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.