UMTravels

One might ask, why Cincinnati? To keep my status on Alaska.

Every winter one city stands out for cheap, long-distance turnarounds (out and back on the same plane). The previous five years, it was Raleigh-Durham. At around $250 r/t, which I can book in Premium which is the free booze and extra legroom portion on the plane, not First, but I usually get upgraded. At this point, only one leg did I not get upgraded.

Again, why Cincinnati? $152 round-trip for 1,914 flight miles each way, plus 2,455 bonus miles because of how much I fly (which won’t be as much this year as last). Doing the math, that is $912 for 22,968 flight miles (which gets me MVP Silver for 2024) and 29,460 bonus for a total of 52,428 redeemable miles, which is just a few thousand miles short of a one-way business class ticket to Europe. It’s also a little cheaper (0.0173) compared to the value of Alaska miles (0.018)

Cincinnati is also an hour shorter in each direction, making the flights more tolerable if I don’t get upgraded. And it’s a 9am departure, which is civil.

We will start with all the pretty, out the window shots – I try and seat in window seats on the way east if I get upgraded to First for the mountain views:

And some interesting infrastructure shots:

Braidwood and Byron Generating Stations outside Rockford, Illinois. More info at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braidwood_Nuclear_Generating_Station

And then there is this:

The Fowler Ridge Wind Farm in NE Indiana. For more information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fowler_Ridge_Wind_Farm

And then the personal and food stuff:

Feta and sweet potato omelette on the way out:

And the Jerk Chicken on the way home:

For the next trip I’m trying the vegetarian pasta dish, though the Jerk Chicken was quite nice. And here is what you can order if you don’t get upgraded:

End of the day…

And the most amusing thing about the Cincinnati Airport is that there is a Bourbon Tasting Bar and Store next to gate that I fly in/out of:

I’ll end this post with the two most amuzing things from the 5 our of 6 miles runs…

Number 1 — A new cocktail (to me). A Nutty Irishman. Oregon Hazelnut liquor and Irish Cream liqour:

Number 2 – When a group of Coral Directors is on board and they want to sing a song to the First Offier who is taking his last flight as one, to become a Captan. That beats my hitting Alaska MVP Silver on this trip. I got a bit of video:

Sadly, for some reason I can’t get YouTube to embed the video as usual, so click on the link below – it’s a quick 21 seconds.

https://youtube.com/shorts/Qc7AGeGzWyI?feature=share

Well, there is our humor for the day.

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