Frequent Miler on the Air - Greg takes a hike and Stephen's possible plans for#40Kfaraway

Episode Date: July 20, 2019

When Nick went on vacation, he sat by the pool. This week, Greg's been on vacation -- but Greg has been prepping for #40Kfaraway with a *50-mile hike*. Speaking of $40Kfaraway, what could Stephen be plotting? Do we have any clues? That and more in this week's Frequent Miler on the Air.

Okay, we're live. Very good. All right. Well, hello from the United States side of the pond. Hello from the United Kingdom. On opposite ends of the pond this week. We can't ever be in like the same kind of vicinity. One time, I guess, Minneapolis, we were in the same spot, but it seems like we're never both at home. No, right. And that's kind of fun about this, I think. There's always one of us somewhere interesting. Right.

Right now, I'm in Penzance in the UK. Yes, the Penzance of the pirate fame. I was picturing Stephen Pepper on a pirate ship there. I haven't seen Stephen, but he's probably around somewhere. So how's it been? What have you been up to? Yeah, it's been incredible. My wife and I have taken a week to, we took a train out from London to Cornwall, which is the peninsula in the southwest corner of the UK. And there's a path that runs along the entire southwest coast called the southwest coast path and yeah what we did is we picked the furthest out point of the path the the furthest west tip and found a tour company that will basically book

inns at little villages like along the way and will schlep your stuff from one end to the next and you hike along the coastal path around the peninsula. And so we've been doing that. We've walked about 50 miles in the last five days. 50 miles. the last five days yeah yeah yesterday my locked yesterday we walked 14 miles day before that 13 which was which was not at all easy that are you and me way of walking I think I think

people might underestimate that too but walking 13 miles I mean anybody who wears like a Fitbit or something like that you know you get yourself up to six seven eight nine miles you know you've done some walking and that's like spread throughout the day 13 like you know basically spending all day walking right I mean that's yeah it's a big day but it but I'll tell you what the the scenery is just unbelievable it's incredibly gorgeous walking along the cliffs above the ocean, crashing waves. So that's in one direction. To your left tends to be Rolling Hills farmland, just beauty everywhere you look.

And then you stop in these adorable little villages that have little inns. It's not a points and miles type of adventure. There's not a lot you can... No park hiats. I don't think there's a single chain hotel anywhere in this vicinity. But, you know, you could use arrival points or Kepa One points or something like that

if you wanted to. In my case, I think I paid with my altitude reserve card so that I'd earn three X that way. Any real time mobile rewards on that? No, I mean, those don't work outside of the US. So if you're being charged outside of the US, it's not gonna work. I also didn't have enough points to cover this,

but I'll earn enough points to cover lots of other things with real-time mobile rewards. So that'll be fun. But I'll tell you what, my wife and I love hiking. What we don't love or even like is camping. And so this has been just the perfect vacation for us. You know, I hope my wife doesn't watch this because we've been seeing your pictures and the pictures look incredible. And I have to admit, they look really beautiful. Not exactly what I picture, I guess. I don't know what image I had of southwestern England, but it's gorgeous. It's really pretty.

And like day after day for the last week, she's been saying, boy, I'd really like to do something like that. Wow. That looks really good. We really ought to try that. And I'm looking at the cliffs thinking my fear of heights is not going to hold up at all. No, no, not a, not really a good match with that. But now you say this, you know, I, I, boy, she's, she watches, she's going to be like, oh, we need to give that a shot.

Cause we are terrible campers. We love nature. Love to hike. Yeah. I will tell you one thing. I'm not sure about going with a toddler though. There is some really tough. Yeah.

There are some really tough. I wouldn't call them climbs, but I mean, you are literally scrambling over boulders and things that, that is not necessarily easy to do. And so, in fact, one of the hardest days was one of the shortest. It was about seven or eight miles, and there were so many boulders and sort of steep inclines and things that we had to scramble up or sort of slide down that that was probably the toughest.

Well, no, that's not true. That wasn't the toughest day. The toughest was the last one because we had built up all of the, you know, day after day of the effort of the long days and then going into a 14-day hike when the muscles hadn't recovered yet. That was definitely the hardest. But still, it was a great walk. And along the way, we kept hearing from people that there's a show called Poldark that was filmed, that is filmed here. It's a remake of an older show. And so we watched an episode of it last night. And all along the way, we're like, oh, yeah, we were there.

Yes, we were there. You know, we saw that. So that was pretty fun. So if you want an idea of what it looks like in video format Poldark is a good way to see it very good it will attract you but a quick tip if if you are interested in doing this at any point is that we went with this encounter walking tour thing where you tell them what you're interested in and they book the hotels for you and they arrange the luggage transfer but you could save a lot of money that just by

getting a guidebook that covers the coastal path and they have itinerary suggesting where you should stop along the way so you could book the individual ends yourself and contract with a company that does the luggage transfer you can do that yourself you can still get the luggage done right and that part's relatively cheap compared to the rest of it so that's good to know you know i would consider doing that next time it's just the hard part would be um not getting like advice about, you know, if you have to, which trails are better than others because the whole coast path, Southwest coast path is a thousand kilometers long. So you're not going to do the whole thing probably.

So you have to pick which one, which parts you want to do. And so having some advice about that could be helpful, but you might be able to get that out of a guidebook. It just depends how much you want to do. And so having some advice about that could be helpful. But you might be able to get that out of a guidebook. It just depends how much you want to do it yourself. Yeah, yeah. Pretty interesting, though. A kind of vacation that I don't think I ever would have considered before. So I think that's been an interesting piece of it for me in that I, you know, being someone who usually uses points and miles, I look at airplanes and hotels and activities.

And I never really would have thought about an extended hike like that. And I'm sure that the scenery you've seen is amazing. And that's something we happen to enjoy. I mean, I live in rural America, I've mentioned, you know, more than once on the blog, and we enjoy living kind of in the middle of nowhere, sometimes, because of the natural beauty and the ability to go take a walk and, you know, or run or whatever else. So that really does sound appealing and interesting. That's something we'll have to toss on the list of things to do.

A lot of, we have a long list of those, you know, life goals. So you would do this again? Oh, definitely without a question, yeah. I mean, whether we do it here in England or wherever, I just, I love the experience of hiking from one town to the next and not having to go along the way. People along the way, right?

Sometimes, yeah. Yeah. We run into a number of people doing the coastal path, sometimes just people that are vacationing in one of the towns that we go through. We've met some interesting characters. So it's been a lot of fun. Nice. Nice. Sounds like a good time. Sounds like a good vacation. Well, while you've been out there vacationing and enjoying things, Stephen Pepper, I think, has been at his computer sweating about what he's going to do for the 40K Far Away

Challenge. He sure has. so he's written a couple posts for us now but this week he wrote about um the what did he write again he wrote about the obstacles right the obstacles that might get in his way or getting really all of our ways i felt like the obstacles he wrote about were things that in many cases all of us face. You know, what happens when you book three flights on budget carriers and one gets delayed and you miss the next one? And, you know, those sorts of things. How are you going to shower? Types of questions that people probably are curious about anyway. So I don't know.

Was there anything on his list that you read and you were like, oh, man, I didn't think about that, but that could be a real problem? Well, you know, one of the things that, not necessarily when I read his post, but I had assumed that most Priority Pass lounges had showers, and maybe that's true. But it's not true in all of the airports that I'm looking at. And I was like, oh, I was really intending to be able to get a shower when I got there. So that's definitely been something that's come into my planning a little bit more than I anticipated it would. Just because I, you know, I'm going to need that after a long, long flight or a couple of long flights in a row. And packing is something that's been on my mind. And, you know, that's something that I know that he's thinking about too. And what I'm going to bring and how I'm going to bring it is something that, you know, I've been considering.

I know that that's been on Stephen's mind too. Was there anything in there that stuck out that you were like, I'm not concerned about that? Or something that you were like, oh, yeah, that's a problem. I mean, I know you haven't really booked anything yet, right? I haven't booked a single thing yet. Yeah. I can't believe that. Nothing.

I mean, like it's getting to be crunch time here. Well, you know, one of the things he mentioned is about having to book everything all at once. And, you know, in a way, because I'm focusing on this United Excursionist thing, it's, I feel like it's even more true for me than then potentially you guys like so if once I pick an excursion flight that I want right I have to be ready then to pick the out you know at least the outbound flight that triggers that excursion. And since I want that outbound, ideally that outbound will

position me for a flight. I'll give away something, an international flight. Then, you know, I have to have all those pieces together. And so that's been tough, but I think I'm getting close. I do have, I have two scenarios that I'm really really really excited about and the one I'm most excited about there's one piece that I still need to figure out if it's possible to do and once once I get that then I can then I could book it on at that point once I have the all the big pieces booked, I'm going to be looking at the more minor details, like how do I get from an airport to some place of interest

and things like that, because I might not have any money left. Right, right. So you might just be walking. I mean, you've been conditioning for the last week here, 50 miles. That's right. I'll be like, oh, town is only 10 miles from the airport. No problem It's just a Tuesday hike

Especially after you spend 10 hours on a plane well, you know, that's something that really stuck out to me early on too is that like If I don't book it all at once then what happens and of course I didn't book it all at once And so then that's had me like frantically day after day if I don't book it all at once, then what happens? And of course, I didn't book it all at once. And so then that's had me like, frantically day after day, like every couple of hours checking, okay, did the airfare change yet and setting up alerts so that I can hopefully catch the sails at just the right times to put all the pieces together to get, you know, where I want to be for all the different parts and pieces, though you did give something away with the

international flight. And I'll tell you what I did seriously consider, especially after I found the Turkish miles and smiles track for the 7,500 points each way within the United States, there was definitely a part of me that considered whether or not I could stay entirely within the United States and fly farther than you guys did. I definitely thought about it. I decided not to do it. I decided not to do it. I decided not to do it, but I thought, but there was for, for a hot minute there, I thought I wanted, that would be kind of interesting because there's a lot of neat stuff to see in the United States too. And I thought that being able to highlight some things and, you know, get as far as I could might be an

interesting story. And I'm not sure that Stephen Pepper won't do that because I mean, the man is on a five-year 50 state road trip. And from the beginning, I'll be honest, and I have no offense to Greg, but I was a little bit more intimidated by Stephen at the beginning than I was about Greg. Because I was hopeful, maybe foolishly hopeful, that Greg's Delta status would encourage him to make some sort of foolish mistake, to book some flight that was a little bit more than he should have spent on it just so you can sit up front. And I figured, Steven, I mean, the planning that's required to sustain a five-year 50-state road trip is pretty intense. I mean, the man's got to be good at budgeting and planning and figuring out what fits in the monthly expenses every month. So I got to imagine that he can take $400 and stretch it. And I don't know, what's the longest trip you've ever taken, Greg? Can you think of the longest time you've been taken, Greg? Can you think, like, the longest time you've been away from home? Like, do you ever backpack through, like, some area or take a long road trip across the country or something?

No, I mean, to be honest, I don't know if it's been more than, I don't know, two and a half weeks, something like that. I mean, I have not done anything. 19 months at this point. So I'm a little concerned about that. Yeah. Well, not only that, because he has experience with the little things that will blow your budget, right? So he's been doing it all this time. So he knows much better than I think you and I do about like those things that are kind of unavoidable that that will come up that that you have to have a reserve for because he's been watching his budget every month since since he started this 50 state road trip and so and you know from his blog if you

read that at all that he sometimes does go over but I think that pains him and I I think he learns from that and and I think he's not gonna have us yeah that's yeah he's not gonna and and you know I've I've seen messages from him emails I've seen things he's had on Facebook I know that he's putting time and effort into it and I'll tell you from his first couple of posts he didn't sound really confident so I went from being like extra intimidated because I thought you know this guy knows how to maximize every penny. And like, while I like to think that you and I are, are relatively, I don't know, frugal is the right word, but relatively smart shoppers, so to speak, and careful with our money. We probably haven't put

the laser like focus into it that Steven has for this trip he's doing, you know, for an extended period of time. And like you said, those little things that pain trip he's doing, you know, for an extended period of time. And like you said, those little things that pain him that builds up and, you know, makes him better at it. So I was initially very intimidated, but then I became a little less intimidated because he didn't sound very confident for a while. But now I see that he's like up late at night, he's looking at roots, he's checking out the sweet spots. And I'm a little bit more concerned that, you know, he's more competitive than I thought he was based on his initial, well, I don't know, I'm a little bit more concerned that you know he's more competitive than I thought he was based on his initial well I don't know I'm probably gonna lose I'm not gonna win either

and blah blah blah I was thinking oh maybe you know maybe I shouldn't be as concerned now though I'm getting a little bit more concerned what do you think he's gonna do do you have any like predictions have you caught anything in his posts, so I've been reading his two posts on the subject and trying to find clues. And so there are some. So one clue, which is pretty obvious clue, where he said he wasn't going to bring a jacket and he was going to wear flip-flops, which all the comments said, don't do that. But aside from that, clearly he's not going up a cold mountain anywhere. He's probably not going up a mountain at all. Like he's not going to be doing any serious hiking, I don't think. So that gives us some clues. I think he's going

somewhere warm. That's probably a good catch. Although I don't know. I mean, I used to know a guy who wore flip flops in the wintertime. I don't know. I mean, I, I, I used to know a guy who wore flip flops in the winter time. I don't know. Steven Pepper's from the UK, right? I mean, he's used to cold rainy days, isn't he? True, true. But you know, I'm just trying to get what, you know, what clues I can and try to figure out what he's up to because it, for some reason, even though I don't know what you're doing, it just, he seems like much more of a mystery to me as far as what he's gonna he's gonna do so so I'm really really curious the other the other clue was he mentioned in his post where he was talking about having a book everything all at once about how there was a fair sale from

Europe to Asia and clearly he had been looking at that and so that tells me a couple things one it tells me oh oh and in that part he said he said he needed to get oh that the time the reason he didn't book it is because the times did not match up with a flight he had already booked. So that tells me, I could be wrong, but it tells me that he has booked, it tells me two things. One. He's booked a flight in either Europe or Asia. No. Well, I think it means he's booked a flight in Asia. That's how I interpreted it, that it didn't match up with his ongoing flight. But yeah, I could be wrong about that. But the other piece is that I think he's already used or has plans to use most of his membership rewards points because he was looking for the best cash rates

from Europe to Asia. So he's not looking for how can he use airline miles. So we are learning. So none of it's 100%, but my guess at this point is that he's using points to get to Europe, probably doing one of those cheap deals, like maybe through, I think it's Montreal to Dublin or something like that with Avios.

And then maybe he's found a cheap way to go from Asia down to Australia or down to the Philippines or somewhere. Any of the southern regions that are warm is my guess what he's got going. But again, just a guess. You know, I think that's a fair possibility. And so, you know, if he did figure that out, so, I mean, the peace from Europe to Asia, so when I think about that a little bit anyway, I think I know exactly what you're referencing now. I think the

trouble is that flights from Europe to Asia often cost a lot of points. Now, I don't know how well he shopped around because there are some deals between Europe and Asia, but a lot of them cost too many points. I'm thinking more points than he's willing to spend. So there are also a number of cheap fares. So I don't know. I'm not sure if I necessarily think his membership rewards are all gone. He just might be looking at it from the smart standpoint of, well, there's enough cheap prices that it's not worth using the points because I can book them cheaply. And I got to say that one of the things that's been most salient about this challenge for me, right from the beginning, really, when I really started intensely looking at stuff, is that really, if you want to

fly mostly an economy class, chasing good airfares is almost better than having points for award flights. There are some award flights that are standout values, but for economy class travel, they are much less of a standout value than business class and first class flights. Often you can do as well or better with good cheap fares. So maybe he's discovered that, but let me tell you this. If he does get to Asia, then I am concerned about Steven Pepper. Like, if he gets there on cash, if he can manage to get a really cheap cash ticket to Europe and a cheap cash ticket to Asia, then I think Steven Pepper is going to have us. And the reason I say that is because ANA has a sweet spot that nobody pays attention to because most people

don't book trips this way. But in their round trips, for instance, zone three to zone three, which I'll talk about what that is, or area three to area, actually I take that back, Oceania to Oceania is 30,000 miles round trip. So if you were to fly anywhere in Oceania to anywhere in Oceania, 30k round trip. Now, the interesting thing is they have routing rules about where you can't route through. And then they have routing rules about where you can route through. And so if he was going to fly Oceania to Oceania, so typically you would think Australia, New Zealand, et cetera, he can route

through Japan, China, South Korea. He can route through a number of places that are really far from oceania and air new zealand has no fuel surcharges united which flies between japan and parts of oceania has no fuel surcharges air china has no fuel surcharges he's got a whole bunch of options in that part of the world that for 30 000 points round, he could fly like tons of miles. And if you put something together with a few segments, I mean, that could get crazy. Yeah, yeah. But keep in mind, no fuel surcharges doesn't mean no taxes or fees at all, right? Absolutely true.

So, you know, the example he gave of the flight from Europe to Asia was 300 and something dollars. That'd be most of his cash budget. How would he have any money left for? He didn't book that flight, though, right? No, he didn't. Right. So it didn't match up. I mean, if he continues, I don't know that he can do it.

But if he can find a way with, you know, with a low enough number of points you gotta also think if he's got the the Schwab platinum which I think I think he might have the Schwab platinum now if he were to cash out membership rewards points let's take you say he takes those 30k to fly Oceania to Oceania via like someplace far in China or Japan far from Oceania, which wouldn't really necessarily be that hard. Then he's got 10,000 more membership rewards points that he can cash out at 1.25 each.

So he's got 125 plus the 400, that's 525. 525 is probably enough to get one way from the US to Australia via Europe. If you book it piece by piece. It's close. Or I say Australia, someplace in Oceania anyway, or that fits the ANA definition of Oceania. It's not impossible. You're right. I mean, it doesn't leave him a lot of money for taxes. So maybe I'm wrong, but I think he could probably build something good there. I don't know. Is there anything in membership rewards that sticks out to you as a value that you're worried about him finding?

You know, I looked earlier at which of the programs are unique to membership rewards, just because I don't know that he's going to do this, but I would think in his position, he'd be looking most closely at those programs to see, do I have an edge over Nick and Greg because I have these? And the two that stand out are ANA and Aeroplan, right? Or wait, is Aeroplan? No, Aeroplan is Capital One, but none of us have Capital One. That's the other one that I showed up. Right. And so I looked at the Aeroplane Award chart and, you know, he mentioned something about how all the sweet spots are for, you know, business and first class travel. And boy, he's right. You know, look at at least a lot of them are. Yeah.

Scanning through the Aeroplane Award chart, it's like, like wow that's not like for economy it's not special i didn't see nothing jumped out at me at all as like wow that's a good value um now ana um is more complicated and you just pointed out a a good sweet spot there what else uh what else are would you think? The other thing that, now this might get thrown out because of, you know, what you said about him, perhaps having already booked a flight to Europe, but a thing that I would have considered, I think, if I were Steven Pepper, would be using Etihad to fly Royal Air Maroc, because for 22,000 miles, he could have gotten from the East Coast of the United States to anywhere Royal Air Maroc flies. So that could have gotten him to the Middle East. That could have gotten him tons of places in Africa.

And that's a pretty decent distance to cover. You know, if you were to get to some of their farthest points, they don't fly all the way to Asia, but they do fly all the way to Asia. They fly to the Middle East, which is technically Asia. They don't fly to what we typically consider as Southeast Asia. But if you were able to pair that up with an award chart that considers pieces of the Middle East as part of Asia, then I think you might have something good going there. So I probably, if I had membership rewards,

I think I would have looked pretty hard at Royal Air Maroc. But the fuel surcharges and taxes might have priced that out. So that was probably one of the first things I would have looked at, though. And then most of the transfer partners, like you said, we have in common. So they aren't things that are necessarily unique to membership rewards. The one that stood out to me was being able to get to Oceania. And I've already let the cat out of the bag in the fact that it's actually pretty cheap to get to Oceania if you can get to Hawaii.

So if he can find himself a cheap way to get to Hawaii, depending on the dates and how that lines up with fares, I showed that there are dates where it's $118 one way from Honolulu to Sydney. So, you know, getting just to Honolulu, if you were to ignore going to Europe, then you get to Oceania, take advantage of the 30K round trip on ANA, maybe even get off the plane somewhere on the way back and not fly all the way back to Oceania, if he's still got money left to catch another deal somewhere else. So maybe he gets to Hong Kong and he wouldn't quite have 12,500 miles left at that point maybe he could have enough cash to buy a few miles though be able to fly that Virgin Atlantic route from Hong Kong to London what are the fuel surcharges on that one 12,000 yeah that one's right yeah 12,500 miles and only $42 you know

thing that is a killer killer deal and that was the other thing I forgot to mention that I was thinking when he talked about having a flight from Asia, or when I guessed that he had a flight from Asia, that it might be that. You know, because he also had a transfer bonus he could have taken advantage of. So it wouldn't have cost him $12,500. It would have cost him, I think, $9,000. $9,000 yeah yeah yeah yeah and so here's the deal he highlighted the

Greyhound sale the other day for 25% off so if he get himself across the United States for under $100 and then get himself a cheap flight to Hawaii from the west coast then he gets from there to Australia and I think he's probably in it already for like maybe 300 bucks or so.

Gets himself his round trip flight. Depends on how much those taxes cost. Finds a way to get off the plane in Hong Kong and fly to London. I mean, he could get pretty far. Yeah. I don't know if he'd have any money to eat. Well, I'm not sure either of us are going to, any of us are going to find eat at our plan. Have you factored in money to eat? You know, I factored in the fact that I don't have any money

to eat. I factored in the fact that I'm going to have to be pretty hungry, but luckily, the way I think it's all going to go, I think I'll actually be able to eat on some planes. And then of course, priority pass, you know, I'll be leaning on that a little bit. Of course, I don't want to miss the experience of eating local food, but I'll have to have to find my cheap local eats and settle for some things that that I might not normally eat. But but we'll see. I don't know. Are you how is your stomach? Are you like kind of person who can eat some sort of strange street cart and be OK? You know, are you normally to the same?

I'm trying as much as possible to pick transportation that includes meals so that I conquer both of those things at once. Great. Smart. And then hopefully I could take advantage of some of those layover deals that I wrote about. But I'm not

letting that drive my decision of where to go. But if it turns out that, for example, if there's an excursion I can take with United where I can route through, let's say, Istanbul instead of somewhere else that doesn't have as good of a layover deal, I'll definitely pick the one that does yeah yeah well that layover post you did I think was really interesting and I saw even somebody just commented on it today I think and there are a lot of really interesting possibilities there I knew about some of the layover tours that were I guess probably more well-known the one in Singapore for instance are the ones in

Singapore I should say not Singapore Iknown, the one in Singapore, for instance, or the ones in Singapore, I should say, not Singapore. I was thinking Seoul, rather, in my mind, because I know you can do either the Incheon tour or you can do the Seoul City tour. So I knew about some of those that were really well-covered, but I had no idea how many there were. So that actually, that post intimidated me a bit. When I read that, I told my wife, I was like,

Greg is more serious than I thought. I pictured Greg just trying to find a way to fly Delta, stay flat, find a Hyatt somewhere to book with his 5000 points a night and stay in luxury. But it sounds like you're taking this seriously. You're not going to go down without a fight. I am not going down without a fight. Very unlikely at this point that I'm going to be use Delta global upgrades on Korean air but then I looked into the details and it only works for certain fare classes and so of course anything I work is not going to be one of those fair classes so so there's no point in me going I'm out of my way to fly Korean air versus any

of the other number of options have you thought at all about how you're gonna get back home after this is all said and done? Well, actually, it's likely that the end of this is going to closely match a trip to somewhere international that my wife has to take. I almost gave away- Be careful there. I was waiting. I was hoping I was going to get a little clue out of that question.

That was meant to be a little clue out of that question. That was meant to be a devious question. I'm going to try to maybe not get back to where she's going to be, but at least be positioned where it won't be too hard to get to there to meet up with her. How about you? Are you going to try to get back? Oh, I mean, I'd like to come back eventually. Yes, my family would enjoy seeing me again. So yeah, I'm going to get back. Yeah, you know, I've probably put, I'm not going to say as much time,

but more time than I might have anticipated into looking at, okay, how can I get back after I've done all this travel and I've not eaten and, you know, I'm tired and dirty and I need a shower and some laundry. I've definitely thought about, okay, what are the really comfortable ways I can get home? And I've definitely been putting time into like, okay, so which routes have these seats or those? And where am I going to get, you know, the right kind of meal? I've definitely put some time and thought into that. We'll see. Because at this point, I'm not sure exactly how it's going to end up. I'm going to say not where, but how it's going to end up. So possible that my wife might come and meet me at my end point,

which will make a difference as to how many seats I need to be able to book on the way home. So we'll see. But I've definitely, I almost put something on hold today for the way home thinking, oh, you know, that might be a good option. But I definitely put some thought into that because I want to be comfortable after this is said and done because the way I have it planned out, I'm going to be fairly uncomfortable for a few days. But hopefully I'm going to see some cool stuff along the way.

So do you have everything booked other than your return home? Yes, I do at this point. I don't feel as confident about saying yes, as I would like, but I guess I have to be confident about it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm booked everything booked, but in terms of flights, uh, accommodation is up in the air at the moment. So, uh, cause funds for that and eating are, you know, getting limited. So I need to, uh, I need to get creative with how I'm going to do some of that. Although I did get some good ideas today. And I found a couple of things today that I said, oh,

that actually might make for an interesting story here and so on and so forth. So we're getting there. Like you said, I tried to plan a good bit of transportation to double up this hotel and mealtime as well. Not all going gonna line up that way so we'll see right right what about uh do you have any scary connections so where what i mean is like you know flying one on one ticket and and a couple hours later flying out on another ticket and so if you're late on the first one you don't have any recourse with the second, you know, airline. Yes and no. Yes, I have scary connections.

No, not a couple of hours apart. But it doesn't really matter if there's only one or two flights a day, right? I mean, if you're flying a 10 or 11-hour flight and there's only one flight a day, if that one gets canceled, then, you know, it doesn't matter that I planned a day in between. There's not enough time to catch another. So yes, I do have a couple of situations like that where I just hope everything goes smoothly because if it doesn't, then the rest of the trip might fall apart quickly. So we'll see. Yeah, I'm definitely, that was a concern of mine before. And then Steven Pepper wrote about it as I was going through and trying to make my final decisions about, you know, okay, am I going to do this? Am I going to do that?

And I was waiting. I set a couple of airfare trackers for like a couple of the dots I needed to connect still. And a couple of things dropped significantly in price this week. And so I thought about holding out a little bit longer. And then finally yesterday, I guess, because I technically still within 24 hours, I think it was yesterday, I booked the last piece. And I was like, well, you know, I think that's going to be it. I don't think it's going to go down anymore. And then I looked today and the price had gone up significantly.

So I guess I made the right decision. Hopefully I left myself with enough money to be able to, you know, get a Big Mac at some point or something like that. I haven't had a Big Mac in probably 20 years. So we'll see what that tastes like after a long time. Yeah, I don't see you going into a Burger King and picking the Big Mac that it'll be like, wait a minute, the single burger is a lot cheaper. Right, right. 99 cents. I got to get that on the dollar menu. That's for sure. Yeah, I'm gonna have to find those kinds of deals. But you know, funny though, this week, there were a couple of quick deals that came up that I hesitated for a little bit on making final

decisions. Because, for example, the IHG points that were on sale the other day for 0.384 cents, um, I didn't anticipate I would probably stay in any chain hotels. Uh, but you know, that makes a 5,000 point night and a point breaks. What let's see. Oops. I just did the math wrong. Uh, very cheap, like less than $20 a night, right? Yeah. I mean, that's, and that's, that's like hostile competitive at that point, right? So there was a great deal. Yeah, so there's part of me and I did buy points speculatively in that,

that I HDL because I was, I was like, this is just so cheap. I almost always find a couple uses each year for IHG points. And there was part of me that from the beginning wanted to wait until the point breaks were out for the time period we're going to be traveling and try to plan a trip to go to one of those 5,000 point break places. And that sale price definitely brought me back to that thought because I was like $19 and change a night could be I could sleep a lot more comfortably for $19 than what I'm planning to sleep for $19. So so there's definitely part of me that they double thought about that and said, Oh, maybe I shouldn't stick with this plan. But ultimately, I decided to charge into the fire. And we'll see. I'm really curious about when you're

going to book. So I mean, do do you have like a deadline in mind? Are you going to wait just until the last minute? I mean, I know you're talking about using points for airfare. So you probably have to book that somewhat in advance in order to get a good deal, right? Maybe. Although, you know, I'm not making it a secret that I'm hoping to use my United Mart and the The Star Alliance flights in the places. I've looked at pretty Widely available in economy. So

I'm not feeling a lot of pressure there There are pieces where I definitely need great deals on paid flights and so so I've been watching that like a hawk, just like you talked about. But right now, as I said earlier, there's just one piece that I'm not even sure is possible, and so I need to confirm that it's possible. I've been taking this week off as a break. So next week, I'll check whether it's possible. If it is, I'll probably go ahead and book the whole thing. If the pieces are still available, probably Wednesday or Thursday, I'm guessing. Are you still there? Oh, looks like we lost Nick.

Well, on that note, Nick, it was great talking to you again, as always. I'm going to end the broadcast there on that note. We'll see you next week.