This is part of my end-of-year series while I’m away on vacation. Future posts will cover business lessons learned, a travel roundup, a list of every post from 2009, and the shape of things to come. Happy December! 2009 has been a truly amazing year for me personally and for AONC. It’s no exaggeration to say that my entire life has shifted dramatically from the place where it was a year ago ...
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This is the first in a series of five articles about my Annual Review. Every year since 2005 I've set aside an entire week in December to look back on the previous year and set goals for the next year. This time I'm taking two weeks (it was an intense year!), but I'm also editing my book and outlining a couple of projects for January at the same time.
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This site update comes to you live from the Costa Del Sol in Southern Spain, where I’m on vacation and planning out the next year. Each month I look back at what’s happened with AONC in the previous month (or two, in this case). If you’ve missed some articles, you can catch up here ...
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Greetings from vacation-land, where I've just arrived. I'm looking forward to sharing my 2009 Annual Review with you. But first, some big news in the travel hacking world has come up –-
Yesterday I spent a little over $2,000 on stickers I don't expect to use. On March 1, 2010, I expect to receive at least 280,000 new Star Alliance Frequent Flyer Miles in one of my mileage accounts as a result of the purchase. This is a case study in travel hacking, and in this example, something I call mileage arbitrage.
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A while back I needed a reference letter from a professor from graduate school. I went to see the first guy I thought of, who was widely-known in the field and could have helped strengthen the application I was preparing. We hadn’t really hit it off so well in class, but I thought it was…
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I hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving (fellow U.S. citizens) and enjoyed the quiet internet (everyone else) while the folks over here ate birds and went shopping. This morning I completed my final long run in Oregon until the end of the year. I made it about 15 miles and thought about all the things that have happened in 2009. It’s a long list, and I could have kept thinking, but 15 miles is about my limit these days in terms of running. Afterwards I came home and started packing a bag, also for the last time this year ...
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Friends and readers, I’ve returned home to Portland, Oregon just in time for Thanksgiving. I try to live a life of gratitude every day, so I don’t have much to say about the Thanksgiving holiday in general ...
Read MoreA while back I completed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for any governmental records related to my travel history. You can read the original post, including all the info you need to make your own request if you carry a U.S. passport, over here. As mentioned at the time, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I was curious to see exactly what kind of records the Department of Homeland Security keeps on an active traveler.
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Greetings from the Caucasus, where I’m wrapping up my two weeks of travel in Azerbaijan, Georgia, and now Armenia. I’ll post more on the trip at some point, but this afternoon I’m getting ready to begin the long journey home (EVN-VIE-FRA-DEN-PDX). My first flight departs Yerevan at the lovely hour of 5:45 a.m. tomorrow, but I decided not to sleep on the floor of the airport the night before. (I know, I’m probably getting soft … but remember I took the 15-hour Russian train last week.)
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When I first started doing media interviews in 2008, I noticed that one question would almost always come up: “Why are you so obsessed with travel?” (I learned to call it the mountain-climbing question, because it's the same one climbers are asked about Everest and K2: “Why?”) The question bewildered me until I got used to it. For a long time, I didn't know how to answer; the quest to see the whole world was just something that made sense to me intuitively. I like travel, I like goal-setting, so why not put the two together?
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Greetings, friends and readers. I've been traveling in the Caucasus this month, and over the weekend I took advantage of the opportunity to go from Azerbaijan to Georgia on a 15-hour overnight train. Here are a few notes and several videos from the trip ...
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Greetings from the only coffee shop with WiFi I could find in Baku, Azerbaijan. Not speaking Azeri, Russian, or Turkish doesn’t help with getting directions, but I’m holding up OK. More on the trip next week as I continue to Georgia via overnight train, assuming I can figure out how to get to the train station.
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Greetings from somewhere in between Frankfurt airport and Baku, Azerbaijan. (This post is going up in advance, since I’m not sure I want to rely on in-flight internet.) Approximately one billion people—perhaps slightly less—have recently asked me about what kind of travel gear I use to roam the world and work.
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After an extended time at home with no international trips, I'm headed back out on the road this week. My journey will take me to the Caucasus region, including Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia. Here's how I arranged the trip and what I plan to do.
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Friends and readers, my final business project of 2009 is now available for your consideration. It’s called Frequent Flyer Master, and the goal is to democratize free travel. I want to help thousands of people travel for free, and this guide will guarantee at least one free domestic plane ticket for everyone who picks it up ...
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