The Guide to Free Surf Travel

another duble post admin what up

 

btw, the airlines sell the miles to the corps at roughly 2 cents a mile & the corps then offer the miles to us all to induce us to take on their product (the corps peg this as a cost of doing business aka overhead & we all end up paying for that anyways in the price of the products) - - so, the airlines don't lose anything - - in fact, when miles expire or go unredeemed, the airlines are making massive amounts of money from yet another angle

 

The Pudding Pop Guy is perhaps the most well known / entertaining (and true!) example of a mileage hound or 'hobbyist'....

David Phillips, a civil engineer at UC-Davis, has become a cult hero in the obsessive subculture of people who collect frequent-flier miles by converting $3,150 worth of pudding into 1.2 million miles. Oh, yeah — he's also going to claim an $815 tax write-off.

Last May, Phillips was pushing his shopping cart down the frozen-food aisle of his local supermarket when a promotion on a Healthy Choice frozen entree caught his eye: He could earn 500 miles for every 10 Universal Product Codes (bar codes) from Healthy Choice products he sent to the company by Dec 31. Even better: Any Healthy Choice bar codes mailed by the end of the month would rack up double the mileage, or 1,000 miles for every 10 labels.

"I started doing the math, and I realized that this was a great deal," he said. "I wanted to take my family to Europe this summer, and this could be the way."

Frozen entrees were about $2 apiece, but a few aisles away Phillips found cans of Healthy Choice soups at 90 cents each. He filled his cart with them, and then headed to his local Grocery Outlet, a warehouse-style discount store. And there he hit the mother lode.

"They had individual servings of chocolate pudding for 25 cents apiece," he said. "And each serving had its own bar code on it. I did some more math and decided to escalate my plans."

Phillips cleaned the store out - bought every last cup of pudding in the warehouse. He then asked the manager for the addresses of all the other Grocery Outlet in the Central Valley and, with his mother-in-law riding shotgun in his van, spent a weekend scouring the shelves of every store from Davis to Fresno.

"There were 10 stores in all," he said. "Luckily, most of them were right off the freeway."

 

He filled his garage to the rafters with chocolate pudding and stacked additional cases in his living room. But Phillips wasn't finished yet - he had the manager of his local Grocery Outlet order him 60 more cases.

"A few days later I went out behind the store," he said, "and there were two whole pallets of chocolate pudding with my name on them."

All in all, he'd purchased 12,150 individual servings of pudding. Around this time, Phillips began to reveal his scheme to fellow of the Webflyer Web site where he posted an account under the name "Pudding Guy." Phillips' tale was met with skepticism, if not outright disbelief, until he uploaded photos of his haul.

But then Pudding Guy discovered he had a problem on his hands: The deadline for earning double miles was quickly approaching, and there was simply no way Phillips and his wife could tear off all those bar codes in time. "I had to come up with something to do with all that pudding, fast" he said. Phillips trucked the pudding to two local food banks and the Salvation Army, which agreed to tear off the bar codes in exchange for the food donation. "We'd never seen anything like it," said Larry Hostetler, community relations director for the Sacramento Salvation Army. "We've gotten some big donations, but always from companies and institutions, not individual people."

Phillips got his bar codes in the mail in time to beat the deadline, and then held his breath. The promotion specifically said I could get the miles for any Healthy Choice product," he said. "But still, it seemed like there was a good chance they'd get me on some technicality. "But then packages — large packages — started arriving in the mail from Healthy Choice. In all, they contained 2,506 certificates, each good for 500 miles. That's 1,253,000 miles.

Under the terms of the promotion, Phillips could have the mileage posted in any airline account. He split 216,000 between his United, Delta and Northwest accounts and posted the rest — 1,037,000 miles — to his American Airlines account.

By surpassing the million-mile mark, Pudding Guy now has Aadvantage Gold status for life, entitling him to a special reservations number, priority boarding, upgrades and bonus miles.

While we talked on the phone, Pudding Guy did a little math — as you might have noticed by now, he's very, very good at math - and figured out that scheme netted him enough miles for 31 round-trip coach tickets to Europe, or 42 tickets to Hawaii, or 21 tickets to Australia, or 50 tickets anywhere in the U.S.

"Wow — 31 trips to Europe for a little over $3,000," I said. "That's less than $100 a ticket."

"Oh, it's better than that," Phillips said. "Since I gave the pudding to charity I can take a tax write-off of $815. So that brings the cost of a ticket to Europe down to $75." As it turns out, Pudding Guy didn't donate all his stash to the food banks. He kept about 100 servings for himself, and he's just about finished them. "Actually," he said, "I really like the stuff."

 

For sure. Aside from the obvious free travel, it's a bit of a kick locating a situation & expanding the beach head, so to speak, for one's benefit. You say it better than me, though.

 

To each its own, cooda, to each its own.

No cap gains tax on miles, bunky, unlike those stock chips being raked in.

When & where to CR for you?

 

You, and Seen, and other SI buoys too many to name, I hope you get some goodness cause you guys are good peeps.

 

Cool, hope you score & have FUN.

I was flying to LIR, biz class on miles of course, and struck up a convo with a college kid, engineering major, cool normal dude, sitting next to me. Turned out he was a hobbyist, too, and he had been many places to surf - - utilizing only miles. His friends, he said, would make fun of his dedication to collecting miles & points - - but he said what's not to like about free travel?!? He went on to say that while he was traveling the planet for free & surfing & more, those guys were perched on bar stools back home. He said he couldn't understand how those guys could just pass up free travel.


We all make our choices.

 

April 2014: flew into SJU on JB (miles) & rented a rig (points) & drove over to the area near Rincon. Stayed in Shayne McIntyre's rental house on the hill. When it was huge, could see Wildo breaking from the house. Rincon was always pretty crowded but Wildo was never crowded - - and remains in memory as one of the best & most consistent waves we ever surfed. Def need 4wd to access. Might want to bring reef booties and / or urchin removal kit plus Doxy.

There's other breaks too.

Several guys who post here are much more knowledgeable on PR.

 

Not certain but I think money orders have fees. Also, there are limits as to how many & how much you can utilize; you can thank the W boys who forced the Patriot Act on us for that bit of guvmint intrusion.

 

Don't know Tamarindo - - have stayed away, cause like Blasters notes in his inimitable way, the rep is crowded & skanky.

Might want to take a look at Playa Guiones & stay at the Gilded Iguana (request an AC room). Catch it mid-tide. Lotta fun. Can get big to huge but doesn't hold size well (closeouts). Your friends will dig it in Guiones Nosara & it's wifey friendly for sure. Really good restaurants (Kaya Sol, Burgers n' Beers, Gilded Iguana, many more) but since everyone there surfs, no nightlife.

I would never go to PR in December based on credible reports of the entire surfing population of the east coast of the USA being there at that time of year. But....to each its own