Vegas Trip Report

This past weekend I made the drive to Vegas to meet up with my buddies from Cleveland Dave, Brad, Tony and Jake.

Since I plan on buying a new car, I decided to set a $50 limit on gambling.

I planned to leave for Vegas at 8pm right after getting my car appraisaled from Carmax. Well the appraisal process ended earlier than I expected but I was not happy with the result. Carmax gave me a low ball $9000 offer for my car which is absolutely ridiculous! So, I was in a pissed off mood when I left for Vegas at 7:30pm. Besides a bit of traffic leaving LA, it was a pretty uneventful 4.5hour drive.

I listened to the UPGRD Podcasts during the drive and basically forgot about the Carmax offer.
I gotta admit, the second the Vegas skyline appears on the otherwise boring drive on I-15 gotta rank up there in terms of exciting moments.

Overall the weekend was filled with lots of drinking, laughing, eating and observing my buddies gamble. The company was great and filled with interesting characters. We had a guy who was 6'8, a uber nerd who works for Google, and a guy who was a contestant on Jeopardy. The pit bosses and dealers kept making bets on how tall my 6'8 buddy was when we walked up to a table.

I was able to stay within my gambling budget and left Vegas happy. And of course, no Vegas trip ends this uneventfully...

I left Vegas after lunch at 3pm, and naturally hit a pocket of traffic. That pocket lasted till the Nevada border. More traffic ensued randomly along the drive. We had to stop at the Agricultural stop and the mother of all traffic, a truck flipped over and caught on fire closing 2 lanes along the mountain roads entering LA. So in total, I was behind the wheel for 8 frickin hours, reaching home at 10:45pm. I could have made it 4/5 of the way to Asia! Completely ridiculous!

Change is in the air

I had a change of heart today...I went into the year with the full intentions of achieving United 1K status. I would have had to fly 100k butt in seat miles and planned my schedule accordingly. With 3 planned trips to Asia, ~12 trips to SF, 5 trips to Chicago, I would still be ~30k miles short. Which means, I would have to rely on a Double EQM promotion or 6 coast to coast mileage runs. Seeing that we did not get a Double EQM promotion this Spring, I was not looking forward to all those mileage runs.

Thats why today I decided to split my mileage between Air Canada's Aeroplan and United's Mileage Plus. To qualify for Star Alliance Gold, I would need 50k miles on United or 35k miles on Air Canada. Since United Premier Executive does not gain access to the United's Red Carpet Club, and Aeroplan's Elite level does, I am going to split my miles between the 2 Frequent Flyer Programs. So 50k on United to qualify for Premier Exec and 35k on Aeroplan to qualify for their Elite Level.

Another thing I placed into consideration was the ability to transfer my miles from Starwood to Aeroplan at a 1:1 ratio.(I only get a 2:1 ration for United)Since 1st class redemption to Asia on Air Canada is 120k miles and United is 135k, I should have no problem getting enough miles to redeem a 1st class ticket next year on ANA, Singapore, Thai or Asiana.

Although I will not get Economy plus access or higher baggage allowance crediting miles to Aeroplan, I plan on crediting miles to Aeroplan only on my flights to Asia, since I will most likely be flying a partner airline anyway.

Another big announcement is that I've decided to switch back to Hilton as my preferred hotel chain. I will try my best to attain Gold VIP status on Hilton which requires 16 stays. With Gold VIP, I get 4pm late checkout, 25% pts bonus, club access and space available room upgrade. Also the good thing about Hilton's program is the ability to simultaneously redeem for both Hilton points and airline miles. This way I could credit the miles to to Aeroplan and be 500 miles closer to my First Class redemption.

United's Unlimited Upgrade

So I was skeptical of ever getting a domestic upgrade when UA announced their unlimited domestic upgrade. As a premier exec and flying mostly hub to hub routes, I was under the impression that the routes I fly were usually filled with 1k and global service members. Therefore, I thought my upgrade chances were next to nil.

Low and behold, I woke up to an email from UA confirming my upgrade for my weekend trip back to Chicago. So I'm looking forward to my hot nuts, a cold alcoholic drink and hot meal. Thanks United!

Vegas

So I will be setting off to Las Vegas tonight to visit my college buddies Dave, Brad, Jake and his buddies. Since I am about 500 miles away from my next oil change(I want to spend as little money as possible since I am selling the car), I decided to rent a car to make the drive to Vegas. I am not flying this time around because the airline industry is smoking the good stuff thinking that they can get away with charging $220 for a round trip to Vegas. So I visited my handy dandy local Hertz outlet at the Tustin Auto Center and got the Hyundai Elantra for $20 a day. Since I will be crashing with my buddies(all 7 of them) in their hotel room, I might roll out of Vegas well under my $300 budget. Basically ~$150 for the car rental+gas and ~$150 for alcohol and gambling. Will give updates once I'm in Vegas.

UPGRD Podcasts

Thanks to my college roommate Phil, I recently became a huge fan of listening to podcasts during my commutes and business trips. I started by listening to my favorite sportswriter, Bill Simmons and his B.S. Report. His podcasts were insightful and highly amusing, making the dreaded drive up to LA an enjoyable experience. But a couple of weeks ago, I decided to search available podcasts and found the best thing since sliced bread. The UPGRD Podcasts were one of a kind, it was a podcast uploaded by a bunch of aviation and frequent flyer mile gurus. The guys, Matthew, Foz, Matt,and Ben knew the ins and outs of the travel industry. I realized these guys were just like me and I had so much to learn from them. So ever since my discovery of the podcasts, I've been addicted. I found myself listening to the podcasts all the time, during my drives, when I'm on the treadmill and even at work. I've burned through half of their 50 podcasts already, I don't know what I will do when I run out of fresh episodes.

My first Mileage Run

To those of you who are not familiar with mileage running, A mileage run is a paid airline trip designed solely for gaining maximum frequent flyer miles, points or status for no other reason.

Well, I booked my 1st Mileage Run! After carefully reading the ins and outs of mileage running on the extremely helpful flyertalk.com forum, I decided to try it out myself.
I sourced for a cheap point to point fare on Farecompare's Flyertalk tool for weekend travel in April. The cheapest coast to coast fare was LAX-Charlotte on a K fare for $190. The fare allows for 4 free transfers at no extra cost. I then used the ITA software to find the availability of the fare bucket for transfers at UA's major hubs.

Since this was my first time, I decided to keep it simple with 1 transfer each way. And for $190 I was able to book my LAX-Denver-Charlotte-Washington DC-LAX flight. What makes this a special deal is that since the Denver-Charlotte leg is a red eye, no hotel stay is necessary, saving me several mullahhs. So the plan is to leave LAX Friday night ~8pm and arrive in Charlotte around ~6am Saturday morning. Then walk around the city and grab a good bite to eat at a Yelp recommended restaurant and then fly back towards LA Saturday afternoon. A total of 4989 butt in seat miles, and since I'm a premier exec on United(all those years flying on United is finally paying off) I get double miles credited to my account. Yayyyy, so that means 9978 miles credit for $190. I'm also crossing my fingers that my upgrades will clear since United has started upgrading its elites automatically. Isn't it a great deal??? Some of you may be shaking ur head at the stupidity of enduring 2 days of crap service from United, but I think its well worth it since I will be 1/12th the way there to a 1st class award ticket to Asia on SQ, Thai, or Asiana.

So I will post a trip report after the trip. I AM SOOOO EXCITED!

Hello World

Hello and Welcome! I guess I should start by talking a bit about myself and my hopes for this blog. I’m certainly not as qualified as some of the other travel and food bloggers in terms of industry experience, but I hope you’ll find my ramblings, pictures and erm, views interesting nonetheless.

I’m a young working professional working in Los Angeles and I love to eat and travel. I spend a lot of my time over at FlyerTalk.com and Yelp.com. I fly mostly United and stay mostly at Starwood properties. And I enjoy and will eat anything other than green onions.
Last year I traveled a little over 75,000 miles, and will likely top that this year. I’m a complete miles and points junky, and can get a wee bit carried away at times.

If you have any ideas, tips, tricks, comments, stories, or just want to send something my way, I’m available at jiangatang@gmail.com.

Thanks for reading and enjoy!

Warmest Regards,
Erik