouldn't be able to afford any other food all day.

Lounge

Waffle maker

Work stations

We went back to the room for a bit and packed up.  I also made sure to take advantage of our balcony.

Balcony

Decent view from balcony

We checked out and took the shuttle back to Phoenix Airport.

Shuttle

False advertising

After a seemingly never ending security line, we boarded our flight to Houston.  I was sitting very close to the front so I had a nice view of first class.  Before taking off, one of the gate agents came up to a guy sitting in first class.  She handed him a laptop and said he'd left it at security.  The odd thing was the man didn't seem relieved or thankful at all to get his laptop back.  Later on in the flight the man asked an FA, "How did they know it was my laptop?"  This is a good question.  How did they know not only what he looked like, but also which flight he was on and where he was sitting.  Weird.

The flight landed in Houston, and we boarded our second to last leg of the journey to Newark.  I was happy to find that I had a whole row to myself.  Right before takeoff, an FA came over and asked the guy in front of me if he wanted to move back to my row so he could have more room.  Fair enough.  I didn't actually expect to get the whole row to myself.  The man brought a bag full of various food items.  He had a giant sandwich, a piece of chocolate cake, and a bunch of candy bars.  He proceeded to scarf down everything in a matter of minutes.  He smacked his lips and chewed with his mouth open and got crumbs all over the place.  He also had terrible restless leg syndrome and shook the entire row.  When the snack cart came by he ordered three snack boxes.  For the remainder of the flight he managed to shove all this food down his throat like a garbage disposal.  And this was in addition to the large meal he'd eaten at the beginning of the flight.  I wanted to tell him he should be on Man vs. Food.  

After landing in Newark, I had worked up quite an appetite and we headed over to Ruby's Diner.  It was decent.  

We boarded our final flight of the trip back to BWI.  When we landed, the journey was not quite over.  We had booked a limo service through Groupon.  It was $60 and we figured it would be roughly the same price as taking Super Shuttle for two people.

The town car that picked us up was pretty nice.  Our driver was very interesting to say the least.  He was from the Czech Republic and said he was helping out his brother who owned the limo company.  He was getting his master's degree in mathematics.  For the hour long drive, he proceeded to tell us about his crazy life.  He'd had quite a few odd jobs including interior designer and male stripper.

When we arrived back at our apartment, we found a pleasant surprise.  Our stove had been broken for the past few weeks.  Our Mexican repairman had come to fix it while we were on the mileage run, and left this note.

Is Work

Overall, it was a good mileage run.  We didn't get lounge access at any of the airports, however we did get it at the Hilton.  So it wasn't a total loss.  I also can get lounge access now, so stay tuned for some upcoming trip reports with blurry pictures of lounges.