Riding With a Road Warrior

Here we are in the Alana Doubletree Waikiki in Honolulu, relaxing after a fairly long day of flying yesterday.

Our original DEN-HNL flight did go, but we were happy to play it safe (and grateful to United) for rebooking us DEN-LAX-HNL. We earned a grand total of 50 miles more this way (4430 vs. 4380) but it was worth it for the peace of mind. It still made for a long day as we fell into our beds here around 12:00 a.m. PDT, quite a few hours after that 5:30 a.m. shuttle took us from our Seattle Airport Park-and-Fly Doubletree to the airport.

We were split up in F on the DEN-LAX hop, and Brian had the pleasure of chatting and trading flying tips with his seatmate, a quality engineer in the aerospace industry who travels regularly for work. He mentioned that so far this year he's flown more than 60,000 miles without traveling any further East from his L.A. home than Denver.

It's 860 flight miles between L.A. and Denver, and 954 flight miles between L.A. and Seattle. Yes, we've flown more miles than he has (well over 70,000 EQM January-May) but that includes flights to Singapore, Hong Kong, and Buenos Aires. Imagine how many twice-weekly flights he has to take to accumulate those miles.

He says if he doesn't make it on miles, he'll work to make it on segments (100 for 1K), even if he has fit in a few extra flights on his own time and his own dime. That's a lot of flying, and we tip our hats to him.