Frequent Miler on the Air - Bed bugs, Citi Doubles down, & #40KFaraway crunch time prep

Episode Date: September 28, 2019

What happens when you get bitten by a different kind of travel bug, why Citi has us seeing Double, and how we're handling last-minute prep for the #40KFaraway challenge, mere days away from beginning.

This week, we have an additional guest, more than usual. I'm Greg, the Frequent Miler, and I have with me, as usual, my right-hand man, Nick. And today, joining us is our other author of our blog, Stephen Pepper. So welcome, Stephen. Welcome, Nick. Thank you very much, Greg. Thanks. Great to have you. Great to be here, Greg, and great to have you here, Stephen. Nice to see you this week. Good to see you guys, too, and actually be part of this, Greg. Thanks. Great to have you. Great to be here, Greg. And great to have you here, Steve. Nice to see you this week. Good to see you guys too and actually be part of this. Yeah. Yeah. So we were eager to have Steven part of this conversation because we're all desperately

getting the last minute plans together for our 40K to far away challenge. And so Steven, as much as either of us is in there, too, doing the same thing. And so we want to hear from him. But first, you've been experiencing a little fun of your own in travel. Might be good prep for some of the places we're going to be staying. It could be. What happened to you this week? So, in case anyone who's watching this isn't familiar,

my wife and I are traveling full time on a road trip around the US. And we made our way down from Winchester to Charlottesville this week. And we were just staying there for a few days just because we had a little bit of time before head off for the 40K trip. And so we checked into the fairfield inn um in charlottesville north everything like seemed perfectly fine um i'm a late night person so i was up um late working and then all of a sudden like i just see my um wife's light on her phone like like flashing all around the room going all crazy and um and this

was at something like 2 30 in the morning and asked what was up and she said that she's been really itchy she thought that she felt something on her and then like sure enough like shining the light on the bed she um saw a couple of bed bugs and so um immediately like came over squished those so on top of the sheets or Yeah, well, I think that it was in the pillowcase because she sleeps with her arm underneath the pillowcase or something like that. So she thinks, because it bit her

on a hand and then down her arm and stuff. And so we think that that's where they were hiding out initially. And so, yeah, the biting is what woke her up. So I went downstairs. And then the crawling cat are awake, huh?

Yeah. And so, yeah, I went down to the front desk and I mentioned that there were bedbugs in the room. And at first, the person at the front desk seemed fine and was going to get us into a different room. But she went into that room to check the bed just to make sure there wasn't kind of a widespread infestation and although she didn't see any bed bugs there were like a few dots of blood on the mattress beneath that we just figured okay that looked a little bit like where someone may have been bitten in the past and then bled um through on the sheets onto the mattress so we're like okay we're not too keen on having a room

where someone might have been bitten by bear bugs and so in the end um yeah so i went back down to the front desk to say look can you move us to a different hotel and because fairfield inn is part of marriott um i asked if we could stay at one of the residence inns that were nearby so a couple were a couple there, and we have our dog with us, so it needed to be a pet-friendly property. So it was either one of two residence inns or an autograph collection that was category six, which I figured they probably wouldn't want to put us up in, given that we were paying like 80 bucks a night at the Fairfield Inn. And so she wasn't really having any of that, but she got another room on the third floor.

And so she went and... Just a minute. What excuse did she give for not moving you to another hotel? That seems like a really reasonable... Yeah. I'm not sure if it's just that because it was like night stuff, I don't know if she's just not authorized to do that. To be honest, this is the first time we've had anything like that.

So I don't really know kind of what the procedure would be. And by that time, it was like 2.45, 3 o'clock in the morning. And she said that the manager would be in at 8.30. And so we were like, okay, we'll just stay here, chat to the manager in the morning. But she wanted to put us in a different room on the third floor. And so we were just like, that's a lot of hassle. We don't necessarily want to move. We don't really want to stay in the same room. And so initially, we were just like that's a lot of house we don't necessarily want to move

we don't really want to stay in the same room and so initially we were just going to like stay in the same room for a few hours like sit on the couch not do anything like hopefully stay away from the bed bugs in the end we piled everything onto two um luggage carts just because we traveled everything we own and so it takes two luggage carts to move it all upstairs we moved to the room on the third floor stayed awake most of the night we slept for a couple of hours on the floor um went down and chatted to the manager in the morning and he initially had been really good and said that we'll call out um like a third party contractor to check for bed bugs and then we'll go from there see what happens um

and that she can like look into us like going to a residence in or something like that but because we were only due to be staying there a few days we weren't too worried about um like moving elsewhere so long as we weren't going to have bed bugs and it didn't seem like they were any in the third floor room that we were given so in the end we just decided enough are people like moving every five or six days anyway having to then move again and our dog doesn't like moving days um too much either so then it would be like moving like three times within one day to do to all the different rooms and then to a completely different hotel so we just figured okay we'll just stay there um wait wait are you in the

the bed bugs hotel right now oh no no no've left. My mother-in-law. I thought I saw something crawling on your forehead there. No, but so you stayed in that third floor bedroom for a couple more nights? Yes. Here's how it would have went if it was my wife and i right if we saw those bed bugs right we would have been out the door not of the room of the hotel talking to them on the phone from the parking lot right exactly yeah we're like we're checking into the whatever is like not the hotel we were in. Probably not even that.

We probably wouldn't stay in that state. Just in case. I'm pretty sure that my wife's reaction would be even more extreme if it's possible. So yeah, there's no way we would have been on the third floor. I commend you for your adventurousness. So I'm curious, did you try calling Marriott corporate at all during that whole shenanigans? I didn't. No, basically the manager, this is our first experience having bed bugs,

so I wasn't sure what the normal procedure was. And I shared about some of it. The normal procedure is not to have the bed bug. Let's just make that clear. Yeah. Well, to be fair, to be fair, there's not a lot that hotels can really do about.

Yeah. Now, how they, how they treat you though, when they're found, that they have everything they could do about. It sounds like they think

they're a very good job. And that wasn't great. So in theory, we might've been able to move to a residence in, but we decided to stay there because we figured that

if they're in this hotel, they could just as easily be in the next hotel and because we live in hotels we're kind of like playing russian roulette with bed bugs all the time effectively because we're going to be more likely to come across them so we decided to stay but then um and you didn't wait you didn't sleep like in the bathtub for the rest of the time, right? We would have definitely been in the car, if anything, I think. You slept on sheets where there could have been bedbugs. Did you wake up in the middle of the night thinking, feeling a little itchy?

Not after that. The night when the original room that we were in, while we were trying to decide what we were going to do, I was sitting on the couch with my laptop. And then it kind of felt like there was stuff falling over me, even though there actually wasn't. Because that so happens. Oh, man, Nick, you're going to experience this in a few years. Oh, I'm sure. A kid comes home with a note from school or daycare or whatever that says. Oh, I've been teaching already.

It was lice. Yeah. And just reading that note causes your head to itch. Right, right. Like, you know there's lice up there. It's awful. So, yeah, I can't believe that, you know. There's no way I would have slept.

Little bugs crawling down your neck or anything. Right. I guess you did when you were at the computer. When you were awake. I feel like we ended up getting bonvoid by the property, though, because the manager said that they were calling out this third-party contractor to verify that there were indeed bed bugs. So that's fair enough.

They can't necessarily just take guesswork for it. They might have physically poured in a little container and pour them on the bed or something like that. I can understand the money tonight at the $80, you know, whatever. I mean, it seems like a dredge. I feel like they ought to be able to reach, you know, but then that happened on Tuesday, and then they didn't end up having anyone come out until after we checked out today. So it's like three and a half days after, because it was actually Monday night where this happened, Tuesday when we had spoken to the manager. So it took them three and a half days to have someone come out to test for it. Truly, they didn't want to spoil the bedbugs fun. You never saw the

bedbug inspectors? I didn't, no. We checked out just before midday and they were due to be coming this afternoon. Probably what delayed them is probably they had put other guests into your room.

They had to wait until they checked out before they brought in the bedbugs that were on them. into your room before they brought in the, maybe they've been trying to see who lasts the longest in that room. Now I'm picturing three people with these big things on their back, just like ghostbusters, but with like bed bug busters. There's a pool.

There's a pool going in the, in the housekeeping department as to how long somebody's going to last in that room, right? I mean, each time. Oh, man, 3 a.m. I thought for sure we'd get somebody to hold them for us. Well, it's funny that you talk about the housekeeping department because they were interviewing someone for housekeeping yesterday and they started today.

So it seems like they might be short on housekeeping staff there, which might also be a quick issue. Yeah. Because all of that stuff. And they were cleaning. They didn't want to take it Yeah. They were like, we could work at that other Mary at the autograph collection. So I emailed the manager. So the manager had given us her card on Tuesday morning and said, like, if you have any issues or whatever, just email me.

So I emailed her yesterday and said, hey, like like is there any update on the bed bug situation um and then never heard anything else um went down um to the front desk just before we were checking out and like just happened to bump into her then and looked like she was about to head out so i asked what was going on and she told me that was that that was when the bed bug inspectors were going to be coming later in the day and then later on my wife had to go down to the front desk and just ask them for something and then the person at the front desk like rolled her eyes at my wife and then when I checked out later on I wanted to pay with some gift cards I picked up on daily getaways a couple of years ago and never got around to using. And so my key is to say, just to let you know I want to use some gift cards. And then she rolled her eyes

at me because I wanted to use gift cards to check out. And so there's like that. And then the lady the night when we had a bit... They can't be charging you anything. I can't believe they charge you anything for the stay. Because the stay itself, including the pet fee, it was just under $400

for the four nights. It's not like it was a super expensive thing. You obviously didn't rest well. The whole purpose of paying for a hotel is to be able to rest. It seems totally reasonable to me that they would have comped at least a night or two, if not the whole thing, like Greg said.

That's nuts to me that they didn't do anything. I think that she probably rolled her eyes at you because she had 20 bucks on you lasting until 8 a.m you might be right she was very disappointed when you chose the other room so uh she thought for sure you were going to go back and wait until 8 30 but uh so yeah i'm gonna follow up with the manager tomorrow find out what's going on with the inspector. I have no idea. I don't know if they are able to verify immediately or if they have to go back and run some kind of test or whatever. But then once they verify that,

then we should be able to talk compensation with them because if it is verified, then I'm... Well, it should be verified just because we basically have the bedbugs, we have the photos, I squished them in the sheets. They were there. So, so yeah. So I'm looking forward to hearing the results. What, what kind of compensation do you get for a verified bedbug claim at a Fairfield? Let's move, though. Enough bedbugs. Hopefully you want to think about it. None of us really want to think about it, right? No, no, no. But before we get to 40K, just real

quick. Last week, when Nick and I talked last week, we were talking about the Citi double cash. The rumors that Citi was going to let us transfer those double cash pennies two points at a one-to-one transfer ratio, which would be amazing. And Nick argued, there's no way they would do that. And I said, you should never, ever underestimate Citi's ability to do things that are stupid. And then just, I think it was a date later maybe maybe two i don't know no no about a day about a day we found out it is in fact they are doing it uh the transfers are one-to-one if now if i remember right now correct me if i'm wrong my memory's not great i think you said i'll eat my

hat if they're going to be one-to-one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, right hand man because I was way off on my prediction but it's hard to be wrong sometimes so that is one hat that I'm happy to eat the 2X everywhere uncapped hat especially to have that come out and happen at a time when Simon is still offering the $1,000 Visa gift cards

with the $3.95 fee I made my goodness talk about just printing points. And with Turkish, as a transfer partner, people have still been having a pain with Turkish. So I almost hesitate to even mention them positively, except that I was able to book something with them this week. And when I look at the cost in creating those points with a double cash, you're talking about like $18 worth of activation and money order fees to generate points for a one-way economy class ticket anywhere in the U.S. So I don't know.

I can't see the double cash lasting with those transferable points forever. But, Siddy, if you're listening, keep proving me wrong. Thank you. That's right. They'll never do 3X everywhere. That would be nuts. It would be dumb. No. All right. That would be nuts. It'd be dumb. No.

All right. Let's move on. We'll come back to the Citi Double Cash, I have no doubt, in future episodes. I'm sure we will. But let's go on to 40K. Okay. So both of you guys published videos this week of what you're packing in your backpacks. Yes. Sure did. Now, that was a lot of fun for for me to

watch um my my wife said oh my god their their backpacks are huge you know you guys are huge and they're heavy yeah very happy are you guys not worried about just spending all day lugging this stuff on your shoulders? You guys are super strong. Yeah, well, I mean, for me personally, like I've had, we've used that backpack when hiking before and had it filled up with water. And so that's been pretty heavy at times. So hiking like eight, 10 miles with that full of water, with a fair amount of that being uphill, then I'm hoping that I'm going to be good. It might be times where I'm on a bike or something like that.

So I might have to find somewhere to put the backpack because I don't think I'm going to want to be biking with that on. But other than that, I'm hoping that I'm going to be good. Although it might be that by the time we're done with this trip, then I have back issues, in which case I might have to invoice you for the medical bill. Hopefully you used a card that has medical travel insurance with it. Yes. And read my post from today.

And then. To find out which one. Which one you should have used. And which one could have given you medical evacuation. Whoever does that will go even further. That's a plan. Anyway, hopefully we won't do that.

You're lugging what looks like a mainframe around in your backpack um no you know i steven said he does some gang and and i spend a lot of time thinking about hiking which makes me feel better about not hiking so so i feel like i'm interested mentally to take on the challenge uh i carried it around for about five minutes and I was okay. So I'm sure I'll be fine. With that kind of preparation, what could possibly go wrong? Right, right. No, I'm not particularly worried.

But believe it or not, I ordered some more things to put in there. So hopefully that's helpful. Not to replace existing things that are in there? Well, okay. In fairness, a few things to replace existing things, yes. I really don't have that much space to add much, so I guess I'll have to be replacing a little bit.

But I'm getting excited. It's good. It's been fun watching the videos. Actually, watching Steven's video, I felt like, I think, well, I feel now, I think I know where he's going. And I might be totally wrong, but I think I know where he's going, i might be totally wrong but i think i know where he's going and i'm kind of jealous like i kind of i spent some time let me get my poker face on and

then you tell me where you know no no no i'm not even gonna say it because i don't want i don't i don't now i just said that i'll be jealous about it so now people know i'm going there so uh no i can't say it out loud i can't i don't want to ruin the the surprise but i think i know where you're going and i think it's a really smart play and i the surprise but i think i know where you're going and i think it's a really smart play and i'm going to say i think i know where you're going because you've mentioned a bunch of times that you don't think you're going to go as far as we do and then when i looked at what you're packing in your bag and thought about budget travel in general i think i know i might be wrong but well let me let me ask you this no i'm not even asking you i'm going to predict that from our starting point steven pepper is flying south not even asking i'm going to predict that from our starting point

steven pepper is flying south that's all i'm going to say well i knew you're going that i knew you were going that way when when you uh when you said that about the not very not as far not as far but i i think i think there's going to be a and again i could be totally wrong but i think there's going to be a really good trip to come from from steven so i'm excited to see what you do i'm a little jealous i spent some time thinking about how i could have maybe retooled my trip today if i had uh taken advantage of some other sweet spots so i'm i'm very interested i'm excited because actually i think i could be wrong but i think i know where greg's gonna go too and so i have a feeling that we're not up in the same place so yeah well i have a feeling we're not either because i am not going so your video next video made me think he's very likely to go somewhere

cold there was just a little tip in there showing off that super warm jacket right or just planning to sleep outside at night. All the powers of my deduction. I'm guessing. I'm going to go out on a limb and say I think you're going to go somewhere in the polar circle. In the polar circle. All right.

We'll see. We'll see if I can find something polar. So I'll give it a shot. But I, well, Stephen had warm stuff in there too, though. Stephen had the warmer pants. We'll see if I can find something polar. I'll give it a shot. Stephen had warm stuff in there too, though. Stephen had the warmer pants, and he's got the rain... And I got the Mylar blankets. And the poncho, and the blankets.

Or maybe he's just British. I don't know. He's just planning for rain all the time. What gave things away in my backpack? With you, I don't know if it's necessarily the backpack or things that you've written uh so i don't think it was necessarily the backpack for you i've given actually a lot of hints in the thing i've written if people really read between lines and everything and then i cut another hint that i'm not going to tell anybody about until later on i've got another hint that that later on when you find out you're going to be like oh man yeah but i'm not

going to divulge it yet okay i noticed something in one of the videos you guys did i think it was like two three weeks ago and so i've got no clue where greg's going to end up but at one point he referred to traveling 40 000 miles and so i don't know if that was a slip of the tongue with 40k to far away with it being 40 000 miles or points whether he because of it being the 40k challenge that he somehow put together an itinerary where he's actually going to be traveling 40 000 miles so knowing how competitive you are then i it wouldn't surprise me whatsoever if it does turn out that you've managed to put together something where you will be traveling physically 40,000 miles. So I'm thinking that.

And that's why I'm kind of ready to concede now to work or to you. I'll just get you guys to fold your hands. It's either that or he's going to travel for like 40 minutes. There were no clothes in that bag that he packed. So clearly he's not worried travel for like 40 minutes. There were no clothes in that bag that he packed, so clearly he's not worried about being dressed at all. So I don't know if he's going to a nudist colony or

if he's just going somewhere really warm where he's not going to need much. The compression bags work really well. There was like a whole wardrobe in there. But what are you going to do after you've opened it, though? Yeah. You have like a little dustbuster. but what are you going to do after you've opened it though yeah you don't need any kind of vacuum you put stuff in the bag

you zip it closed and then you push you kind of roll all the air out and it compresses it so I've actually adjusted things a little bit since that video so I hope I i'm gonna have time to do a second video of what's changed um i've downsized my fanny pack that's good i still i didn't want to lose the nerd appeal so i still have a fanny pack but it's now a small much more

manageable one and it could also easily be worn like over my shoulder as like just a little sort of man bag. And I have added a few articles of clothing, but not much. It's still very, very small. Well, I did add a Chromebook today. So I ordered it. Well, I didn't add it yet, but I ordered a Chromebook. I followed Greg's lead on that. Not actually small and light as his, but I realized that I was in a different computer after all. And the Dell that I bought has to go back.

I'm not happy with it. So I ordered an HP Chromebook actually. I did it strategically because this week, if you've been following along, actually just tonight, just a little while ago, he posted that Barclays has stripped benefits from a number of their card. If you remember just a little while ago, he posted that Barclays has stripped benefits from a number of their cards. If you remember

just a few days ago, Citi stripped a whole bunch of benefits from their cards and one of the benefits that seems to be going quickly is price protection. So now you have to guess which credit card did I use to buy a laptop two months before Black Friday? Because clearly

I had to be ready in case that price dropped, but I need the laptop now. So I had to use a credit card where I'd be able to buy it and then hopefully get my money later on. And I bought a Chromebook, not that that's going to help you at all, but I needed to get a big Chromebook with a numeric keypad and I finally found some. Anyway, which credit card did i use does does the um did the rewards play into uh your decision making as well or just the uh just the price protection just the price protection the rewards certainly did not play into my decision i don't actually have which cards have price protection anymore so steven wrote about it the other day and actually actually, he's the one who

alerted me to the fact that this card still had price protection. I had totally forgotten about it. The choice card? Not the choice card. That one's losing it, but it does have it now. Oh, one of the... I'm sorry. Was it one of the chase cards?

Yes, it was. The old $49 IH ihg card that still has price protection has price protection the new one also does have it but i just have the old version with the 49 annual fee and it still has price protection up to 500 per from what you said about rewards right you can't get fewer rewards than with that car no horrible rewards on the purchase but hopefully it'll be more rewarding in the sense that hopefully it'll drop in price and go on sale sometime between now

and the holiday shopping season and I'll be able to get the difference back. So that's the one I used. So you just bought it. You haven't gotten it yet? That's correct. And you're planning on it being your laptop? Is it being delivered or are you picking up at the store?

So here's the thing. This weekend, plans got thrown all up in the air. A lot of stuff has happened this week. Spontaneously, I had to book a trip to Houston on Sunday. I have to fly to Houston on Sunday, but my flight to DC is out of Albany on Tuesday. I have this Chrome Albany on Tuesday. I have this Chromebook coming on Monday. I have some

other things I ordered for the challenge. My Google Fi data only sim is coming on Monday. I have to be back home on Monday. I'm flying to Houston on Sunday, flying back on Monday, and then flying to DC on Tuesday. Hopefully when I get home at

8 or 9 o'clock on Monday night, I'm going to get the Chromebook set up and ready to go in the next 12 hours or so. So kind of close. It's out of the wire, guys. You know, you've got extreme times call for extreme measures.

I've got to be ready. For those listening on the podcast, instead of seeing this, my mouth has been hanging open and in shock at the story because i mean setting up setting up a chromebook or you know any kind of new tech you usually have to live with it for a while before you learn like oh you know i didn't install this or that or how do you do this shortcuts on a phone book are really different as well, because I had a Chromebook like eight to ten years ago or something, like fairly soon after they first came out.

And so it was really weird getting used to going from a regular laptop to a Chromebook just because all the shortcuts and things would be so completely different. So in the end, I stopped using it after a while just because I was so used to just using a regular PC. Yeah, I'm really nervous about that. And I actually emailed Greg to ask him about how it's been working out because I'm making this switch totally and not having access to Windows,

especially for the blog and stuff that we're used to. It does make me a little bit nervous, but here's why I'm here for this challenge and why I think I'm going to be happy with the decision long term. First of all, the battery life on this thing is supposed to be up to 13 hours. And now I don't know. I never believe what they say, but I believe that that means it'll get more than the like three hours I've been getting out of the desk. So I think that'll be good. Number one.

Number two, it charges, I i believe off of usbc and i what i've read is that and i could this could wrong but what i read somebody wrote was that all chromebooks that have a usbc even if they say they don't charge on usbc will charge via the usbc port that's what somebody said again i don't know if it's true but i'm running off that assumption because i bought a battery pack a 26 800 mage battery pack with power delivery that should theoretically charge the laptop. So now I don't have to worry about being near a power supply for like full of days, probably, if need be. So that's going to be helpful for me, not just for the challenge, but hopefully long term productivity wise, I won't have to worry about being to a

court if I'm on a trip on an airplane without a power supply without a place to plug in it should work for a long time and that'll work out well long flights that we're all planning to take at the back of the plane in the middle seat that is you know 10 inches wide so and are you are you also like steven and me bringing two phones you know i i was i was going to and then i went to one and then all day today I was thinking about bringing us one. So I'm undecided on that. I can sim that the data only sim is that not for this? Yeah. So I did get the data only sim for this because the Google Fi sim, Google Fi data works so much faster overseas. And my main phone is a T-Mobile phone. So I have the T-Mobile phone

or T-Mobile sim in it and my wife has taken the google phi pixel because it takes great pictures so i'm not bringing the pixel with me on this particular trip i have other stuff to take pictures so um so i'm not bringing the pixel with me uh so yeah i'm considering using just the phi sim switching out from the t-mobile but then like i said i got thinking about it today and thinking more and more that maybe I'll just bring a second phone and put the PHY SIM in the second phone. Yeah, my second phone doesn't have any

kind of cell or phone service or anything like that. So it's just purely going to sit in airplane mode to preserve the battery and just be used for music for myself. So I'm just going to be running off one off Google PHY on my main phone. I'm thinking I'll keep it for a I'll put it in an old phone for a hotspot, an old unlocked phone that I have here and make it a hotspot.

Yeah, yeah, there you go. So I have my second phone with the data-only SIM. It's that cheap Motorola I bought in order to get Google Fi originally before they supported iPhones. And using that in a number of ways, like one is it's just my backup. So like if something happens to my iPhone, then I've got that one and I've got data,

which is really all I need. I decided not to bring my Kindle. Like I've been, even though I bring my Kindle everywhere I travel, I decided this little phone i bring my kindle everywhere i travel i decided this little phone will be my kindle and so i practiced last night reading from it i actually hate that experience but yeah you know because you have to swipe every two seconds just because you only put a few words on the screen it kept like my palm would hit something causing it to do something

other than what i wanted to do. Um, and it's my media player, like, like you talked about. So, um, that's,

that's what, what I'm thinking with, with my phone. And, um, I'm going to keep it kind of hidden my backpack and in, in the very unlikely chance my backpack gets stolen, I can do like the find type of thing and I should be able to...

I don't know what I would do. That actually just came in handy for me on this last trip that I took. We were in Lake Tahoe and we'd been in a playground with my son running around, went somewhere else and then realized that we couldn't find the Google Fi phone, the Pixel.

I thought my wife had it. She thought I had it. Neither one of us had it. We panicked and drove back to the playground looking for it. Sure enough, even though I don't ever remember enabling the Find My Phone feature, I was able to make it ring, make it ring a sound. Of course, it was in the car with

us the whole time. That's great. At least you didn't have it on silent. That's the worst thing. Even if you do, if it's on silent mode and we called it it wouldn't work but with like find my phone feature which i was able to pull online with my through my google fi account you can make it ring even if it's on silent so i didn't even know that i i just i i like through google like just search for, find my phone and it'll find it like with GPS or whatever, like throw it on a map. But I didn't know you can make these things as well.

Yeah, it showed it on the map. And I was like, okay, well, by that point, we were back at the playground. And so I was like, okay, well, it's here somewhere. Thinking that we were going to get out and search the playground on this phone. And then I was like, oh, there's a button to make it play a sound. And I read it. Can you make it play things like, oh, there's a button to make it play a sound. Can you make it play things like stop.

A drone is flying above you and is going to fire if you don't put down that backpack. I didn't see that option, but maybe you can customize. They really should add that. I don't know why they wouldn't. Hey guys,

so I'm flabbergasted by Nick's story about what he has to do over the next few days because, personally, I'm curious if you guys have this too, but I started making a list of the, like, don't forget to trim your fingernails because I'm not bringing a fingernail clipper, to big things like find a place to stay in City X. Right, right. That's on my list too. Yeah. So do you guys have that? Are you guys sweating the list?

I just got my hair buzzed today. Yeah, I got my hair cut. I'm behind. I need to. But yeah, I still have probably a reasonable amount of travel still to book because I haven't used up all of my cash

and all membership rewards yet. So that's all that I'll say on that matter. So I'm still trying to decide on my strategy with this. I have a general strategy in mind, but how I go about doing it is a whole other matter. So I'm trying to decide what's going to be the most fun, what's going to be the most cost-effective and interesting, but we'll see.

Yeah, well, I'm definitely in the same boat. that's i'm definitely in the same boat no i'm not in the same boat i do not have money and miles left but i'm in both the wow i need to book a place to stay in this city and that city and like almost all of the cities so um so yeah i've definitely been in a boat and actually spending time in the last few days, Googling the different stuff about like how I get from the airport to where it is I want to go and where I can walk and have access to other things. Because I really didn't spend as much time as perhaps I should have on those things and planning the cities that I was going to visit. I just had faith that I'd be able to make it work and I probably will. But yeah, so I had planned this weekend that I was going to be home alone and have the house to myself on a night weekend with no distractions so that i would be

able to just like put my nose to the grindstone and get that stuff done i i got some stuff i want to write about that that we'll publish eventually when we start publishing all the story behind booking the trip so i wanted to get a head start on writing that stuff out before I even go. Then this little thing, this little flight to Houston kind of threw everything. Threw a big branch of things. I'm not going that way.

Are we allowed to engage in shenanigans and sabotage each other's trips? Because if Nick's going to be away, I'm free Monday so I can head off to Albany, fly off to Albany intercept his Chromebook and Google Fisim and stuff like that

do a runner back down to DC and bring it along on my trip you are allowed to sabotage this trip but not in that particular way because the Chromebook is how he's going to be blogging as he goes. Oh, so that one you're not allowed

to do. That hurts all of us. Now, adding your little bed bugs to wherever he's going to end up or into his backpack. Totally legit. I would appreciate you keeping your bed bugs yourself, Mr. Pepper. Put those in a jar. That might be how you could get free places to stay everywhere. I was going. Pepper. Put those in a jar. That might be how you could get free places

to stay everywhere. I was totally going to say, put those in a jar. I can't believe I didn't think to keep them to try that out. I mean, you could have at least kept the dead ones to be able to toss those and be like, look, I just killed it. It would have worked. No, and I also have a list of other

silly things like, for example, reset my password when my GoGo Wi-Fi passes because I need to reset that because I haven't used them in forever. I don't use them very often, but I want to make sure that I get set up with the GoGo Wi-Fi passes. I got to make sure that my wife has all the information that she'll need on this end and blah, blah, blah. So yeah, I mean, I have a list going of things

that still need to be accomplished. And a lot of those are silly little things but they're important for the trip also steven's done a lot of research with places with showers and the priority pass lounges and stuff so i got to figure out where i can where i can take a shower and get clean i got to go back and recheck his post to make sure that uh that i won't be uh smelling too rough on my airplane rides here and get thrown off the plane i was a little worried the other day because my dog got skunked. And so I was a little worried that I was going to get thrown off the plane for smelling like a skunk on day one. Luckily, I think we've got that tamed. So quite a list of things though still. What are you nervous about, Greg? I mean, I know you said

that you got a list of things, some of them easy, some of of them difficult you sound a little bit nervous i mean what are you worried about you got this right for 40,000 miles for me as you probably uh know if you read my post about the rental car um i'm nervous about the budget so i am down i'm counting pennies now. It's no longer like, it's no longer dollars, you know, it's like, how many cents is that going to be? So do you know how much gas is where you're going to be driving that as well? That's an, I do. Because that's something I had to investigate

because I just booked a rental car for one of the places I'm going to be. Yeah. And so it's, gas isn't as cheap as it is here. No. Where I'm going to be. What I don't know, though, and maybe you do, I don't know exactly how many miles I'm going to be driving. So I had to guess how many gallons.

That's true, yeah. I've got no idea. Hopefully you don't have to take a ride to a large SUV. So, yeah, the car that I'm getting, it's to replace the long bike ride i was originally planning on doing because there's something that i wanted to do um in one of the places i'm going to be i'm trying really hard not to give anything away by accident um and so i was going to be doing it by bike just um because that seemed to be one of the most economical um ways of doing it in order

to get around just because it seemed like it was going to be too far to walk. But when I was mapping it out on Google Maps, it turned out to be about 40, 45 miles or something like that, which it's been a long time since I've been on a bike. And I don't know if I've ever even done a 45 mile bike ride before. And so I was feeling a little bit nervous about that especially because i've done a couple of 20 mile ones and i was feeling a little bit of the bicycle seat just thinking yeah and and when i'd be waiting to bike by the hour and say that i'm sorry were you worried about the steep hills as well they're not gonna get me there mountain cliffs yeah well no you know one of the things though

i'll say that uh i've really enjoyed about the challenge especially in the last week as we all seem to be uh slight procrastinators on planning our stuff out here is that i haven't planned a trip in this way in a very long time in the sense that these days because i'm using miles for flights and i'm using hotel points for hotels i'm usually picking my hotels by chain and where I can use points. And they're typically pretty nice places. And since I'm not spending my money on the flights and the hotels, I don't usually worry about how it's going to cost to Uber to the hotel or, you know, where I'm going to rent this or that, or if the car rental is, you you know three bucks cheaper if walking two miles will save me two dollars on a bus like greg um but now i am and it's kind of fun because it's a reminder

of the way i traveled long before i discovered this whole hobby and it's kind of exciting looking for those ways to kind of cut the budget because i think this hobby attracts people who like that stuff you know we're all kind of couponers at heart in some sense and so it's been a nice kind of returning to that i don't know you guys feel the same way well it's been weird as well because i'm usually pretty organized with stuff and so the fact that i've i mean i can be a procrastinator as well but the fact that i procrastinated this long with the trip coming up so soon like when we um get back from the trip i'm just trying to go through my mind to make sure i'm again not going to give anything away when we get back from the trip i'm trying to get back from the trip i'm just trying to go through my mind to make sure i'm again not going to give anything away and when we get back from the trip i'm trying to get back for um bridge day in west virginia which is i think it's like the 18th or like october 18th or 19th or something

um and so we're going to be in west virginia for like a month or just over a month and i've got all of our accommodation booked in different places for there. I've been researching what we're going to do in Maryland. After that, we already have two or three places booked for Tennessee at the end of the year. But I still haven't booked the end of the trip just because I can't quite decide

on what I want to do. It's tough. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know I've never looked up, where can I walk to from the airport? That's not something I have ever looked up before. Oh, yeah. I've never looked up. Can I, can I, where can I walk to from the airport? That's not something I have ever looked up before. Oh yeah. I just did that today.

And, uh, yeah. You know, it's one of those where you read like people's comments about like, no, it's all highways all around it or whatever. And it's like,

maybe I won't, maybe I won't walk from that one. But yeah. Cause that was something I had been looking into before. It was like, how viable is it to walk there? Cause I, I would have been happy walking an hour or two from the one. Because that was something I'd been looking into before was like, how viable is it to walk there? Because I would have been happy walking an hour or two from the airport,

but then I don't know how realistic that would be. You guys couldn't do it in an airport. Yeah, because I'm just trying to imagine when I fly back home and fly into Heathrow or something like that, there's no way I'd want to be walking from there for a couple of hours just because of um like kind of I think it's the m4 that um takes you up to Heathrow but

yeah I wouldn't want to be trying to walk anywhere around there because I'm not even too sure up there even sidewalks or anything like that or how easy it is even to the the airport kind of compound right because all the cars are driving on the left side instead of on the correct side you mean on the correct side there's the right side and the wrong side come on ain't it the truth well you know one of the things that inspired me on this and i had hoped to be able to do but then didn't plan out my trip this way after all was brian cohen at the gate wrote a post a while back about how to walk to the las vegas strip from the airport and so i think there's a little dicey section in there where you know you have to like go where the sign says not to go or something if i remember correctly but

he had pictures right exactly i mean it's doable he lived to write about it. So I figured that it's safe enough anyway, and it can be done. So then I became interested in, okay, figuring out, well, can I actually walk even though it doesn't look good? And I think, you know, if you looked at the Las Vegas airport, or if you ask somebody, I would bet most people would tell you it's not possible to do, but Brian Cohen showed it could be done. So that's what I've been looking for. So that would have been perfect too. I looked into this too. We had emailed about it, but we hadn't told our readers about it.

I don't know if all three of us did. Did you look into Vegas too, Steven? I don't know. No? I was trying to decide not to give anything away. I was thinking we could put it all on red and double budget

that would have been pretty amusing actually just to do that get there on some kind of like 50 bucks spirit flight from DC and then just put it all on and see where it goes from there that would actually be hilarious that would be hilarious

but no I mean I was basing it on nick's nick had that post about the status merry-go-round about how you could easily get the status you need for um what is it like a hundred dollar free meal and and there's a way to do that so you get meals all day long with the all day buffet that's right you could go there you could eat like a King. And then they also have some, not some complimentary rooms. And, and so if they happen to have them when you needed them, we're talking about staying in very nice accommodations,

eating food all day long for free, all of this for free. And if you could walk from the airport as well, that would be, that would be amazing. But I couldn't put that into my plans. And, and it sounds like you couldn't either. no it was in my first plan but then yeah things took off from there so and i've been looking at so many different plans and so many things that i've thought oh that would

be awesome to do too and you know of course you got to pick and choose a little bit so and i don't know about you guys but there are also some things things that I disappointed about that I can't do, like some of the places where I'm going. And I think, oh man, if I'm going there, I'd love to do this, but of course it's not going to quite fit in the budget. So this trip is also going to kind of, I think, inspire me to want to go back again to some of the places that I'm visiting because I'm not going to be able to do everything this time around. But one of the, again, comforts that I enjoy of using miles and points is knowing that I could go back again if I have to. So I'm very excited about this 40K trip.

Yeah. I was just thinking today that I wish I built in a trip to Germany along the way. So, spoiler alert, I'm not going to Germany. Because I realize that it's going to be Oktoberfest while we're there. And so that would have been a pretty cool thing to do. I don't know how much that would have completely messed up our budget by trying to go to Oktoberfest and not spend a lot of money. Because what's the point of going to Oktoberfest if you're not going to have several beers? But I think that that would have been quite a fun thing to have done along the way.

So it's probably good that I didn't end up in Germany. And here I'm counting on Greg going to Oktoberfest and missing his flight. I'm not going to say whether I'm going to Germany or not. And I'll say this, that there are no free rooms available this week. Kicking off on Wednesday, right? And Rio and Las Vegas this Wednesday would be $15 as a Caesars Diamond member with no roofie, which of course, as Greg said, you can get that Diamond status by matching.

So you can match to Wyndham status and then match from Wyndham to Caesars. Get yourself for 15 bucks this Wednesday. So it's not quite free, but pretty darn close. And then if you did the $100, you'd also get a $100 celebration dinner. So man, for 15 bucks to have gotten a room, free transportation from the airport by foot, $100 meal. I'm starting to rethink my trip already.

Well, that had briefly crossed my mind to do that before to get some accommodation along the way. But my parents are coming to visit from the UK next year. And because they're coming over so they can see the Grand Canyon and join us kind of out west for six weeks um they're probably going to be flying into Vegas so I figured it could be fun to have both Shay and I do that beforehand so that way we can go out for a nice meal for free so I'm actually going to be saving my status match for um that point unfortunately but that that would have been a great thing to do for the that'll be that'll be fun to hear about so So speaking of status matches, did either of you guys do status matches or challenge type of things

in order to position yourselves better for aspects of this trip? Steven? Possibly. Possibly. Possibly. Well, I have done one status match, but that would be towards a potential thing that I might still be yet to book.

And so I'm not 100% sure if I'm going to be taking advantage of this status match yet, but I figured I'd get that done now, just in case. And are you willing to tell us what you match to? Nah.

Oh, okay. I don't to? No. No, okay. That's fair. I think if I was to disclose that, I think you would probably be able to guess what my potential plan might end up being. So if you're right, I'm going to keep it. He matched to Virgin Galactic status, and so we might be flying into space.

So you must be talking about matching to sort of a status that would give away right so it's got to be someplace something that's only located in one area um all right so now we're going to be thinking about this a little bit and see i think greg is asking because he knows that i i had the hyatt explorer's match to american airlines gold and he knows that I already did it. So he's trying to figure out if I'm flying American, hoping for an upgrade with my gold status on American. So no, I'm not that hopeful.

And no, it's not going to do me any good on this one. And you didn't do any other matches or anything like that? No, not particularly. No, I mean, I'm not staying anywhere where a match is going to be helpful. Not exactly for this trip. That's as much, I'm not staying anywhere where a match is going to be helpful. Not exactly for this trip. That's as much as I'm going to say also. So, no, no, I haven't. But I'm, no.

With that, you, Greg, did you do any matches for the trip? So, I did. Well, you know, I don't think I've hidden the fact that i am booking things with united miles right um not everything but i am booking some stuff so um i thought it can't hurt to have some status and um right i looked up the um status match the public status match rules that United has public. And from my Delta Diamond, it looked like I would get United Platinum, which is good, but it's not their top.

So their top sort of reasonable one is 1K. That's sort of more the equivalent of Diamond status. And one of the reasons I wanted this was simply in case I had an opportunity to be at a Foreign Star Alliance lounge where I couldn't get in with Priority Pass. So that would give me that I believe the platinum status would, but anyway, what actually happened, they actually,

um, gave me a challenge for one K instead of platinum. So it's even higher level. Um, and all of a sudden, uh, so one of the, one of the theoretically nice things about that is I can,

uh, change awards for free altogether, whereas Platinum status, you can change them for free until 60 days before your flight. And so by the time I got the status match, it was too close.

But this is a curse, actually, because all of a sudden... Now you can V-book your entire trip. Everything, yeah you entire track everything. Yeah. Flexible. I don't need this like extra stress. Like,

you know, what if I rebook everything? No, no. So, so, Oh, I love it.

I love it. Cause I can imagine how that'll like racket your brain every day too. You're like, Oh, I wonder what if I could do this? And I finally forced myself to just stop. It's's it's locked in um i you know i i think the best part of it will be if anything goes wrong i should be able to get someone really working to help me and that that i think is the most likely thing that will actually be of use during the trip i actually

don't um that actually there might be a Star Alliance lounge or whatever but there's not a lot of situations where it's like critical for me to have that that I think in my plan. Well so what I'm interested in here is you got the match and the match gave you the benefits immediately you didn't have to do a challenge

in order to. Yeah so the way it works and Delta does this too is they give you i think 90 days or whatever uh of that status and you have that time to fly the 30 000 miles or whatever it is for the challenge so so you so you've got the got the time to fly the are you gonna you think you're gonna qualify for the 1k? So no, but, um, this, this is one of the things that made me rethink my plan.

So, um, now I don't really have a lot of use for 1k, but United just came out with this new rules about their global or about their upgrades that you get as a 1k. Um, and, and it used to be that they would give you certificates that only work on sort of not full fare, but not,

they, they wouldn't work on the heavily discounted economy fare. And so you couldn't upgrade to business class from those heavily discounted economy. But if you paid a full fare economy class to fly from say Houston to Albany today, then, uh, you could use those.

You could. No, I didn't get any, I didn't get any of these upgrades for the challenge. Like don't even remember. Um, talking about if I, if I,

uh, met the challenge, then I got them. And that, so that didn't hold a lot of appeal to me because the Delta ones work on any fare. But they've changed now to a points-based system that is going to start mid-December where you just use double points

in order to upgrade from a highly discounted fare. So you can upgrade from any fare. And suddenly it becomes more interesting to me to have that status because it actually sounds worthwhile. You could buy the cheapest fare and that would also, the flying that cheapest fare

would help you requalify for the next year and so on. So it made me interested. So that was why I started rethinking like what if instead of these award flights i cancel them redeposit the miles get my money back for the taxes and i i use my chase points to buy united flights and i and i qualify for 1K. Wouldn't that be a really cool 40K adventure? 40K to 1K. 40K to 1K. 40K to 1K.

That sounds like a real big devaluation, actually. Sounds like something United might. That sounds a little bit more like something Delta would do. Or Marriott, maybe. Anyway, so I got all enamored by that idea until i realized that um even though i can get my united miles back i can't get my chase points back so i've already traded in those chase points for united miles and so it would be it would be wrong uh by the spirit of our adventure that we're doing to uh pretend that the united thing didn't happen. So I'm not going to do that.

Interesting though. Very interesting how that's worked out for you. And so what did you have to show in order to do the match? This actually, this airline matching thing just came up in frequent miler insiders just yesterday, the day before somebody asked a question about it. So what did you have to show in order to get the match with United?

I think just a picture of my Delta profile with my status on it. Or no, they said I think it just says send a picture of the of your elite status card, which I don't

actually, I toss them as soon as I get them. So I just use, I just took a screenshot of the app that shows a virtual card and that worked. Interesting. Interesting. Good to know. Yeah. I'll be selling you my screenshot.

No. I'm more thinking about what I could do that might work out for the trip after all. Maybe it inspired me, Greg. Yeah. So it often takes a week or so before they will match you. Just a little caution there. Yeah. We'll see if that's enough time.

Yeah. That's a good inspiration as we run into the 40K challenge. Yeah. So we are getting long here, but I do have a question for Stephen about his tuna fish. Yes. I have a lot of questions for your tuna fish. So Stephen's post today showed everything in his backpack, and one of those things was about 12 things,

which are a whole bunch of packets of tuna fish, right? Different flavors. 15 in total I've got, yeah. 15. 15, okay. of packets of tuna fish, right? Different flavors. 15 in total I've got, yeah. 15. 15, okay. 15 packets of tuna. 15 packets of tuna in water, right? Can you bring that through security?

That was one of the questions. They're not really in water, though. There's a tiny bit of moisture in them, but it's not like cans of tuna where it's in water. You open it up, there's a tiny bit of moisture in them, but it's not like cans of tuna where you have where it's like in water. You like open it up. There's like a tiny bit of fluid inside. But otherwise, it's just it's just tuna that's already mixed in with whatever the flavoring is. And so I've got like jalapeno. I've got sweet chili flavor and things like that. So someone actually commented on the post that I wrote today about it, asking if I've ever tried doing this before getting it through security.

So it could end up being that all I'm eating is mayo tortillas, basically, because that's all that I'll have to go in them. I've got like a little mail package to go with it. So I could end up being very sad after, like before even my first flight. So when you, when you rip open those packages does and it doesn't water drip out if you like only kind of like a tiny bit yeah it's it's yeah it's not like a regular kind of tuna thing like you need to be careful this conversation with the tsa agent yeah yeah i'll open one in front of him and just prove

that it's not full of water. Just a little water. So yeah, I mean it is a little bit of a risk, but because I don't care for protein bars and stuff like that. So otherwise I'll still have the wraps. I've got like Nutri-Grain bar

type things or like Nutri-Valley bars. And so I'll have some kind of sustenance, but it may just be that I'll have to end up spending a bit more money on food if I need to. And because I've still got that in the budget, because I haven't finished booking everything yet, then I'm not going to be going starving. And so, yeah.

Amex has various ways of like paying with points for things like food or merchandise or whatever. So you should definitely do that. And then you use up all your points doing that. Totally agree. That works out incredible about you. It wouldn't be enjoyable then. I think that's the only time you'll ever hear that advice on frequent mire.

That's right. So just a little warning now, it might not be a factor because you said there's not that much liquid in in your pouches but i happened to um this summer uh on one of my trips i brought a it wasn't tuna but it was like a like a chicken thing but it looked similar to your tuna yeah i brought it on my trip um thinking that yeah i i thought that was like a great idea to have like real protein you know type of thing have something really close to a real meal as opposed to a protein bar um i never got around to eating it on this trip but um uh when i got back from the trip it it was leaking in my luggage. Now, I saw that most of your tuna packets

were in a Ziploc, so I didn't have that. It looked like you had some that weren't. I had a few that weren't actually and ended up fitting in there, but that's a good point. I might stick them in a Ziploc bag. Yeah, I recommend that.

So, question. Thank you, Davey. So, you said that you had brought the chicken pack along with you. Was that to Denali? No, to Hawaii, actually. Okay, so did that go on a flight in a jet bag or a carry-on? Carry-on. Yeah, no, there were no issues.

Okay, so I should be good. Well, hopefully. If it's a similar kind of deal. If it's flying all within the United States, sure. But, you know, different countries have different sensitivities to things. That's a good point. You know, I remember in, I think it was Ireland, getting my whole bag, like, everything pulled out so they could find some toenail trimmers, you know, and you have a lethal weapon. Right, right. now and you have a lethal weapon right right driving back to the united states once they took it they confiscated a banana that they saw in the beat of our car because it didn't have a sticker

saying where it came from from from canada to maine so yeah yeah have you seen that hidden valley ranch um ad where the lady's got the bottle of um dressing in her um carry-on luggage and she has to take it out and they say well you can you can't take that through. She just chugs it in line at the TSA security check. I might just have to do that and then hope that that satisfies my hunger. It reminds me

this happened to me just last weekend. I was driving to the airport. I'd been on a quick trip just an overnight. I had a rental car. I was about an hour away from the airport. I'm driving to the airport. And I was sure I had plugged into my Google Map

to stop at the gas station right before the airport. But I'm pulling in and I notice, oh no, I'm actually going into the airport. I messed up. So by some miracle, just talking to Siri, she actually, I said, fine, navigate to the closest gas station. And she did, which was great. And so this is a kind of long story. I'm going to try to make it quick though, because I know we've run over time already. But this is related to the 48K. I'll get there in a moment.

So this car had its gas tank on the right side instead of the left side that I'm used to. But I knew that because for anyone who doesn't know this, you could look down at the gas gauge in your rental car and it shows you a little arrow pointing left or right. And you know which side of the car the gas tank's on. So I knew that. So I rush into the gas station. I'm not that late from what I need, but, you know, 15 minutes behind now because of this diversion. And so I pull up to the gas tank on the correct side. I get out. I do my credit card. It's all authorized. I put the,

I try to put the pump in there and it won't go. It's diesel. We go cancel, cancel transaction. How do you cancel? There's no cancel buttons. Anyway, I finally figured it out.

Drive around to the next pump like that. Get out of the car. Oh, now I'm like the pumps on my left side. On the right side. So it was easier then to get back in the car, drive to another pump so that it's on the right side again. And now I'm like, oh, I better not put in that first card because it might get declined for duplicates. I put in another card. The machine's not reading it.

I'm doing it over and over. Get out a third card. It finally works, so that all's fine. I go to the airport, and I'm going to skip the section about how there was no traffic anywhere around except one intersection that I needed to turn left to get to the rental car company. So it took me another 15 minutes just to turn left.

Get into the rental car. Dropping off the rental car was fine. Get into the rental car bus to drive to the airport. The driver stops at an intersection. He has the right of way. He stops at an intersection because he knows how hard it is for everyone else to turn left. He waits for 15 cars to turn left. Nice guy. Thank you very much.

And then, where were you when I needed you? But then he goes on, get to the airport. Yay. There's hardly any line at TSA PreCheck. There is the little old lady who

can't figure out how to navigate the maze of those ropes, but she eventually figured out her way. And we got through security. It didn't take very long. I go through the belt, and my backpack gets pulled aside. What happened? You know my 40K to far away branded, um, water bottle. Oh no. I forgot to empty that out. I forgot to empty it. So I said, well, can you just pour it out? No, it has to be, it has to either get thrown away the whole bottle or, uh, or I have to escort you

all the way out of security and you have to, and you have to empty it and come back through. So I'm looking at the bottom. You're not even allowed to drink it there and then? I don't know. I wasn't in a state of mind to think through all the questions. I have a solution for you. Say it's for the baby. It will let you bring anything through if you say it's for the baby.

It's crazy. It's insane. It probably helps with that argument. It does help. It's a little hard if you say it's for the baby and there's no baby. Then they might escort you to the security guard. It's for the old lady with me. I had them escort me all the way around. I didn't want to lose that water bottle.

It's too cool. I didn't make it to the flight, so it was all okay. I look forward to having my 40 that water bottle. It's too cool. I didn't make it to the flight, so it was all okay. Not much is good. I look forward to having my 40K water bottle. I hope that I have the same commitment to the bottle that you did. I hope you do, too. I don't want to get thrown away at a checkpoint. Nor do I. I will be

sure to check before I get to the checkpoint. If it does get thrown away, you have to make sure you're video recording that whole situation somehow. I'll be sure to find a way to record that all patient. I will fight tooth and nail for my 40 K water bottle. But, but yeah, you know,

and I, I said it jokingly, but I really am amazed traveling with a baby at how they will just let you bring water bottles or formula bottles, or, I mean, all of the rules seem to go out the window. It was nuts to me that to could just pour out your bottle.

It would help you a lot to bring your son on your 40K. It would. It would. You should really do that. Well, thank you. I appreciate that suggestion a lot. Might help out your wife, too. No, don't get too excited.

Don't get too... I mean, I'm flying solo, so as much as I would love the company, I'll be flying solo alright alright guys hey it's been great now Nick's gotta do the

wrap up here well thank you guys all very much for joining us today always great to have you here if you're just tuning in of course if you're watching us live on Facebook you can just roll back to the beginning and watch the video but if you're checking this out later on, you can just roll back to the beginning and watch the video. But if you're checking this out later on and you'd like to download it, you can head over to YouTube if you want to see the video. Or it'll be available in all your favorite podcast formats.

You can find links to all of that stuff in the Week in Review post that'll post tomorrow morning. That'll be September 28th, tomorrow morning, Saturday morning, September 28th. So you can check it out there. Check us out online at thefrequentmiler.com. That's our site. Again, thefrequentmiler.com. You can find us on Twitter at Frequent Miler. You can find me at Nick at FM. And on Facebook, you can join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group

where you can ask questions and help others and get help from others in our group. A very active group of travelers who are interested in helping each other find ways to maximize their money and miles so check us out in all of those places thank you very much for being out here with us today thank you Greg thank you Steven looking forward

to 40k and this week be on the lookout for a lot of social media coming from us follow on Instagram follow us on Twitter follow us on Facebook because there are going to be videos there are going to be pictures there are going to be updates and I look forward to seeing where you guys are. All right. Bye, everybody.

See you guys in a few days. Thanks. See you in a few days. Bye.