Points, Planes and Passports Officially Joins Prior2Boarding and BoardingArea!

First of all, I apologize for the lack of posts the last few weeks — they’ve been quite hectic, and the blog has been in transition mode.

A few months ago, I joined Prior2Boarding — a collection of top travel blogs and sister-site of the uber-popular BoardingArea community of travel blogs.  This past Tuesday, the techie wizards out in Colorado at BoardingArea successfully migrated my blog to the BoardingArea servers, so you’ll see a few minor changes to my blog, including a banner header with links to the other Prior2Boarding blogs.  I encourage you to check them out, as they all feature a wealth of information on everything related to travel, points and miles.

For those who haven’t read my blog yet, here’s a brief introduction…

About Me

I love to travel.  I especially love to travel comfortably for as little money as possible.  Collecting points and miles, as well as knowing how to find travel deals, have afforded me the ability to travel the world frequently and in style.  As my travel for work is extremely limited, pretty much all of my travel is personal, so finding a good deal and using miles for virtually free travel is the way I try to do it!

When I’m not traveling or writing about it, my day job has me smack, dab in the middle of the Nation’s Capital — Washington, DC.  I enjoy experiencing all that DC has to offer, spending time with my girlfriend, trying new restaurants and places to go out.  Other than that, I’m a rabid fan of the Auburn Tigers, my alma mater — War Eagle!

How this whole thing started

In the Spring of 2012, I was in the process of booking my annual pilgrimage to Oktoberfest in Munich.  I was about 20,000 United miles short of a first class trip there, and pondered buying the miles to take the trip.  During the same time, I noticed that I could take a cheap trip to Hong Kong for about the same price as purchasing the miles through United.  A few days later, I was in Hong Kong for the weekend, but upon returning from flying over 35 hours in economy, I figured that there had to be a better way.

Enter, the Internet.

After searching for a bit, I found several BoardingArea blogs, as well as the MilePoint travel forums — each of which contain a wealth of information.  Later that month, MilePoint was sponsoring its first “Frequent Travler University” in New Jersey.

I signed up and attended.

I was hooked.

Two and half years and almost 300,000 miles of flights later, here I am writing about my travels, as well as the tricks and tools that I use to plan and make them a reality.

Where I’m going

Blog-wise, we’ll see where this goes.  I originally started this thing to chronicle and share my travels with friends and family, but have since expanded.  I really enjoy writing and helping people with travel-related questions, so that’s why I’m doing this.

Travel-wise, I’ve got a busy fall and winter including:

• Two trips (okay — mileage runs on American)  to Anchorage
• A conference in Vegas for BAcon — the BoardingArea blogger conference
• A round-the-world trip in October, including:
  • Oktoberfest in Munich
  • A full day in Bangkok
  • Three days in Shanghai
  • Three days in Hong Kong
  • 23 hours in Tokyo
  • All First Class Travel on United, Thai, and ANA.
• A weekend trip to Iguazu Falls, Argentina and Brazil in November
• A weekend trip to Dubai in January

As always, check my Travel Calendar page for my upcoming travels.

Where I’ve been

It’s best to just reference my Flight Diary profile.  Though not entirely complete, this is a good representation of where I’ve flown.  If somebody knows of a similar site to log one’s cruises, please let me know — because I’ve been on way too many of those to keep count!

You can check out my trip reports on my Trip Report index page, which include recent trips this year to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Ireland, and of course, Australia.

In the meantime, I’ll continue pumping out content on this blog, with a focus on detailing my trip planning and chronicling my journey, as well as the latest tips, tricks, and news in the world of travel, points and miles.