Jürgen's 70th Birthday World Tour: Afterthoughts

A week or so after my return back to the States from my almost four-week-long trip around the globe, my head is still spinning faster than normal. For the first two days after I had landed back in Lubbock, it was actually spinning out of control.

I'm used to crossing time zones, going east and west and advancing or subtracting six or seven hours, and even crossing the dateline—effectively traveling a day back in time—was not new to me. But, coupled with the myriad of impressions and stimuli that my brain had accumulated over the course of my trip, this time-travel triggered a heavy response that resulted in what is known as an ocular migraine. Sandy (a board-certified optician who runs one of Walmart's Vision Centers in Lubbock) immediately recognized what was going on when my vision started to get first blurry, then "fractured" on Saturday morning after getting up, coupled with a mild headache. I had trouble focusing, not only with my eyes, but with my thoughts. My hard-drive had hit full capacity, and it needed defragmenting, badly.

All this lasted about two days. With simple rest and not even listening to music or the news, I could feel how my brain was slowly returning to normal patterns. The best therapy, once I had overcome the worst, was sitting down and writing my blog entry covering Tokyo: With every paragraph written and every additional photo inserted I could feel a type of catharsis that was completed when I hit the "publish" button. I know, it sounds a bit weird, but the galloping brain had been brought back to a gentle walk.

Why am I telling this? Certainly not to discourage anyone to travel by plane or venture to new places. I am writing about it because it was an important lesson that I had not anticipated, being a well-seasoned traveler and a person with a very active lifestyle. The lesson: Build in extra time for decompression at certain intervals during a longer trip to allow the brain to digest. Had it not been for my "defragmenting my hard drive" several times during this trip by writing blog entries after each major segment, I might have had such a reaction earlier, and it would have been much more scary without someone I trust at my side. 

All along, I had meant to write a type of epilogue to this trip, but I had not expected the kind of opening that you just read. What I had envisioned was a synopsis of what had gone into the planning and the execution of my journey, which now has been preceded by some mental health advice. 

Like many of my ideas, the plan to travel around the world for my 70th birthday had sprung up during one of my daily bike rides in Lubbock last fall. By the time I got back to the house, I had a general sense of direction of travel and some of the places I wanted to visit. As for the timing, the main thing was that I had no burning desire to be in Lubbock on my actual birthday; a secondary consideration was that the NICA high school mountain bike season was going to start in early February. A few pointed question for Microsoft's Copilot created a rough outline of the trip. It was just a matter of connecting the dots and figuring out the nitty-gritty.

Of course, my friends know that I don't like to spend money that doesn't need to be spent, so the challenge was to keep the trip's cost as low as possible while maximizing the comfort of travel. There were several healthy OneWorld frequent flier accounts to dip into, my membership in various hotel programs would come in handy, and one remaining and soon-to-expire systemwide upgrade certificate with American Airlines was begging to be used. After a few nights of mining numerous resources that those of us who play the miles-and-points game know, I had fleshed out my complete itinerary, and it knocked off even my own socks:

$851.22 to fly 23,214 miles, all in Business or First Class. Six airlines, ten flights.

$0.00 to stay for 13 nights in decent hotels in some very expensive Asian cities.

Of course, I did have to part with some of my miles, but in the end this came to less than one tenth of my overall mileage portfolio with American Airlines and British Airways—and no need to dip into the almost half a million miles that I have with United and Delta (accrued to more than 90% by simple credit card churning and fewer than a handful of short-hop flights over the decades). Similarly, the hotel points in no way depleted my Hilton and IHG accounts, thanks in part to being able to take advantage of my branded Chase and Amex credit cards (book 3 or 4 nights with points, get a 4th or 5th night for free). Hotel status thanks to these credit cards also meant free breakfasts and upgraded rooms. OneWorld Emerald status gave me access to every First Class or Business Class lounge in all the airports I visited.

The bulk of the $851.22 that I spent in real money, exactly $492.50, covered a Basic Economy ticket from Lubbock to Madrid. You know, that's the type of fare that doesn't allow changes, comes without advance seat selections, and limits ticket holders to the last boarding group. It's really basic! But I was able to apply that one solitary systemwide upgrade voucher to this booking and flew in a lie-flat seat directly from DFW to Madrid; the ticket would have cost $3,346.00 had I bought it with money. The remaining $358.72 paid the taxes and fees for all of the actual award flights. (The taxes for the hotels were covered by the points redemptions, so no out-of-pocket dollars.)

One of the few remaining beautiful things of lifetime Emerald status is that I can change or cancel an award flight until the very last minute before boarding, for a full refund (points and taxes) without any tacked-on fees. So, over time several of the original flights actually decreased their mileage requirements, and I made good use of this perk. The most lucrative of these changes was cancelling my Tokyo to Lubbock flight (which had initially cost me 138,000 miles) only two days before I left Japan and immediately rebooking it for 43,000 miles less, 95,000. For $49.43 in taxes I thus flew a total of 6,576 miles in a seat that would have cost a staggering $6,433.00 at the time of booking. Fun, isn't it?

Here's a chart that shows you some of these details:

Generally speaking, airline miles are valued at about 1 cent per mile; when you purchase $100 worth of merchandise with your credit card you will receive 100 miles in return, or a 1% discount. The trick is to find a card that will pay more than this (say 2%, 3%, or even 5%) for certain categories. It takes a bit of homework. American sells miles at a rate between about 2.25 cents to 3.75 cents a mile, depending on how many you buy and whether there's a promotion. So, my mileage "cost" for the 238,500 miles I traded for my flights would have been at best $2,385 (1%) or between $5,366 to $8,944 (had I bought them from AA at those rates). Using these miles saved me $15,030 over buying revenue tickets; so you see, even buying the miles from AA would have still saved me half the airfare (provided there had been availability for my desired flights; my return flight from Tokyo one day before or after my date would have cost in excess of 350,000 miles!) After asking the AI to do some math it became clear that with a value of 5.95 cents per mile I did exceedingly well, with what the AI called a Flyer Talk-brag-level redemption. 😄 

Of course, while I was in Madrid with Howard and his family and during my week in Germany with Sabine I stayed for free. But there were associated costs such as the hotel in Oberammergau, the train ride to Cologne, and quite a few decent dinners and numerous pints of beer with Howard that needed to be covered. The final tally for my ten days in Europe came to exactly €803.53, or about $950.00. 

Bookkeeping in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo was made easy because I was able to pay for everything with my German credit card and thus just had to tally up the line items in my statement. Only once did I have to pull out one of my emergency $20s to pay for a few trinkets in a small store that didn't accept plastic. Here's the breakdown:

        Singapore (3 full days)        €233.04    ($275.94)

        Hong Kong (3 full days)       €157.49    ($186.48)

        Tokyo (4 full days)              €276.65    ($327.58)

That comes to exactly $790.00 for my time in these three Asian metropolises, for all my ground transportation needs, entry fees, food and beverage, and whatever small miscellaneous expenses there were. You know, I didn't skimp.

The trip was memorable, for so many reasons. It wasn't just those three-and-a-half weeks that I was away. The time that I spent planning and anticipating, and the time that I have taken (and will continue to take) reviewing and reliving this amazing adventure form an integral part of the overall experience. When I started to travel back in 1974, right after graduating from high school, my daily expenses were limited to about ten to twelve dollars a day, and many of the nights I spent in trains crisscrossing Europe to save the money for a crappy hostel bed, or worse. Never would I have thought that 52 years later I'd be able to spend almost a month circling the globe in Business Class, enjoy a nice drink and smoked salmon while looking from the 45th floor of a fancy bar upon Tokyo, and stay in clean, modern hotels for less than $2,600 total—or less than $94 a day.

Give it a whirl sometime! 

Jürgen