Mid-Year Report: My 2013 Travel So Far

As the mid-way point of 2013 has come and gone, I’ve been meaning to assess how much I have actually traveled so far this year.  It feels like the entire month of June I was out of the country, and I know I’ve spent plenty of weekends on the left coast, or in another country all together.  So, I went ahead and updated my flight history at Flight Diary.net, and my 2013 map looks a little like this:

Well, as it turns out, I’ve traveled a whole, whole bunch.  Though I’ve taken four different international trips, a good bulk of my flying has been transcontinental, domestic trips to the West Coast.  While this may seem miserable, life ain’t bad considering that I was upgraded to first class on a relatively high percentage of my flights.  I’ve also enjoyed meeting friends for lunch in San Francisco, for beer tours in Portland, or for weekends full of shenanigans in San Diego or Vegas.

Yup, it appears I’ve already flown over 100,000 miles on 55 flights, so far this year — 100,793, to be exact!  Thus far, I’ve visited:

• 29 cities
• 8 countries (5 new — Turkey, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and UAE)
• 4 continents (North America, South America, Europe, and Asia)

With all this flying, most of which has been focused on United or one of its Star Alliance Partners, I have just about hit Premier 1K Status with United, which is United’s top achievable status.  Only about 4,500 premier qualification miles left until I do so!

Though I’m taking a break from travel for the next few weeks, I have a full slate of travel scheduled for this fall and winter, including scheduled trips this year to:

• Rio De Janeiro, Brazil for Labor Day Weekend
• Europe (Oslo, Copenhagen, Munich) for a Frequent Flyer event with Star Alliance and SAS, and Opening Day of Oktoberfest
• Europe (Munich, London, Edinburgh) for Closing Weekend of Oktoberfest and my annual EuroTrip with friends
• Sydney and Cairns, Australia (Sydney for New Years and Cairns to dive the Great Barrier Reef)

I’ll also be taking several weekend, domestic trips to:

• Auburn, Alabama (twice for football — War Eagle!)
• Atlanta for a wedding
• Tampa, FL
• Houston and College Station, TX for football
• Raleigh, NC

All in all, this year will mark the most travel I’ve ever done in one year… and I’m loving every bit of it!  In some of my upcoming posts, I’ll detail how I’m able to travel so much, and how I find the deals, so stay tuned!